Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1902-11-21
BURIED AMERICAN CITIES.
Ruins Of Vast communlties-sout
Arizona Field of Marvellous
Archaeological Richness.

Arizona a Field OF Marvellous
Archaeological Richness.
The passage by the House of Represen-
tatives at Washington of a bill for the
creation of a national park for the preser-
walton of the petrifed forest of north
eastern Arizona from the vandalism of
relic-hunters and seekers of polished
stones for ornamental building purposes
led some 1000 people recently to petition
Congress for the creation of a national
park for the preservation of the remains
OF several large cities, in Maricopa and
Pinal Counties in Arizona, that passed
away hundreds of years ago. Prof
Hamilton Bonynge of Cambridge Unver-
sity has said that there is no richer field
for archaeological work in America than
the ruined sites of these prehistoric COM
munities. Unless Congress throws some
protecting hand over them there will
be little left of the relics by another
ten years. While Italy has been pro-
tecting her Pompeii and Herculaneum for
a century, while Egypt jealousy guards
her ancient relies, and even Mexico and
Peru permit no one to go digging among
their relics of prehistoric races, there has
never except in the case of the ruins
of the aboriginal temple at Casa Grande)
been the least legal effort to save oblit-
GRAFTON of the marvellous relics of the
buried cities on the plains of southern
Arizona, or to check the destruction of
the matchless cliff and cave dwellings
among the mountain canons along the
line of the Atchison. Topeka and Santa
Fe Railroad in Northern Arizona. The
tourists, who become more numerous in
Arizona every winter, have made relic
gathering n settled industry There are
cowboys, schoolboys, clerks, and men out
OF job who go forth every winter and
dig and plough for relies in these Pom
peiis of America. In the last ten years
there has been a wholesale ripping open
OF tombs of prehistoric warriors a
searching for ancient turquoises battle
weapons, personal finery, household uten-
Sis, and other articles used by the I'M
known ancients who dwelt i'm the ella
Valley. The building of the enormous
irrigation plants in the Salt and Gla
Valleys has obliterated acres of very in
teresting remains of aboriginal irrigation
systems while ranchmen and cattemen
nave land low many an outline of pre-
historic structures, where a trained arch
aeologist might have learned facts of in
estmable value in solving the problem of
who these aborigines WERE how they
lived, whence they came, and whittier
they departed. During the last year
several fine specimens of the engineer
ing skill of the mysterious race who
dwelt here ages ago have been covered
over and wellnigh obliterated by alfalfa
growers.
Where The Buried Cities Lie.
There are no more interesting aborigin-
al remains in the Union than these of the
buried towns in the Gila and Salt Val
leys, within fifty miles of Phoenix. In
deed, an aggregation of mines of pre-
historic towns may be traced across the
hot. sandy. desert wastes from Florence
southwark into Sonora, Mexico. Frank
H. Gushing estimated that the popula-
ton of these dead, silent. uninhabited
localities was once over 100000 In age,
these ruins of the buried of Arizona are
far earlier than Pompei and Herculan-
cum.
The evidence is overwhelming that
there were once fourteen aboriginal
cities, each having a population varying
from 10000 to 5000, in southern Arizona.
Here, in what was a wholly unclaimed
desert until the last few years, and is
yet largely a waste of hot drifting
sands there lived several thousands
of years ago a dense population of intel
ligent. ambitious, and skillful farmers.
That these people lived in this region
hundreds of years is not gainsaid by any
archaologist, and that they were the
peers in brains and progress of any con-
temporaneous race on the Western hem
isphere is patent to the most careless in
vestigator. The irrigation systems,
? which comprise canals sixteen miles
4 long. with ingenious water gates: the ar
! rangement of streets and buildings; the
polished woods, stones, and shells; the
finely woven fabrics that have been re-
covered from these buried and ruined
cities all tell of the high degree of civili-
cation reached by these mysterious peo-
pie. There Is no more fascinating sub
ject I'm the realm of scientific exploration
and study than that which concerns the
origin and aspirations, the wars. and
the final and wonderfully complete dsap-
pearance of the several hundred thous-
and men and women who made a garden
of the Arizona desert wastes centuries
ago.
The remains of the largest cities are
on sloping plain-about forty-five
miles across in any direction-between
the Salt and ella valleys.
Remains of Canals.
The irrigating canals are characteristic
of this region. over 100000 acres of land
must have been watered by these great
systems. Even in this day of mechani-
cal devices and the finest tools and appli-
ances the construction of such canals.
big dams, storage reservoirs, and dykes
would be no mean engineering work.
Fancy, then, what years of patient labor
their construction required from this pre-
historic race. who had only crude stone
implements to excavate with. and wicker
baskets in which to carry away the
canals of these ancient peoples were
used for navigation. as well as for ir-
rigaton. He found there evidences of
very large pine timbers which could not
have been obtained within seventy miles
of the cities, and he believes that these
and enormous stones for building pur-
! poses were fioated down the artificial
waterways.
These aborigines were travellers for
shells that came from the lower Pacific
Coast-many from the Gulf of California
ARE frequently exhumed. They were
also adopts at inlaid and mosaic work.
In a very durable cement made from the
gum deposited by insects on greasewood
twigs. fragments of turquoises bits of
polished granite. and shells were artis-
/ tically embedded. Then, when the
matriX had been polished and rubbed
down. very superior mosaic for home
ornamentation was made. The location
of the temples which are determined by
the character of the relics found in the
ruins, shows that these people were sun
worshippers. In one city, twenty miles
from Phoenix. the remains of an estufa
or temple have photographs (picture writ
ings) which show the priests and others
worshipping the rising sun.
I The excavation of the prehistoric tombs
and vaults reveals facts concerning the
religious and social classes among them.
Hundreds of skeletons have been re-
covered. The people We're small in
stature, and their skulls We're broader
than those of the Aztecs and Peruvians,