Weekly journal-miner., 1911-03-15

NudIlOl h- lAdlAs tNAA AbOA AdA AASNSA4 4eAAi
 was read at the last meeting ot
 the Monday Club by Mrs. George
 c. Ruffner:
 The early Spanish explorers travel.
 ling over Arizona found long-abandoned
 houses of stone and adobe, like the
 Red House" of which Pedro de Cas-
 teneda tells in his quaint story of the
 marches of Coronado; and from the
 earliest parties sent out by the United
 States government to mark roadways
 across this farthest fringe of the"Great
 American Desert to the most recent
 tourist sight-seer, the dim remains of
 human occupancy in some remote time
 has aroused speculation and interest
 It is. only quite recently that any
 attempt has been made to study these
 curious and varied traces of unrecord-
 ed human life as a whole. rather than
 in detached groups and by considera- tion Of special localities. Indeed there
 has not been much data available for this larger study, nor many observers
 who were fairly familiar with the whole region and with all the types of ruins found in it.
 reau of Ethnology has been carefully
 gathering the material for such com parative study and it is probable that within a short time some comprehen- sive work including the opinions of the most careful investigators will be before the public. I do not aim in this article to express any positive opin- ion as to where our prehistoric .Ari- Zonans came from or whither they went
 or of what blood they sprang, but as l have seen at one time and another ern to the northern borders of the region a little grouping of descriptions may be of some value.
 The oldest type of ruins in the South west are found with very little change from the Mexican border. and I know not how much farther southward, to at least the region of the Cliff-dwell CTS in northern Arizona These are the low, irregular. almost untraceable stone heaps scattered through with pot shreds. that a trained ruin-hunter may find in almost every valley and on almost every low mesa from far south of Tucson up into the deep canons of the pinon country.
 Who made these simple homes that were perhaps only brush shelters with a few stones laid to keep the light material from blowing away we can not know. Excavation among the stone heaps gives only bits of rude nay have served to hack wood or flesh, and large stones that may lave been "r-ldN hammers or hide scrapers. Sometimes on large bould- pictures will be pecked into the rock. but these may have belonged to a later people and they tell no word that can be read with certainty.
 Yet there is. nothing in these dim ruin-heaps at all out of harmony with the things found in the larger and later later ruins ruins; s6e sEpde pottery might bears of the people whose broken jars, polished and painted in really beautiful patterns lies scattered over the the flint and stone implements have a family likeness
 It is always in the river valleys and along little streams, north and south. hot 1ron- s,,,1s aF permanent and often successive occu- pations. Here the chance of gathering larger stores of grass seeds and food roots from the moister land. or of as were cultivated. drew the forgotten brown people year. by year to the same camps and fields. If droth dried uD the water and obliged them to go come. or if floods swept away the fields for season or more, it was perfectly natural that when times were favor able again, someone would come back to gather and plant in tn" bottom lands and build ney camps and homes in the cliffs or on the hilltops overlook ing the country.
 In the Gila and Salt River valleys and on the Rio Verde ard its tributary strear7s such field traces are especially plentiful and clearly d"fi-nd. Tn. tn" and canals led out tho wato- and dis tributed it over eNtaneTva fields. and these old planting grounds arn still out lined by rows of stones and ridges of earth where the water was divided and controlled Many of thasA old fields are now alfalfa farms and some of the present ditches follow the ones which may have been dug ont bv hand to feed the fields so long foreotter.
 Ir tho Verde valley whara the de- posit of sediment and building up of the level Of the land along the riv"r sNAms to have been by successive per iods there are several levels of oc~u- patton, if one may so express it. The carly white settlers often found pot objects at the bottom of wills and eel lars which they happened to dig. and such things were exposed now and a gain by the caving of banks along
 At last during time of heavy and prolonged high water the river changed of farming land and exposed to view more than twelve feet below the pres ent level of it's banks some hundred feet of a prehistoric canal large enough This canal seemed to have been lined with the cement-like clay from nearby hiTls. hardened with time and use till it resembled a soft tile.
 Out from the canal was a strongly built dam of boulders- and small stone which had probably diverted the water GS ntS has the adn Sanaihead heada This old ryer than anyone would dare to guess-to he uncovered again and become oncn more the channel of tho Verde. This curious uncovering of the rivers SO crets prada clear the fact that tho val lev once had a much lowrr level and that people had cultivated land daeD under the present fields and far-rS. Some very fine photographs were made of ditch and dam while they were at their best and ethnologists wera inter aSted to visit and study the work.
 Such a story might be told of almost anv stream in Arizona, with the eX- ception of that greatest Of western riv- Grand Canyon is full of traces of ong-ahandonad homes in cliff and cave ard on tho huge turrets Of stone that furnished such safe and lofty lookouts: but in the valley below tho canyon. all the long way to the gulf, what re- mains of human life may have been. ar0 lost under layer after layer of the red earth which the river has brought down.
 The legends of the Indians along the upper river seem to indicate that in and below the great canyons there lived numerous tribes-perhaps those People of the Underworld' of which the HOpi r7vths speak SO often. and it is not unlikely that more thorough eXplora- tion may reveal remains now hidden. History and tradition do make us sure that this great valley has been occu- pied for a long period of time by var
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