Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-10-20
The Haskin Letter
Bv
J. HASKIN
MORE DATA ABOUT CLIFF-DWELLERs

means they were able to grow corn
not in abundance but still in sufficient
quantities to exc out their thin supply
Of fish and meat.
1t was not enough to grow the corn;
they had to store it for the winter.
If they could not store 1t safely, they
could not survive. Originally these
people had lived in half-sunken pit
dwellings on the top of the mesa. Along
the sides of the canyons which cut into
the mesa were high, shallow caverns,
caused by the erosion of soft strata of
rock between harder sorts. To these
caverns. probably, they first took their
corn for storage.
This would no be good storage, for
rains and SHOWS would beat into the
caverns and dampen the corn. The
next step in their progress was to
build dry ~<granaries for the storage
of their crops. Anthropologists have
long observed that the only primitive
peoples who have ever amounted to
anything have been those who built
| of stone. The cliff-dwellers were the
| only prehistoric tribe north of the Rio
Grande river that used stone as a
building material.
Beginnings of Communal Life
Thus these people gradually became
| skillful artisans in the use of stone.
Eventually they left their earth lodges
on the top of the mesas and went to
live in the safer and more comfortable
caves. Here they built themselves
houses, and naturally built them of
| stone. A communal life began. AT first,
perhaps, only a single family occupied
q cavern with q small u built on
the cave floor. Family descent was
through mothers. Presently a branch
would break off the original family
and become a clan. This clan built its
stone housing to adjoin the original
house. Thus the various cliff dwellings
grew in size. Each clan provided for
| itself ceremonial rooms and living
quarters, and the house grew until it
became q village in itself. The Cliff
Palace, the first Of these ruins to be
discovered, is 300 feet long, nearly
100 feet wide, and it contained 200
rooms. Parts of it were three and four
stories high.
This sort of building developed for
the cliff dwellers a distinct type of
architecture. The typical building was
| constructed in the form of a letter ID.
This correspondent to the shape of a
| cliff cavern-the straight edge OF the
precipice in front and the curving wall
! or the cave DenLnu. 4ne C~lll-uNelleIs
became sun w~orshippers, and when
they build their sun temple on the
mesa top. each of the two sections OF
the temple followed this form.
These people also became skillful
and artistic p~otters. This in itself was
a tremendous advance over most OF
the prehistoric people in America. The
p~ottery of the cliff-dwellers not only
served it's use but in form and decora-
| ton it was beautiful. judged even by
/ our standards of beauty today.
Thus necessity operated then as II
has in historic times to advance civil
cation. The cliff-dwellers reached tbs
top of their greatness about the
twelfth century-the time of the Cru
sades in Europe, when Robin Hood and
his merry men held Sherwood Forest
in England and the barons were forcing
the Magma Charta from t%yrannical
King John. At the same time the In
dian tribes that ranged more favored
sections of what is now the United
states suffered their occasional
famines and advanced little in culture
What happened TO the cliff-dwellers
Nothing Is known definitely, but there
Is reason to believe that the old story
of Rome and the barbarians was re-
peated there on the Mesa Verde. The
conjecture is that the Ute Indians
drove out the cliff dwellers, who moved
to the south and became the ancestors
Of what we know today as the Pueblo
Indians.