---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Anderson, Joseph F.
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 17
number: 3
published: 1914-01
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Joseph F. Anderson, "Discoveries on the Colorado—III," *Improvement Era* 17, no. 3 (January 1914): 230–235.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1703unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera1703unse
start_page: 230
end_page: 235
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1914-01)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1703unse
  publication_year: 1914
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1914, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Discoveries on the Colorado—III

<!-- page:230 -->

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

<!-- page:231 -->

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.

<!-- page:232 -->

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

<!-- page:233 -->

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.

<!-- page:234 -->

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.

<!-- page:235 -->

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