The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona. Cosmos Mindeleff
of a visit he made to the canyon. He entered it over the Bat trail, near the junction of Monument canyon, and saw several ruins in the upper part. His descriptions are hardly more than a mention. Much archeologic data were secured by the assistants of the Wheeler Survey, but it does not appear that any of them, except the photographer, visited Canyon de Chelly. In the final reports of the Survey there is an illustration of the ruin visited by Lieutenant Simpson about thirty years before.3 The illustration is a beautiful heliotype from a fine photograph made by T. H. O'Sullivan, but one serious defect renders it useless; through some blunder of the photographer or the engraver, the picture is reversed, the right and left sides being interchanged, so that to see it properly it must be looked at in a mirror. The illustration is accompanied by a short text, apparently prepared by Prof. F. W. Putnam, who edited the volume. The account by Simpson is quoted and some additional data are given, derived from notes accompanying the photograph. The ruin is said to have "now received the name of the Casa Blanca, or White House," but the derivation of the name is not stated.
In 1882 Bancroft could find no better or fuller description than Simpson's, which he uses fully, and reproduces also Simpson's (Kern's) illustration. In the same year investigation by the assistants of the Bureau of Ethnology was commenced. Colonel James Stevenson and a party visited the canyon, and a considerable amount of data was obtained. In all, 46 ruins were visited, 17 of which were in Del Muerto; and sketches, ground plans, and photographs were obtained. The report of the Bureau for that year contains an account of this expedition, including a short description of a large ruin in Del Muerto, subsequently known as Mummy Cave. A brief account of the trip was also published elsewhere.4 The next year a map of the canyon was made by the writer and many new ruins were discovered, making the total number in the canyon and its branches about 140. Since 1883 two short visits have been made to the place, the last late in 1893, and on each trip additional material was obtained. In 1890 Mr. F. T. Bickford5 published an account of a visit to the canyon, illustrated with a series of woodcuts made from the photographs of the Bureau. The illustrations are excellent and the text is pleasantly written, but the descriptions of ruins are too general to be of much value to the student.
In recent years several publications have appeared which, while not bearing directly on the De Chelly ruins, are of great interest, as they treat of analogous remains—the cliff ruins of the Mancos canyon and the Mesa Verde. These ruins were discovered in 1874 by W. H. Jackson and were visited and described in 1875 by W. H. Holmes,6 both of the Hayden Survey. This region was roamed over by bands of renegade Ute and Navaho, who were constantly making trouble, and for fifteen years was apparently not visited by whites. Recent exploration appears to have been inaugurated by Mr. F. H. Chapin, who spent two summers in the Mesa Verde country. Subsequently he published the results of some of his observations in a handsome little volume.7 In 1891 Dr. W. R. Birdsall made a flying trip to this region and published an account8 of the ruins he saw the same year. At the time of this visit a more elaborate exploration was being carried on by the late G. Nordenskiöld, who made some excavations and obtained much valuable data which formed the basis of a book published in 1893.9 This is the most important treatise on the cliff ruins that has ever been published, and the illustrations can only be characterized as magnificent. All of these works, and especially the last named, are of great value to the student of the cliff ruins wherever located, or of pueblo architecture.
GEOGRAPHY
The ancient pueblo culture was so intimately connected with and dependent on the character of the country where its remains are found that some idea of this country is necessary to understand it. The limits of the region are closely coincident with the boundaries of the plateau country except on the south, so much so that a map of the latter,10 slightly extended around its margin, will serve to show the former. The area of the ancient pueblo region may be 150,000 square miles; that of the plateau country, approximately, 130,000.
The plateau country is not a smooth and level region, as its name might imply; it is extremely rugged, and the topographic obstacles to travel are greater than in many wild mountain regions. It is a country of cliffs and canyons, often of considerable magnitude and forming a bar to extended progress in any direction. The surface is generally smooth or slightly undulating and apparently level, but it is composed of a series of platforms or mesas, which are seldom of great extent and generally terminate at the brink of a wall, often of huge dimensions. There are mesas everywhere; it is the mesa country.
Although the strata appear to be horizontal, they are slightly tilted. The inclination, although slight, is remarkably persistent, and the thickness of the strata remains almost constant. The beds, therefore, extend from very high altitudes to very low ones, and often the formation which is exposed to view at the summit of an incline is lost to view after a few miles, being covered by some later formation, which in turn is covered by a still later one. Each formation thus appears as a terrace, bounded on one side by a descending cliff carved out of the edges of its own strata and on the other by an ascending cliff carved out of the strata which overlie it. This is the more common form, although isolated mesas, bits of tableland completely engirdled by cliffs, are but little less common.
The courses of the margins of the mesas are not regular. The cliffs sometimes maintain an average trend through great distances, but in detail their courses are extremely crooked; they wind in and out, forming alternate alcoves and promontories in the wall, and frequently they are cut through by valleys, which may be either narrow canyons or interspaces 10 or even 20 miles wide.
The whole region has been subjected to many displacements, both flexures of the monoclinal type and faults. Some of these flexures attain a length of over 80 miles and a displacement of 3,000 feet, and the faults reach even a greater magnitude. There is also an abundance of volcanic rocks and extinct volcanoes, and while the principal eruptions have occurred about the borders of the region, extending but slightly into it, traces of lesser disturbances can be found throughout the country. It has been said that if a geologist should actually make the circuit of the plateau country, he could so conduct his route that for three-fourths of the time he would be treading upon volcanic materials and could pitch his camp upon them every night. The oldest eruptions do not go back of Tertiary time, while some are so recent as probably to come within the historic period—within three or four centuries.
The strata of the plateau country are remarkable for their homogeneity, when considered with reference to their horizontal extensions; hardly less so for their diversity when considered in their vertical relation. Although the groups differ radically from each other, still each preserves its characteristics with singularly slight degrees of variation from place to place. Hence we have a certain amount of similarity and monotony in the landscape which is aided rather than diminished by the vegetation; for the vegetation, like the human occupants of this country, has come under its overpowering influence. The characteristic landscape consists of a wide expanse of featureless plains, bounded by far-off cliffs in gorgeous colors; in the foreground a soil of bright yellow or ashy gray; over all the most brilliant sunlight, while the distant features are softened by a blue haze.
The most conspicuous formation of the whole region is a massive bright-red sandstone out of which have been carved "the most striking and typical features of those marvelous plateau landscapes which will be subjects of wonder and delight to all coming generations of men. The most superb canyons of the neighboring region, the Canyon de Chelly and the Del Muerto, the lofty pinnacles and towers of the San Juan country, the finest walls in the great upper chasms of the Colorado, are the vertical edges of this red sandstone."
Of the climate of the plateau country it has been said that in the large valleys it is "temperate in winter and insufferable in summer; higher up the summers are temperate and the winters barely sufferable." It is as though there were two distinct regions covering the same area, for there are marked differences throughout, except in topographic configuration, between the lowlands and the uplands or high plateaus. The lowlands present an appearance which is barren and desolate in the extreme, although the soil is fertile and under irrigation yields good crops. Vegetation is limited to a scanty growth of grass during a small part of the year, with small areas here and there scantily covered by the prickly greasewood and at intervals by clumps of sagebrush; but even these prefer a