Indiana daily times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1914-1922, 1920-08-30
HERE is RELIC
OF AMERICA IN
ANCIENT DAYS
Indians of New Mexico Mold
ing Civilization Before
Christ.
MOST PICTURESQUE CITY
BIZ FREDERIC j. HAsKIN.


canyon.
It was a city we'll worthy of the name,
with many stone houses, churches~~and
forts. arts and industries, and farm
lands to feed its population, of whom
there were perhaps two thousand.
The age Of this city is a matter for
speculation.
It is known only that it was ruin
when the Spaniards came in the sixteenth
century.
There are many other things about it
that puzzle archaeologists.
But its size and how it looked are ap-
parent to every beholder.
Fer half of it was built OF masonry,
some of which still stands, and the other
half was excavated in the face of the
tufa cliffs.
These rooms made by digging are al
most unchanged. The SCOT of ancient
fres is still black on their roofs, and
on their floors lie the stone mortars and
pestles with which grain was ground, the
stone tools with which the rooms were
made, bit Of pottery, arrow heads and
many other remnants Of the life that
was.
For a long time writers romanced
about the men who made these cliff
dwellings.
Because the doors were low, so that
a man could enter only on hands and
knees, it was assumed that they were a
pigmy race.
But Bandelier. Loomis and other able
investigators discredited this charming
fairy tale.
They showed that in all essentials, as
shown by its remains, this civilization
- h. rxyae Ike the civilian
ton Of the Pueblo Indians of today.
They established the fact that the an
cestors Of the modern PuebIos lived in
this cliff city in an age when they were
a more thriving race than they have
been in historical times, and when they
needed such refuge in order to escape
the Apaches and other nomad Indians.
STRIKING
CITY SITE.
Never was a city built in d more pic
turesque and inaccessible location.
Here the Rio Grande plows a way a
thousand feet deep through a barren
land Of lava, iron hard and iron hot,
frugalIy timbered with gnarled and
hardy pinon and juniper.
Down to the river come other streams
little clear streams from the pointed
peaks to the north-through gorges as
deep and sheer as that of the Rio Grande
itself
But these tributary canyons are not
cut through lava.
Their walls for the most part are of
tufa, a volcanic deposit as soft and work
able as chalk and yet solid as marble.
The Rito is one Of these branch can
yons.
It is perhaps 700 feet deep. and It's
walls are so abrupt that its floor can
be reached only by few steep and DIFF
fcult trails.
You must picture it then as a vast
crack in the face of the earth with walls
steep and sheer, sculptured into ali sorts
of forms by wind and rain, and tinted
in every shade of brown, from the pal
est bun to the richest of old meer-
achaum.
These walls are barren and sterile.
but at the bottom of the canyon there
are temple-like groves Of pine and thick
shade Of willow and box elder along
the stream, and open, level land where
corn will grow.
And the level mesas above are well
timbered with pine and juniper and
support rich grass.
Wild turkey and blacktail deer are
still abundant there, as they must have
been in the days of the cliff dwellers.
4ACAc dAC bEal III AA4C NaAs JUS anu
mountain liont and coyotes are album
dant.
PLACES CHARM
EASILY SEEN.
It is easy to imagine the charm which
ouch a spot would have for tribe o.
primitive men, sedentary by habit, who
longed for a place where they would
be secure from plundering hands of
nomad Indians.
They could raise corn in the canyons
and perhaps on the mesas. game was
abundant. the winters were mild, and the
tufa cliffs made the building Of homes
an easy matter.
No doubt the rooms in the cliH walls
were made first with rude stone picks.
The doors were made small so that
a single round boulder would close one
against a marauder.
Windows and chimney holes were dug,
and shelves and cubbies for the storing
OF provisions.
Then, as the tribe grew strong and
numerous, they made rafter holes in the
cliffs and built two and three-story
stone houses cut in front of it.
They built great circular communal
house on the floor Of the canyon.
All of its walls may still be traced,
and some Of them are yet several feet
hign.
And finally the shamans of the tribe
climbed to a great cave IN the cliff,
nearly 200 feet above the stream, and
there they built one of their circular
places of worship, called a khiva, half
way between the silver water and the
blue sky that looked over the rim
rock
Never was pagan temple more fdy
set
It is the beauty of this place that tho
country is just as it has always been,
and that so much of the ancient city
remains.
You have only to see its walls stand
ing again, to populate it with brown men
and women, like the Pueblos of today,
save that they were probably more near
Iy naked, to hear the thunder Of the drum
from the ceremonial cave, the deep chant
ing of the men as they come home from
the fields, the voices of laughing women
trudging in long lines from the stream
with tinajas full of water on their heads,
and you have a picture of the city that
Was
1t was a civilization in the making
These people We're spotters of great
ability, making a glazed pottery, of
which you may find abundant pits and
which the modern Indians can not equal
they wore mantles of cotton. probably
gotten in irade; they drew pictures on
the rocks and painted them on the roofs
of caves; they had an organized govern
ment and a religion with permanent
temples
Who can doubt that they would have
evolved true civilization had not an
old