San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1896-10-24
LIFE OF THE CLIFF JEWELLERS.
Farmers Who Know None But the Most
Primitive Methods.

Primitive Methods.
He was dark-skinned fellow, this old
cliff dweller, as his mummified remains
show plainly enough. The hair was
usually black, and moderately coarse
and long. He was of medium stature
and the back of his skull was flattened
by being tied firmly against board in
infancy, as among some races is the
custom still. He had fair teeth, much
worn as the years grew upon him, from
munching ill-gTound corn.
1t would be difficult to say from the
articles thus far discovered just how
much this prehistoric man was devoted
to dress, or, rather, to undress. A sim
pie breechclout was certainly in vogue,
and there is considerable reason to
think that this was, at times, at least,
the piece de resistance in his costume.
But parts of hide jackets, fur caps,
blankets made of feathers tied on to q
coarse net of cord, are also in evidence,
and mostly preserved among the fur
nishings of the dead. A variety of san
dals and other rude footgear has been
found, some woven of yucca leaves,
some braided of other vegetable fibers,
some rudely constructed from corn
husks.
A certain passion for personal adorn-
ment and devotion to superstition is
evident from the rough beads and the
strings of bones and small shells which
he wore, while amulets of turquoise
or shell or broken pottery pierced for
suspension about the neck are not sell
dom found. He brushed his hair with
tightlytied punches of stiff grass, with
one end trimmed square, and his long,
coarse, black hairs are clinging still TO
some of them.
The spirit of the age now prompts us
to ask what did he do for a living, this
dark fellow in scanty attire, with a tinge
of vanity and superstition.
He was, first of all, farmer. He
raised corn and beans and gourds or
squashes, at least, in the thin soil of
the mesas, or upon the lesser slopes,
which still show traces of scanty ter
races. Corn is frequently found, some
times still on the cob, sometimes shelled
off and slowed in jars, while corncobs
and cornhusks are scattered every
where among the rubbish. The beans
and gourds are less abundant. The
gourd seeds were sometimes carefully
slowed away. The only farming i'm
plements which have been found are,
so far as l am aware, stout sticks
pointed or flattened at one end, quite
like the planting sticks still in use by
primitive agriculturists.
1t is evident enough that in his time,
as now, his country was very dry, and
water had to be carefully husbanded.
One finds here and there traces of sbal-
low reservoirs and what seem to have
been irrigating bitches. Sloping hol-
lows in the rocks near the houses are
not infrequently damned across their
lower ends, apparently to save the melt
ing snow or the waste of showers. The
considerablenumbe of large jars would
indicate that water was stored, too, in
the houses, it may be, for times of siege.
The earthen ladies or dippers not in
frequently found in the graves are often
much worn and beveled on the edges,
an Indication that they were used to
ladle up water from hollows in the
rocks, such as abound on the plateaus
above and about the cliffs. Small
springs still exist near some of the
largest cliff houses.
That the cliff man was skilled in ma
sonry, the well-shaped and finished
stones, the trim walls hung upon steep,
sloping rock surfaces, sheer at the edges
of cliffs, where they rest to-day firm and
secure, abundantly prove. The mortar
of most of the houses was very skill
fully laid in, and between the tiers peb-
bles and small stones were set, giving a
pleasing break to the lines Of the ma
sonry.-T. Mitchell Prudden, in Har-
per's Magazine.