Discoveries on the Colorado, III

Discoveries on the Colorado BY JOSEPH F. ANDERSON, OF THE UTAH ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPEDI- TION, 1913, FORMERLY PRINCIPAL OF THE MONROE HIGH SCHOOL III — The Industries of the Cliff Dwellers. The industry and skill of the vanished dwellers in the cliffs is as well shown in their handicrafts as in the extent and variety of their architecture. They were people of the neolithic stage of development. No evidence whatever has been discovered to show that they had any acquaintance with the metals. Almost every other available material to be found in the country seems to have been used, in one form or another, in making clothing, household utensils and accessories, implements, weapons and ornaments. With the materials at hand, these ancient folk worked so ingeniously and fashioned so skilfully that they may be regarded as among the most advanced of neolithic men. The home seems to have been the center of all industrial activities. There was evidently no centralization of manufacturing, nor was there a monopoly on the output of any product. Each home had its own grist mill, each family did its own spinning, weaving, and tailoring, and each farmer and hunter made his own implements and weapons. He was at once farmer, mason, potter, weaver, basket-maker, tailor, jeweler, warrior, hunter and woodsman. Certainly he was diligent and thrifty. He must also have been daring and hardy to scale such cliffs and perform such tasks as he did. In all the cliff dwellings the same general types of relics are found, with a few exceptions and variations. Everywhere, articles of clothing and adornment are found, almost as plentifully as the pottery. It would be difficult to say from the articles found just how much this prehistoric man customarily wore. Certainly, the simple breech-clout was in vogue. Parts of hide-jackets are sometimes found. These often show considerable skill in tanning. Often the skins found, in the houses well protected from moisture, are just as soft and pliable as if fresh from the tannery. A few centuries of time seem to have detracted nothing from the strength. Fur caps are among the articles of headgear brought to light. Thread for sewing these and other articles of apparel was made either from cotton, yucca, sinews or milkweed fibres. The most elaborate and costly costume was made from the

DISCOVERIES ON THE COLORADO 231 feather blankets. These are much in evidence in all the cliff houses, and are mostly preserved among the furnishings of the dead. Fur robes, like the feather robes, are often found wrapped around the mummified bodies buried in the cliffs. Thick and heavy, these robes must have formed warm wraps. They seem to have formed an essential part of the royal and ecclesiastical garb of the time. The weft of such a robe was made by wrapping heavy cords of yucca fibre with strips of feather, obtained by splitting the feather down the center, or with narrow strips of fur. These, when completed, made fluffy strands, the thickness of an ordinary pencil. The warp was either of yucca or cotton cord. Fabrics of varied texture and composition are largely in evidence. Most invaluable to the cliff man, as a fibre producer, was the yucca, or Spanish bayonet. He used the long, narrow leaves in lieu of nails, in fastening the timbeis of his house together ; with them he bound his sandals to his feet, and with them he bound the embalmed bodies of the dead for burial. He beat out the brittle matter from the leaves, leaving long, tough fibrils, which he twisted into threads, cords, and ropes. From these were formed the warp and woof of his most common fabrics. Often a combination with cotton was made. Considerable quantities of fine-textured cloth, all of cotton, have been found. Fine cotton laces of intricate design were uncovered by the Utah expedition, showing great skill in fine handwork. Small looms of simple construction, Photo by Frazier, Utah Arch. Exped. "NAVAJO JUAN," A Navajo political leader, weaving-sticks, and simple spindles, are the wno is a very intelligent inonly mechanical devices discovered with d^an. He has much influence . { . . . among the Navajos of the which the Spinning and Weaving Were done. Kayenta agency, and has al- Si i r i 1 ct, ways befriended Prof. Cumandals of closely woven yucca fibre were mi£gs and the men with him. the universal footwear. Even their prim- J* is ?u?h ,In,dians as.,he Jho .. /~v r have helped to keep the JNavltive shoe-making had its artistic phase. Of- ajos from the warpath for so ten the sandals were elaborately decorated ong a time' with woven, raised designs and colors. Headbands were worn either for utility or ornament — possibly as an aid in keeping the hair in position. Many hair brushes are found, with hair still matted in them.

232 IMPROVEMENT ERA These and other brushes are tightly tied bunches of stiff wiregrass, with one end trimmed square. Needles were made from hard wood, or from bone. Awls were of sharpened bone, or of sharp pointed obsidian, laboriously chipped to a fine round point. Drills for boring holes in wood, pottery or other hard matter, were flaked into shape apparently in the same way as the Indians formerly made arrow points. As a basket-maker the cliff dweller was expert. Baskets, mats and shields showing considerable variety, and a keen appreciation of ornament, attest the skill of the makers. The everuseful yucca, willow, tough grass, and split sticks, were the raa- Photo by Rynearson, Utah Arch. Exped. SECTION OF "TWIN CAVE," A cliff dwelling, in Arizona, containing eighty-two rooms. It was in this cliff house that the author uncovered the largest olla (storage vase) in the world — circumference five feet. This is one of the cliff dwellings excavated by Prof. Cummings and party. Several large boxes of relics were shipped to the university of Utah from this dwelling. terials used in their construction. Since they evidently had no beasts of burden and had to transport crops from the field on their own backs, baskets were indispensable. They vary in size from large carrying baskets, with a capacity of more than a bushel, to the tiny cone-shaped ones, seemingly used for collecting pitch from the conifers. Some of the smaller baskets have been found to contain stored seeds of the rarer sorts, nuts and sacred ceremonial articles. One of these latter, which Professor Cummings found in the Sagi-ot-Sosi, was a little basket of excellent make, with rows of humming bird feathers woven into the meshes on the inside. Over the top had been stretched a cover of buckskin carefully held in place by a buckskin thong. Fond of ornamentation, like all primitive peoples — and superstitious as well — they used everything bright and striking in

DISCOVERIES ON THE COLORADO 233 appearance as ornaments for the body, and used as talismans and charms anything with an air of mystery about it. Animal forms were carved of rare stones and other materials, and apparently used as charms against evil spirits. Strings of shells and beads of precious stones were common articles of adornment. Ear pendants of turquoises and other bright-colored stones, as well as ornaments molded from clay, satisfied the vanity of those mysterious people. Medicine bags and ceremonial outfits are common — sometimes made of skins and sometimes of cloth finely woven from human hair. The outfits contained in these bags consist of talismans, prayer sticks, tails or hoofs of animals, anvthing to lend an air of mystery and enchantment. These early Americans cooked their food, and as evidence of their efforts to win fire, they have left their charred fire sticks, which they twirled in the sockets of other larger pieces of wood in the laborious and patient effort to produce the precious SParThe cliff man was something of a musician, if we may judge so from the whistles of reeds and the flute-like instruments left behind him. Other objects which may have been used as instruments to produce noise or music have been found. As a tiller of the soil, he had to make implements for planting, cultivating, harvesting, and threshing : his crops. Planting sticks were made from hardwood sticks shaped with stone axes and sharpened on the sandstone cliffs, as ^ToftThorn" the ledges show. Shovel blades were made ^^J^"^ of mountain sheep, fastened to wooden handles and sharpened on the sandstone. Scythes and sickles were of curved ticks o hardwood, sharpened to a fine edge. Flails for threshing beans A MARVELOUS VIEW This view is between cliffs in Dogoshie-boko canyon, Arizona. The arrows point to cliff dwellings in the opposite cliffs, several hundreds of feet above the bottom of the canyon below. Ihe trees seen in the canyon dotting the foreground are tall pines.

234 IMPROVEMENT ERA ?$|ijtl£| 3r CrMSIHss?1"* ;.«j^ m ■ flr^-'i ■"We**.* VvH ^ .J K- ' ^B* "" N L ^fr'; M gBb. >S» 1 j ^HL. , v •""J '<-^8B! and other seeds were also of hardwood sticks shaped for such work. Tools for milder industries were fashioned largely out of bone. Beveled edges were ground on the long segments of leg bones from large animals, making chisels, scrapers and knives. The best knives, however, were shaped from flint or ground from other kinds of hard stone. Axes, hatchets. and hammers were similarly made, and were supplied with grooves or notches by which wooden handles were fitted and fastened with thongs. Weapons, such as spears, arrows and bows, seem to have been made much the same as the more modern natives make them. Bows still strung with sinew, flint-tipped arrows, and spears with shafts still intact, have defied centuries of time, and are found in most of the cliff dwell ings. Thanks to the dry climate of the country, the relics found in the cliff dwellings are wonderfully well preserved. T he dry, fresh atmosphere of the painted desert is said sometimes to dry up and preserve the carcases of large animals of today before they have time to putrify. These and other stories of water scarcity in the desert, and of thirst- endurance of desert animals, might well seem incredib e — some have questioned what was said o.i this subjec'. in a former article, — -but many of the statements are vouched for by men of reputation for veracity, who have spent years in the country. Father Garces, who traveled ex- Photo bv Stockman, Utah Arch. Exped. SECTION OF A CLIFF DWELLING, Showing a very good primitive masonry and architecture. In the foreground are seen members of the Utah expedition making a careful descent to the canyon hundreds of feet below, slip or a mis-step might mean a tumble into eternity. THE "BAT WOMAN" This is a cliff dwelling pictograph located on the cliff over the "Bat Woman" cliff dwelli.T. A Navajo legend, given to Prof. Cummings through Mrs. Wetherill, of the Kayenta trading post, recites that "Bat Woman" was the grandmother of the war god; that the war god was an issue of the marriage of the sun with a Navajo maiden, and thus are the Navajos connected by legend, if not lineally, with the ancient cliff dwellers.

DISCOVERIES ON THE COLORADO. 235 tensively in the southwest, refers more than once in his Memoirs to the wonderful endurance of the animals and Indians, native to the desert. He writes that they "endure both hunger and thirst for four days at a time." Van Dyke, in his volume, The Desert, relates that the natives do the same thing today, and that a Yuma Indian can travel on foot to the Pacific ''without any sustenance whatever — a thing no one not to the desert born could do." Van Dyke continues : "Years of training in starvation, tl.irst and exposure have produced a man almost as hardy as the cactus, and just as distinctly a type of the desert as the coyote. Strange as it may appear, many of the desert animals get no water at all. There are sections of desert fifty and more miles square where there is no trace of water in river, creek, arroya or pocket, where there is never a drop of dew falling, and where the two or three showers of rain each year sink into the sand and are lost in a half hour after they have fallen. "How the animals can endure, how — even on the theory of getting used to it — the rabbit, squirrel, rat and gopher can live for months "BAT WOMAN" CLL'F DWELLING This dwelling contains forty-eight roo- if, and is one of the dwellings discovered and excavated by Prof. Cummings. The arrow at the left points out the room from which the Utah expedition removed the mummified skeleton of an ancient potentate buried in a room filled with his wealth. Thf. arrow at the right shows a pictograph of concenluc circles so common near c'Ht ■!> veilings. The arrow near the center designates the location of the "Bat Woman' pictograph. without even the moist are from green vegetation is one of the mysteries. The mule-de^r, v,nose cousin in the Adirondacks goes down to w iter every night, lives in the desert mountains month in and month out with nothing nure watery to quench his thirst than a lobe of the prickly pear or a joint of cholla." Thus he goes on speaking of the endurance of one after another of the desert animals. Some of the Indiana and white