The Coolidge examiner., 1930-06-13
EXCAVATINC AT
THE RUINS
How About Modern Dumps?


automobile tenders? What will be-
come of the rustless iron? l think
our dumps will not be so interest
ing as those of our Indians.
Our trip ito Santa Rosa, when we
saw an Indian woman making pot
terry, gave us much on which to
ponder. She grasped boulder
with both hands and slowly pound
ed a mixture of clay and mica
schist in a tin lard pail
A few days after that Julian, the
Mexican, uncovered precisely the
same equipment for preparing the
clay and tempering matter, in a
house at the compound. To be sure,
the tin pail was not there; but the
mica schist was, and the boulder
for it's reduction to suitable size.
A flat slab of stone lay on the floor.
1t was abouut Is inches in diam
eter. Upon it was a piece of mica
schist, surrounded by several ma
nos and boulders, just such OBJ
jects as the Papago woman was u.s.
ing.
All of these things seemed to
have been left there ready for use.
Why did not the woman who plac-
ed them there return to them?
That is one of the tantalizing things
about this work, we find so many
cases of things having been left,
casually. with every intention of
returning tothem. Why was that
house abandoned? Nothing in it
or around it indicated catastrophe
or sudden departure. 1t was as
though housewife had laid out on
the kitchen table her utensils for
or that and stepped out for a few
moments and never came back.
Why do we find no entire meta
tes in these ruins? At Mesa House,
in Nevada, | found three only;
Jeanson found five at Po-Shou-Du-
inge, in a ruin of 127 rooms, but
here we find none at all, and very
few fragments Of them Such frag-
ments as we find are almost all
made FROM volcanic rock. We sus-
pect that if any entire metates were
left in the house they were removed
by later comers. They were not
light in weight and must have been
unhandy implements for a people
whose travelling was done afoot;
and they must have been treasured.
There is something beautiful about
metates and manOs, they smack OF
the hearth and the home.
Few Metates Found
Those who finally see it in its
case in the museum are going to
marvel at the niceness of the cary
ing. 1t would be a credit to any
master of the carving art. Just
picture in your minds eye two
birds, back to back, each grasping
in it's talons the rattles of rattle
snake and in it's beak the head of
a rattlesnake. All of this in a ring
which will almost but not quite slip
over the ring finger, carved from
circle cut from | know not what
species of shell.
This is the second ring of the
sort which Happy Jack has found
in soil containing cremation burials.
The other day another trowelman
came upon a mass of calcined bones
and shells, with many fragments of
carved shells among them. Some
of these were birds, and we now
know that some of them were parts
of large shell bracelets with the
bird-snake motif.
Who Were They?
Who were these people whose
houses and burials we are explor-
ing? They made the same sort of
pottery found in the compound and
in and about the ruins of Casa
Grande National Monument and in
both the Gila and Salt river val
leys. That is, the same sort of
plan ware was theirs, and the red
on-buff, and the Pimas and Papa
gos make a similar pottery today,
by the same methods; and l saw an
ola the other day which was a
piece of modern red-on-buff. This
does not argue for blood kinship
between the canalbuilders and the
present Pimas and Papagos; but it
is at least interesting to know that
the method of manufacture is sim
liar.
We are sure that the people who
carved these rings and made the
burials we are finding are an ear
lier stage Of the same people who
built our compound. More and
more certain are we that they had
intimate contact with Old Mexico,
especially with the people whobuilt
the great houses in Chihuahua.
They may even have been as a col
ony from there; at present no one
knows.
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