El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1901-02-01
HOW TREY DIED
INDIAN LEGEND OF
ARIZONA CLIFF JEWELLERS
Their Enemies Pursued Them to their
Caves and Suffocated them With
Smoke-Many Skeletons Found
Huddled Together.

FORT APACHE, Ariz., Jan. 2S.-
Rain, Rainli Rain,!! 1t has rained
nearly every day for a week.
Who says that it never rains in Ari-
IONA?
1t has rained more since December
last year than in the previous four
years 1t is terribly muddy here; to
use the slang phrase lit is little slop-
py.'
The mail which comes from Hol-
brook one hundred miles overland,
has been behind time lately on account
of the mud and rain.
Fort Apache is the headquarters of
two companies of soldiers who are sta
toned here to hol dthe White Noun
tain Apache Indians in check, they be-
ing vet somewhat warlike. They how
ever are more peaceable than in for
mer years. These Indians who have a
reservation about as large as the state
of Delaware, number at present 1850.
Their lands. however, for the most part
are mountainous and make even poor
grazing lands; but III the valley of the
White river, Black river, and the Sibi-
cu creek corn and wheat are raised
in such quantities that il fair years
the Indians besides supplying their
own wants furnish the military post
and the Fort Apache agency with all
the grain and hay that is needed.
Fort Apache is situated it, a very
picturesque valley at the junction of
White and Black rivers. 10 the east
of the Fort about one mile is the re-
mains of an ancient Indian village and
fort and futher up Black river to the
east, probably four miles. the sides OF
that river are honeycombed with the
remains of the Cliff Dwellers.
One entrance opens up into several
hundred rooms. The rooms are dark
and dismal and there are so many of
| them that the tourists are compelled
to line their course with string in
order not to lose their course
and them perish in the tombs Of that
once queer people who inhabited this
section of the country. These rooms
one opening into another extend back
under the solid roof of rock for, / sup
pose miles. So far back at least that
even the Smithsonian institute men
failed to reach its utmost recesses.
The rooms have been chiseled out
along a great fissure with some crude
instrument Some of the rooms are
very large some are mere Railways.
One room contains the remains of
about four hundred skeletons-the peo-
lie seem to have all huddled together as
though some great catastrophe mad
Iovertaken them and they had assem-
bled for a last prayer to their gods and
that having been said they there per-
ished.
What the catastrophe was is only in
conjecture. The Indians have le-
gend that these Cliff Dwellers were at
war with another ancient race and
these White Mountain Cliff Dwellers
having been defeated. retreated to their
cliff houses where they were shut in
by their conquerers and there sufocat-
ed with smoke from fires built by the
invaders in the cliff entrances.
This seems very probable as the en-
trance wall sare smoked. They might,
however. have been shut in by a caving
in of the entrance and thereafter ex-
hausted themselves in trying TO cut
their way out and while doing so per-
isneu of hunger and thirst.