'{Glacier '^MT'ONALPaRK PARK , Montana Or C G O N '.T-- NATIONAL PARK t^^,AHHptH V\ \ s D MISSIONS M ANTONIO OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS NEVADA FALLS, YOSEMITE VALLEY Our American Wonderlands ''y George Wharton James Author of . The Grand Canyonof Arizona' TheWonders of the Colorado Desert,"Etc,£tc. IJJustrsited from Photographs CHica-^o A. C. McClurg & Co. 1^15 tr Copyright Edith E. Farnsworth 1915 Published November, 1915 W. F. HALL PRINTING COMPANy, CHICAGO DEC -2 1915 ©C1.A414857 FOREWORD Few Americans know their own land even in a cursory way. The Alps are not to be known by railway travelers, nor can the Sierras be studied " from a car-window." With its two thousand years or more of culture and mate- rial progress there are many parts of Europe that can be seen only by those who are willing to leave the beaten tracks. Many of the trails of the United States are still fresh and newly-trodden, yet the wonders and marvels they reach are far beyond what the Old World has to offer. In everything, save the products of man's industry, genius, and energy, this country affords far more to see than does Europe. Our " Wonderlands " are more start- ling, more varied, more alluring, more attractive. Hence, while the war now raging between the great civil- ized nations of Europe is to be deplored, it will serve one good purpose, at least, if it leads Americans to a keener, truer patriotism, manifested in a desire to see and better know their own country. He is no true American — from my standpoint — who will seize every opportunity to cross the Atlantic before he has crossed the prairies, the Rockies, the sage-brush deserts, and the Sierras of his own land. Once let Americans know and exalt the glories of Amer- ican scenery as they do those of European scenery, and the United States will begin to take its proper and appointed place among the countries of the world as the possessor of many gifts and most wonderful allurements. FOREWORD In the following pages I have sought, briefly and vividly, without entering into too much detail, to give the reader living glimpses of what America offers of antiquarian, scenic, geologic, and ethnologic interest. The cliff dwell- ings of Colorado and Arizona are just as fascinating as the castles of the Rhine, when one comprehends their story; the Hopis, Havasupais, Apaches, and Navahos are more picturesque than the Swiss, Irish, Servian, or Russian peas- ants, and their social and religious ceremonies far more wonderful and fascinating; the Natural Bridges of Utah, the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, the Canyon de Chelly, Havasu Canyon, the Yosemite Valley, the Yellowstone and a hundred other scenic glories of our Western World far surpass in variety and marvel anything Europe has to offer. The Colorado and Mohave Deserts, the High Sierras, the Channel Islands of California, Lake Tahoe and its glacial surroundings, are equally fascinating as their coun- terparts in the Old World, and the glaciers of the Alps are not more wonderful and alluring than those of the Glacier National Park of Montana, and the Cascade and other western ranges. It by no means reflects credit on our citizens that, when they are questioned in Europe " I suppose, of course, you know the Yosemite, the Petrified Forest, the Grand Can- yon, the Hopi Villages, Meteorite Mountain, the Roose- velt Dam, the Yellowstone Park, Glacier National Park, the Mammoth Cave, the Great Bridges of Utah, the Cliff Dwellings, Canyon de Chelly, etc., etc.," they are compelled to answer, "No! I have seen none of them — or, at best, only the ones that are reached easiest by railroad." FOREWORD To excite interest in these wonderlands of our own country is my avowed purpose, with the deliberate intent of making the slogan See America First a potent one in active and daily operation in the minds of all intelligent Americans. To increase travel in these directions will be my reward, for thus I know I shall add largely to the measure of satisfaction enjoyed by my fellow-citizens in the increased knowledge of their own great and wonderful land. Pasadena, California, ipij. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I The Grand Canyon of Arizona .... i II Old Taos and the Flagellantes ii III The Prehistoric CHff- and Cave-DwelHngs of the Southwest 20 IV To Betatakin and Kitsiel 38 V The CHff-Dwellings of the Mesa Verde . . 60 VI Old Santa Fe and the Land of the Delight Makers 67 VII Canyon de Chelly, Del Muerto and Monu- ment Canyons, and Their Ruins .... 76 VIII The Navahos and Their Remarkable Fire Dance 87 IX The Terraced Houses of the Rio Grande . 95 X By the Enchanted Mesa to the City of the Sky loi XI Over the Painted Desert to the Hopi Snake Dance 115 XII Over the Lava Fields to the "Seven Cities of Cibola" 136 XIII Meteorite Mountain and Sunset Crater . . 145 XIV Over the Apache Trail to the Roosevelt Dam 150 XV The Canyon of Cataracts, and the Havasupai Indians 158 XVI The Petrified Forests of Arizona .... 167 CONTENTS CHAPTER XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX XXX XXXI PAGE The Lure of the Arizona Deserts .... 172 The Colossal Natural Bridges of Utah . . 182 The Garden of the Gods and Monument Park 190 The Old Franciscan Missions of New Mex- ico, Arizona, and Texas 196 The Yellowstone National Park .... 203 On the Roof of the Continent — The Glacier National Park, Montana 214 Rainier National Park 221 Crater Lake, Oregon 227 The Yosemite Valley 234 The Big Trees of California 241 The Lake of the Sky — Lake Tahoe . . . 249 The Channel Islands of California . . . 259 The Natural Bridge of Virginia .... 265 The Mammoth Cave of Kentucky . . . 2^2 Incomparable Niagara 283 Index 293 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Nevada Falls Frontispiece ; The Grand Canyon, plateau view 2 Northwest from Hopi Point 3 Hermit Camp 4 Jacob's Ladder 5 Grand Canyon from Hotel El Tovar 8 Hermit's Rest 9, Taos pueblo 12 , Old Spanish fort near Taos 12 Church procession at Taos 13 Penitente "morada" (church) with crosses ..... 13 Taos pueblo, showing "kiva" 141^ Ruins of old church at Taos i^^ The San Francisco Mountains 34 • Cliff-dwellings near Flagstaff 35^ Over the Arizona desert to Betatakin and Kitsiel ... 46 ' The Arizona desert 46'' Cliff city of Betatakin 47*'' Another view of Betatakin 47"" Two views of Kitsiel 58 ^ Cliff-dwellings, Mesa Verde National Park 62^' The Balcony House 6^/ Doorway, San Jose Mission 201"^ Dome Geyser 204-^ Punch Bowl Spring 204^ Pulpit Terrace 205. Jupiter Terrace 205- Tower Falls 206'^ Old Faithful Geyser 2071^ Grotto Geyser 210 Cleopatra Terrace 210 Silver Cord Cascades 211 Canyon at Tower Falls 212 ^ Grand Canyon and Great Fall of the Yellowstone . . . 2131^ Climbing Blackfeet Glacier 216' Mount Jackson 217- Waterfall. Glacier National Park 218. Blackfeet Glacier 218 '■' Iceberg Lake 219 Lake McDermott 219 - Entrance to Rainier National Park 222 <^ "Snout" of Nisqually Glacier 223 '■'' Near view of Nisqually's "Snout" 2241 Mirror Lake 225 1 Crater Lake 232 u Crater Lake, Wizard Island 232 j' Crater Lake 233 • Entrance to Yosemite Valley 234 El Capitan 235 Overhanging Rock 236 The Yosemite Falls 236 ■ ' Cathedral Spires 236 High Sierra in Yosemite National Park 2^^ . ' ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Looking down into the Yosemite from the rear of Half Dome 238 ^ North Dome 239' At the foot of a Sequoia gigantea 240 ' The Grizzly Giant 241 ^ A cluster of Sequoias in Muir Woods 246 ' Comparison of one of California's big trees with a church 247 ' Carnelian Bay . . . .• 250- Cave Rock 254^ Looking north from Cave Rock 255 ' Rubicon Point : . 255 ' Coast line near Avalon • • • 260" Arch Rock 261 * The Natural Bridge of Virginia 266 «^' Icicle formation 272 ^ Standing Rocks 272 v Pillars of Elephantis 27:^ '-^ Elephants' Heads 276 '''^ The Throne 277-^ Bottomless Pit 277^ The American Fall 284/ The Horseshoe Fall 284 ^^ Whirlpool Rapids 285 . Prospect Park in winter 285 > OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS CHAPTER I THE GRAND CANYON OF ARIZONA AS THERE is but one Niagara, one Yosemite, one Lake Tahoe, one Yellowstone, so there is but one Grand Canyon. While the name has often been applied to lesser gorges, it is a sacrilege that should not be tolerated as an act of lese majesty against the one supreme gorge of the known world. Supreme, indeed, it is, in size — width, depth, and length — in infinite variety of sculptured forms and their dimensions, in the gamut of color revealed, in the geological strata exposed, in the problems involved, and in the vastness of the great river which, working through the patient ages, has been the chief instrument of its manu- facture, and now angrily, sullenly, noisily, sometimes quietly, at others thunderingly and blusteringly, dashes on its way to the far-away open desert, and later to the open sea. There are writers who have sought to compare the Grand Canyon with other objects of natural scenery; but this is only to aid the imagination of those who yet have the pleasure before them of making its acquaintance. You cannot compare things of such difTerences. John Muir once wrote illuminatingly on this subject. He said : It is impossible to conceive what the Canyon is, or what im- pression it makes, from the descriptions or pictures, however 2 OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS good. Naturally it is untellable even to those who have seen something perhaps a little like it on a small scale in this same plateau region. One's most extravagant expectations are in- definitely surpassed, though one expects much from w^hat is said of it as "the biggest chasm on earth." So big is it that all other big things — Yosemite, the Yellow- stone, the Pyramids, Chicago — all would be lost if tumbled into it. Naturally enough, illustrations as to size are sought for among other canyons like or unlike it, with the common result of worse confounding confusion. The prudent keep silent. It was once said that the "Grand Canyon could put a dozen Yosemites in its vest pocket. The justly famous Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is, like that of the Colorado, gorgeously colored and abruptly countersunk in a plateau, and both are mainly the work of water. But the Colorado's Canyon is more than a thousand times larger, and as a score or two new buildings of ordinary size would not change appreciably the general view of a great city, so hundreds of Yellowstones might be crowded in the sides of the Colorado Canyon without noticeably augmenting its size or the richness of its sculpture. But it is not true that the great Yosemite rocks would be thus lost or hidden. Noth- ing of their kind in the world, so far as I know, rivals El Cap- itan and Tissiack (Half Dome), much less dwarfs or in any way belittles them. None of the sandstone or limestone preci- pices of the Canyon that I have seen or heard of approaches in smooth, flawless strength and grandeur the granite face of El Capitan or the Tenaya side of Cloud's Rest. These colossal cliffs, types of permanence, are about three thousand and six hundred feet high ; those of the Canyon that are sheer are about half as high, and are types of fleeting change ; while glorious-domed Tissiack, noblest of mountain buildings, far from being overshadowed or lost in this rosy, spring canyon company, would draw every eye, and, in serene majesty, "aboon them a', " she would take her place — castle, temple, palace, or tower. Every feature of nature's big face is beautiful — height, hol- low, wrinkle, furrow, and line — and this is the main master Copyright by Fred Harvey THE GRAND CANYON PLATEAU VIEW THIRTEEN HUNDRED FEET ABOVE THE COLORADO GRAND CANYON OF ARIZONA 3 furrow of its kind on our continent, incomparably greater and more impressive than any other yet discovered, or likely to be discovered, now that all the great rivers have been traced to their heads.* There are several features of the canyon that immedi- ately force themelves upon the attention of the observer. The first is the stupendous vastness of the chasm into which one gazes. Few people have any standard with which to compare it. The ordinary canyons, or ravines, into which one may have gazed are so puny and insignificant as not to count in the tremendous impression now produced. As one reads the account of emotions experienced in gazing into other depths — as, for instance, Porte Crayon's descrip- tion of the thrilling sensations experienced by his sisters at the Natural Bridge of Virginia, given in Chapter xxix, one realizes how utterly incompetent words are to suggest what one feels in the presence of this really sublime abyss. All the superlatives of the language have been exhausted on objects so insignificant as to be unobservable were they alongside of this great Canyon. Then, too, the vastness of this deep inferno is entirely different from the vastness of a valley that one gazes into from a mountain height. The actual depth may be as great in the latter case as the five thousand feet descent into the Canyon, but the valley is not shut in, is not a wild desolation of highly colored and picturesquely sculptured rocks. The two depths are entirely alike. Hence analysis shows that the effect of vast depth of wide extent is enhanced by the fact of the uniqueness of the scene. It is different in this * The Grand Canyon of the Colorado, in Century Magazine, Nov., 1902. 4 OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS regard from anything ever seen, and being on so stupendous a scale it overpowers, impresses, dominates to the full capacity of the human mind. Another striking feature is the bizarre and unusual sculp- turing and fashioning that the walls and rocks of the canyon have assumed. We think of the Garden of the Gods, Monu- ment Park, the Bad Lands, and the wonderful Land of the Standing Rocks, as marvels of Nature's unique sculpturing, yet they are insignificant when compared with the towers, temples, minarets, domes, walls, buttresses, gargoyles, and other fantastic and strange creations of the Canyon. As an unknown writer has graphically said : Hundreds of these mighty structures, miles in length and thousands of feet in height, rear their majestic forms out of the abyss, displaying their richly molded plinths and friezes, thrust- ing out their gables, wing walls, buttresses, and pilasters, and recessed with alcoves and panels. Nowhere in the world is such wild, grand, marvelous, unusual architecture as here, and on such a sublime scale as to dwarf into insignificance man's most ambitious attempts, as St. Peter's, Cologne, Milan, St. Paul's, St. Sophia, the Kremlin, and the like. Nor should one think that there is no harmony in this architecture. Each stratum of rock has its own characteristic forms of erosion, and these adapt themselves remarkably as architectural details of marvelous quality to the vast structures which corrosion and erosion have formed. The colors, too, are so different from what one has ever before experienced. Here are no soft, tender, gentle, pas- toral landscapes, of refined greens and alluring tones of brown and yellow. No. indeed ! Flaming reds, chocolates. Copyright by Fred Harvey HERMIT CAMP THIRTY-FIVE HUNDRED FEET BELOW THE RIM Cofiyriglit by Fred Har7i JACOB'S LADDER ON BRIGHT ANGEL TRAIL GRAND CANYON OF ARIZONA 5 carmines, crimsons, resplendent yellows, oranges, saffrons; dazzling blues, greens, and creams; glaring patches and streaks of white; and thunderous splotches of black, make up this scene. Here Nature was in her most riotous mood, and spilled colors broadcast from her paint pots with lavish hands. Bizarre, grotesque, startling, at first sight, study and knowledge are required to understand and enjoy them. The blaze and glory of them are absolutely startling. Ten thousand rainbows of solid rock are broken up and tossed higgledy-piggledy into this chasm. Walls are made of the same materials, a rioting chaos of color — this is what it seems at first sight. The eye cannot focalize anything; the vastness confuses; the colors dazzle; the varied forms of the rocky masses bewilder. Were this effect to persist, to continue indefinitely, the Grand Canyon would not please ; it would repel by its first impressions. But in spite of this striking forcefulness, this bizarre uniqueness, this grotesque personality, there is something that attracts, that demands further investigation, that forbids the eyes to turn away. Then, slowly at first, soon more rapidly, the forms of the walls and domes, the towers and colonnades, assume distinct reality, individual personality. The colors resolve themselves into harmoni- ous relationship, the chaos disappears and a very definite, organized cosmos takes its place. An hour, two hours, three, four, pass, and the visitor is still gazing, now drink- ing in eagerly an ever-varying panorama of form and color. The march of the sun makes constant change; the clouds float up from the everywhere into the here; atmos- pheric and electric effects are produced that tone down, soften, change, transform the scenes below, and every 6 OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS change is more wonderful and fascinating than the one that preceded it. Nothing that I know of in the thousands of the pages that have been written on the Grand Canyon so fully brings out these facts as the following written by Major Clarence E. Button, the poet-scientist of the West. He says : The Grand Canyon of the Colorado is a great innovation in modern ideas of scenery, and in our conceptions of the gran- deur, beauty, and power of Nature, as with all great innova- tions, it is not to be comprehended in a day or a week, nor even in a month. It must be dwelt upon and studied, and the study must comprise the slow acquisition of the meaning and spirit of that marvelous scenery which characterizes the Plateau Coun- try, and of which the great chasm is the superlative manifesta- tion. The study and slow mastery of the influences of that class of scenery and its full appreciation is a special culture, requiring time, patience, and long familiarity for its consummation. The lover of Nature, whose perceptions have been trained in the Alps, in Italy, Germany, or New England, in the Appa- lachians or Cordilleras, in Scotland or Colorado, would enter this strange region with a shock, and dwell there for a time with a sense of oppression, and perhaps with horror. Whatso- ever things he had learned to regard as beautiful and noble he would seldom or never see, and whatsoever he might see would appear to him as anything but beautiful and noble. Whatso- ever might be bold and striking would at first seem only gro- tesque. The colors would be the very ones he had learned to shun as tawdry and bizarre. The tones and shades, modest and tender, subdued, yet rich, in which his fancy had always taken especial delight, would be the ones which are conspicu- ously absent. But time would bring a gradual change. Some day he would suddenly become conscious that outlines which at first seemed harsh and trivial have grace and meaning; that forms which seemed grotesque are full of dignity ; that magnitudes which had added enormity to coarseness have become replete with strength and even majesty ; that colors which had been GRAND CANYON OF ARIZONA 7 esteemed unrefined, immodest, and glaring are as expressive, tender, changeful, and capacious of efifects as any others. Great innovations, whether in art or literature, in science or in Nature, seldom take the world by storm. They must be under- stood before they can be estimated, and must be cultivated before they can be understood.* Major J- W. Powell has this to say of the Grand Can- yon, which presents another feature of its diverse attrac- tiveness : But form and color do not exhaust all the divine qualities of the Grand Canyon. It is the land of music. The river thunders in perpetual roar, swelling in floods of music when the storm gods play upon the rocks, and fading away in soft and low murmurs when the infinite blue of heaven is unveiled. With the melody of the great tide rising and falling, swelling and vanishing forever, other melodies are heard in the gorges of the lateral canyons, while the waters plunge in the rapids among the rocks or leap in great cataracts. Thus the Grand Canyon is a land of song. Mountains of music swell in the rivers, hills of music billow in the creeks, and meadows of music murmur in the rills that ripple over the rocks. Alto- gether it is a symphony of multitudinous melodies. All this is the music of waters. The adamant foundations of the earth have been wrought into a sublime harp upon which the clouds of heaven play with mighty tempests or with gentle showers.f There is no difHculty in reaching the Grand Canyon now- adays. The Santa Fe main line crosses Arizona, and at Williams one changes to the branch, which, in sixty-three miles, deposits 3^ou at El Tovar, the fine Fred Harvey hotel on the "rim." At the Grand Canyon one never speaks of the "edge;" it is always the "rim," and the south rim is * Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District, Government Print- ing Office, Washington, 1882. t The Scientific Explorer, in the Grand Canyon of Arizona, Santa Fe Passenger Dept., 1906. 8 OVR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS the first portion to be made accessible by rail. But do not imagine you can see the Grand Canyon by rail. No ! Nature cannot be treated that way, as yet, in her more magnificent and stupendous retreats. Of course, you can get one taste, one touch, one glimpse, one feel, and to some people that is enough. But if you really want to see it and know something about it, you must at least ride on its rim for a few miles, in each direction from El Tovar, and then descend one of the well-constructed trails down to the river; and, better still, steal the time to go down one trail, ride in the Canyon's heart to another, camping out by the side of the rapids of the ever-roaring river, or on the level stretches of one of the plateaus, then cross the river to the other side, ascend to the great Kaibab Plateau and ride through its superb pine forest to Point Sublime, the finest point in the whole Canyon system on the north rim, ere you return. It is not a hard trip to one used to horse- back riding and camping out, but of course the "de luxe" traveler had better remain in the "flowery beds of ease" provided by Fred Harvey in connection with El Tovar. The Grand Canyon is not a mere object of scenery; it is a vast drainage system, covering thousands of square miles of territory, and embracing within its natural area large parts of the states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, California, and even New Mexico. Few, even of the most intelligent of its casual visitors, ever get it through their heads that if all its tributary canyons were placed in a straight line they would come within less than 5,000 miles of encircling the globe. For there are nearly 3.000 miles of canyon in the upper reaches of the Colo- rado, and its great tributaries, or forks, the Grand and the GRAND CANYON OF ARIZONA 9 Green, ere the two hundred and seventeen-mile stretch, called in distinctiveness Tlie Grand Canyon, is reached. And into almost every mile of this 3,000 miles, on each side, other canyons are lined, seamed, or troughed, in endless variety and never-ceasing sublimity. Canyon of Desola- tion, Lodore, Split Mountain, Flaming Gorge, Glen, Marble, are the names of a few of the principal ones, before reach- ing the entering canyon of the Little Colorado, which denotes the commencement of the Grand Canyon. This is some fifty or sixty miles east of El Tovar, and makes a great wagon and horseback ride for the adventurous who do not call the "pleasures" of camping out a "hardship." While others had seen portions of the. Grand Canyon and its tributaries, it was left for that "one-armed hero of Gettysburg," Major John Wesley Powell, first to fully describe its wonders. In 1869, 1870, and 1871 he and a band of large-souled adventurers set forth to explore its hidden mysteries and ride its waters from Green River, Wyoming, down to the Gulf; or, at least, to the Colorado Desert. The records of this trip were first given to the world in Scribner's Magazine, and later in government reports and books, and Dellenbaugh's Romance of the Colo- rado River. The story is thrilling in the extreme, and should form the theme of a lesson in American history, geography, geology, exploration, and heroism for every child in our schools — North, South, East, and West. In my own two books, In and Around the Grand Canyon, and The Grand Canyon of Ari::ona, I have done my best to make its wonders, allurements, and rare marvels known. Everybody that has ever seen it knows it cannot be de- scribed, and then spends page after page in demonstrating 10 OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS that it cannot. The pen of a Ruskin, Carlyle, Dante, Goethe, Mihon, or Shakspere would here fail, and the canvas of a Rembrandt, a Velasquez, a Turner, merely convey a faint impression of its sublimity and majesty in architecture and color. Hence there is but one thing left for the sensible American to do — that is to visit it. And when you do, be sure to plan for plenty of time. Don't be in a hurry. It took God and his army of natural forces hundreds of thousands of years to make it. Surely you can spend a few days to look at it — wandering on its rim, peering into its depths, riding into them — and thus begin to comprehend some of the vast workings of the Almighty Mind. CHAPTER II OLD TAOS AND THE FLAGELLANTES ARE you traveling to the Pacific Coast from the ^ Middle West, North, or East? Why not go leisurely and see all you can on the way? There are a score, or more, of places that will wonderfully pay you, and none more so than Taos (not Tay-os, Teh-os, Tay-oos, or Teh-us, but, as if it rhymed with house, say Towse, in one syllable), redolent of memories of Indians, of the great Pueblo Rebellion of 1680, of the uprising of Mexicans and Indians after the country was annexed by the United States, when Governor Bent was murdered, of Kit Carson and hosts of other interesting events and personalities. It is an old Indian pueblo in New Mexico, the northern- most of all the "pueblos," or villages, of the Indians of the Rio Grande, its several-storied, high-terraced houses familiar to many travelers. Yet most Indian villages are " close corporations," conducted with a secrecy and resent- ment of intrusion that Wall Street has never surpassed. But it is not of the Indians and their religious and social life, however mysterious and fascinating, that this chapter is to deal. Three miles from the Indian village is the later- founded Spanish or Mexican town, of San Fernando de Taos. This was the home of Governor Bent, the first United States governor of New Mexico. Here lived Chris- topher Carson, the redoubtable Kit, guide and scout for 11 12 OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS the pathfinder Fremont, and fully as great a man in his way as was the more refined and cultured Fremont in his. Here stood formerly one of the historic churches of New Mexico, now gone, however, in the rage for a modernism that has no appreciation for the picturesqueness of the old. Here, too, is located today a modern school of American painters — Phillips, Sharp, and the rest — seeking to catch and put on canvas before it is too late the wonderful life of the real, untouched, superstitious, natural Indian in his primitive and gloriously picturesque simplicity. And, more fascinating than all, it is the home, the natural centre, of that strange band of religionists known as " The Penitent Brothers." Even so learned and well-informed an authority as the Encyclopedia Britannica, in the last edition but one, as good as asserted that the Penitentes, or Flagellantes, were practically extinct; that the last proces- sion of Flagellantes marched in 1820 in Lisbon. And I have had several interesting experiences as the result of my contradiction of this high authority, when, lecturing in the East, I asserted that I had been present at Penitente processions, flagellations, and crucifixions in the boundaries of the United States within the past twenty- five years. It was Charles F. Lummis, in his TJie Land of Poco Ticinpo, who first wrote and illustrated these modern and American Penitentes. At the peril of his life, or at least at the point of a revolver, he secured photographs that materi- ally enhanced the value of his descriptions, and I myself have made photographs of the devotees, with half a dozen shotguns leveled in my direction, held in the hands of angry Mexicans, who were only prevented from firing, I imagine. TAOS PUEBLO, xi:\v Ali:XICO OLD SPANISH FORT NEAR TAOS Courtesy of Denver & Rio Grande R. R. CHURCH PROCESSION AT TAOS Copyriglil by E. E. ]]' ent'^vorth Layton PENITENTE " MORADA " (CHURCH) WITH CROSSES OLD TAOS AND THE FLA CELL ANTES 13 by the ominous glint in the eyes of a fearless deputy sheriff who was my guide (and comfort as well) on the occasion. The Penitentes of our American Southwest — as com- monly they are called — are the natural or illegitimate descendants of the Third Order of St. Francis. This order was founded to give to laymen the religious advantages of the saint's rule, when circumstances rendered it impossible or inadvisable for them to accept the rigid monastic life. After the wave of self-flagellation swept over Europe as the result of the preaching and example of Cardinal Peter Damian, and St. Anthony of Padua, many fraternities intro- duced the practice privately among their membership. Then, in 1260, owing to the incitations of Ramer, a monk of Perugia, great numbers of the inhabitants of this city, noble and ignoble, old and young, traversed the streets, carrying in their hands leathern thongs, with which "they drew forth blood from their tortured bodies amid sighs and tears, singing at the same time penitential psalms, and entreating the compassion of the Deity." Then the custom spread by the example and teaching of peripatetic bands of devotees. At first they seemed to do considerable good in checking the open vice and wicked- ness of the people, but, in time, their exhibitions awakened the disgust of the better class of the people. Finally their flagellations grew so obnoxious to the moral sense of the church and the outside world that, in 1439, the occupant of the papal chair, Pope Clement vi, counselled and finally commanded that the order be suppressed. Under the papacy of Gregory xi the Holy Inquisition hunted out those who still continued the practice, and the sect was believed to have disappeared entirely. Yet in 141 4 14 OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS it was revived openly by Conrad Schmidt, and though he and his principal followers were arrested and executed, the spirit of the order, if not its practices, still prevailed. Again, in the sixteenth century, it broke out in the south of France, and Henry iii established a whipping brotherhood in Paris, and himself took an important part in the processions. These fraternities were suppressed by Henry iv, but nobody supposes for a moment that the practice was not continued, privately in the main, both in the south of France and in Italy and Spain. Yet, as far as is known, the last public procession was that already referred to as having taken place at Lisbon in 1820. How the movement reached the Spanish settlements of Nueva Mexico, and took possession of the hearts and lives of the dwellers of the Southwest, would prove an interest- ing and fascinating theme for historical research. Conjecture alone, now, must fill up the gap, with the mere supposition that some devout and zealous colonists, coming from the old world of Spain, or the new world of Mexico, into the northern land of New Mexico and Arizona, possessed by Coronado, Onate, and the later conquerors, brought the ritual of the brotherhood with them, wnth all its repulsive ceremonies of whippings, cross-bearing, and crucifixion. Certain it is, that when the United States forces, under General Stephen W. Kearny, took possession of this land, it was not long before whispers began to be heard of the strange doings of these bands of superstitious fanatics. When the facts were known and brought to the attention of the Archbishop at Santa Fe, he instructed the priests of his district to suppress the order, acting under the sanction of the early papal bull. But, inexplicable though it may u u Q -J o o CO OLD TAOS AND THE FLAGELLANTES 15 seem, the cruel self-scourgings and the often fatal cruci- fixions of the brotherhood had taken such strong hold upon their religious instinct, native superstition, or fanaticism, that when the local priests called upon them, by authority of the head of the church, to desist from their practices, they positively refused. Steadily they continued their whippings and scourgings, their penances and crucifixions, in spite of all persuasions, commands, and final interdictions. Even when the Archbishop threatened to cast them out of the church they stolidly replied : " We do not care, we are Penitentes," as if that settled the question. To be a Peni- tente was far more satisfactory than to be a good Catholic. In that attitude they stand today. There is no longer open and definite enmity between themselves and the priests, but there is a tacit understanding that nothing is to be said on the subject on either side. Hence at Taos, and a score or two other Mexican settlements in the region I have mentioned, the Penitentes still hold full sway. The chief tenet of the Brotherhood seems to be a very literal inter- pretation of the words of the apostle : But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's suffer- ings ; that, when His glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. I Pet. 4: 13. It was at Raton, about twenty-nine years ago, that I had my first experience with this wonderful fanaticism known as " Penitentes." I had been wandering over the surround- ing country with an interesting character such as one occasionally meets on the frontier — who knows everybody and whom everybody knows, and who goes where many men dare not go, and does naturally some things that most men never think of doing. So when he came to me one 16 OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS morning with the information that it was Easter time, and the Penitente Brothers would be engaged in their strange ceremonials, it did not take us long to secure horses and ride down the canyon three or four miles south of town, and we were soon perched upon a hillside where we could look down upon the little IMexican jacal from which the penetrating tones of a flute or flageolet wailed forth most dolorous notes. Following the flute we heard the singing of one or two hymns in rude, uncultivated voices of men. In a short time several of the Penitente Brothers emerged. Each votary had a mask or hood over his head which com- pletely concealed his face, excluding all possibility of recog- nition, even by his most intimate friends. The upper part of the body was entirely nude, the feet were bare, and the only garment worn was a pair of cotton drawers. Each man held in his hand a scourge — a three- foot-long whip, with a flaplike end, having the shape and appearance of a flexible spoon. The whip was made of yucca and cactus, and the spoon-shaped end was a large leaf of the prickly pear, one of the most thorny of the cruel cactuses of the Southwest. The whole scourge was filled with the spines of cactuses, and no sooner did the procession form and move forward, each hooded figure guided by a friend, than, to our utter amazement and horror, these cruel scourges were whirled over the shoulders and brought down with resounding " thwacks " upon the bare backs of those relig- ious fanatics. Every third step the back was beaten, and now and again we could hear the half -smothered shriek of the self-whipper as the piercing thorns penetrated the flesh. It was not long before blood trickled down their backs; but nothing OLD TAOS AND THE FLAGELLANTES 17 daunted their fanatic fury. On they marched, led by the fifer playing a doleful air, accompanied by the equally dolorous singing of the Herman© Mayor, or Principal Brother. Several hundred yards up the canyon a large cross was standing and the whipping continued each third step until this cross was reached. Then the Flagellants threw them- selves face downwards, prostrate before the cross, and lay there for some time, while prayers were offered by the Hermano Mayor. That afternoon another procession formed with five of the brothers whipping themselves. This time several women followed in the procession. It was sickening to hear the swish of those fearful cactus whips. One of the brothers, however, managed to twist and turn his body in such a way as to dodge the prickly whip, and a. spectator was heard to say, " He is dodging. He is not whipping his sins out," but the cowardly member of the fraternity was speedily punished, for one of the guides seized the whip and belabored the poor victim with most sanguinary results. And all this time the pitero was wailing out his piercing tones, while the cracked voices of several of the men united in singing the hymn, " ]\Iy God and My Redeemer." The following day the procession with its flagellations was repeated. In the afternoon three of the blind- folded brothers were led to the spot where there were three large, heavy, rude crosses made of pine trees on which the bark still remained. It seemed to require considerable effort on the part of four or five of the attendant brothers to lift these crosses and place them on the backs of the pilgrims, and then the procession slowly started up the canyon. The 18 OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS poor wretches could barely stagger along under their heavy burdens, and finally one of them evidently fainted, for he fell, with the cross crushing the upper part of his body, and remained perfectly still until several of the attendants lifted the cross and another struck the prostrate pilgrim with a cactus whip and followed his blows with several kicks. The suffering wretch staggered to his feet and again the cross was put on his shoulders, but this time he was urged on his way at about every other step with a vicious blow from the whip of his attendant brother. A little further on one of the other cross-bearers fell, but he seemed to have more strength than the first one who had fallen, and soon regained his feet. It seemed a pitiably long time before that strangely solemn yet pathetically hid- eous procession reached the little knoll where holes already had been dug for the standing up of the crosses. This knoll or hillock was called El Calvario — The Calvary. Here other ceremonies were gone through, and that evening in the little church in town there was a graphic and dramatic representation of the events that followed the crucifixion — the darkness, the rending of the veil of the temple, the earthquake, and the arising of the dead from their tombs. At Taos, at the present time, lives the Chief Brother of the whole organization. Hence the morada — or church — here sees many manifestations of the order's activity. It is located some distance from the town, and appears like any adobe house, save for the several large crosses that stand outside, leaning against the adobe wall of the corral. These are made of the undressed trunks or limbs of trees and are fearfully heavy, as I found out when I tried to lift them. OLD TAOS AND THE FLAGELLANTES 19 Inside the morada is an altar, fully decorated with rude paintings, figures of saints, etc., dominated by a large cruci- fix on which is the impaled Christ, in the most hideous realism. In addition is a small wagon — about the size of a child's toy express wagon — in which is a repulsive figure of Death, used in the lenten ceremonies of the order — for their chief activities are centered in the forty days of Lent, and the great days are Good Friday and Easter Sunday, though scourgings take place on the three days preceding the date of our Lord's crucifixion. Taos may be reached with comparative ease from the Denver and Rio Grande Railway station of Servilleta. A stage drive of thirty miles takes one across the valley of the Rio Grande River, as Charles Francis Saunders describes it : Across a sunny, open mesa country, rimmed about with magnificent mountains, which the declining sun touches with fascinating colors — pink and red and wine, amethyst and violet and purple. Halfway on our journey and without warning, the highway runs out to the brink of a narrow pre- cipitous gorge, and, six hundred feet below you, the current of the Rio Grande plunges and roars. Down it, into the depths, your team picks its way gingerly by a road cut out of the perpendicular canyon sides to meet the river and to cross it. There is a little riverside stopping-place down there where you may break your journey, if you wish; then, climbing out of the gorge by the canyon of the Arroyo Hondo, where a hurrying stream of clear mountain water flashes and bounds down among the rocks, you are again upon the wide plain. Before you is the ineft'able splendour of the Rockies, their sides all splashed, if it be autumn, with the orange and gold of the aspen groves, and yonder, at the mountains' foot, where one canyon, the Glorieta, more noble than the rest, pours a flood of crystal water out into the plain, lies Taos.* * Indians of the Terraced Houses, p. 98. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. CHAPTER III THE PREHISTORIC CLIFF- AND CAVE-DWELLINGS OF THE SOUTHWEST N EVER so well as now can the intelligent American visit and understand the cliff and cave dwellings of the United States. Never before has their relative signifi- cance been so well understood. While an immense amount has been written upon them, half of it has been "wild, woolly, and yellow," while the other half has been purely technical and scientific, and not easily accessible to the general reader. The boundaries of Cliff-Dweller Land in the United States may be broadly defined as including Southern Colo- rado and Utah, Arizona, as far west as the Colorado River, and New Mexico on the east. In this region there are found twelve separate or reasonably well-defined distinctive areas of cliff, cave, or other prehistoric dwellings. These are (i) the ruins of the Province of Tusayan — ruins found near the present Hopi Pueblos; (2) those of the Salt and Gila River Valleys; (3) those of the Lower and Upper Verde Valleys — the latter sometimes called " The Red Rock Country " ; (4) those of the San Francisco Mountain region — near Flagstaff, Arizona; (5) those of the Little Colorado River Valley; (6) those of the Canyon de Chelly; (y) those of the Navaho National Monument — Betatakin and Kitsiel ; (8) those of the Pajarito Plateau, 20 CUFF-DWELLINGS OF THE SOUTHWEST 21 not far from Santa Fe, New Mexico; (9) those of the Zuni region; (10) those of the Chaco Canyon; (n) those of the ]\Iesa Verde; (12) those of the San Juan River region. Of these separate regions numbers i, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 are so distinctive, and so intimately connected with other features of the American Wonderlands as to entitle them to separate chapters, to which the interested reader is referred. The others, and the general conclusions drawn from a study of them all, form the subject of the remainder of this present chapter. When these ruins originally were discovered they were thought to be scarcely related; or, if connected at all, very loosely and indifferently. Now it is believed firmly and reasonably that they were all closely connected and were, in the main, the work of the same or allied peoples, the dif- ferences being chiefly those of condition and environment. Then, too, it must clearly be understood that there is no line of separation between the vast number of ruins of houses, of scattered pueblos, found dotted all over the major area defined above, and the cliff and cave-dwellings found in their respective limits within the same area. To trace out and finally demonstrate the relationship between these ruins and the cliff-dwellings has been the proud achievement of the new School of American Archaeology which has grown up practically within the past twenty to twenty-five years. When the United States and Mexico went to war over Texas, and the Army of the West was started out from the East to invade and subjugate New Mexico and Cali- fornia, the knowledge held by the world at large in regard 22 OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS to the vast territory we now call New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and California was exceedingly limited. We knew of the city of Santa Fe, because our trappers went through the country and occasionally got into trouble there, and several of them came back and told, in book form, as did James O. Pattie, of Kentucky, of their adven- tures. His book was published by John H. Wood, in Cincinnati, in 183 1. Of course we knew a little about California, but gold was not yet discovered, and most people thought of it only as a remote coast settlement of the Mexicans, and could not understand why Benton and Fre- mont and others should be so agitated about it. But Texas precipitated the trouble; Mexico and the United States went to war. Sloat, urged on by Fremont, took possession of Cali- fornia, Kearny and his army annexed and possessed Santa Fe and New Mexico — which then included Arizona — and the various Indian tribes as well as the Mexicans were called upon to pay allegiance to our government. For quite a while the Navahos regarded our treaty-making w^ith them as one of the greatest pieces of fun of the century. They were willing enough (as I shall show in the chapter on the Canyon de Chelly) to make a new treaty every month, for that meant a pow-wow, presents, beef, and the chance to steal more horses and mules, as well as make fun of the white-faced treaty-makers. What a joke it all was! It was while these army officers were learning something of the Navahos and their peculiar tactics that they began to learn something of the country in which the Indians lived. Reconnaissance parties were sent out, and instructed to report upon whatever they saw or found of interest. Some CLIFF-DWELLINGS OF THE SOUTHWEST 23 of these officers were keenly alive to everything that bor- dered upon archaeology, or seemed to promise a field for investigation and exploration. The result was that when, some twenty-five years later, the United States Bureau of American Ethnology was organized under the able director- ship of Major John Wesley Powell, and the experts of the United States Geological Survey were studying every new formation they could find on the earth's surface of our new western possessions, confirmed to us at the close of the Mexican war by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a good deal of general knowledge was gained about the cliff- dwellings, and they were a legitimate subject for real scien- tific exploration and study. The original explorers had found that the whole country, included in the territory bounded by Southern Utah and Colorado, as far east as the Rio Grande River, south to the Mexican line and, perhaps, beyond, and west pretty nearly to the Colorado River, was literally covered with ruins of towers, big communal houses, isolated clusters of house ruins, small houses, with numberless houses of similar style built in the faces of cliffs, and apparently inaccessible ; while remains of prehistoric irrigation canals lined and seamed the valleys in every direction. In addition to these ruins of communal houses, there were a number of Indian villages, called by the Spaniards and Mexicans pueblos, where communal houses of similar character were found, but in actual occupation. These inhabited pueblos reached from Taos, in Northeastern New Mexico, not far from the border of Colorado; down the Rio Grande River, on and near which there were over twenty of them; westward to the magnificent city of the 24 OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS sky, Acoma, with its three-story high wall of defense perched on top of one of the most wonderful and thrilling "islands of rock" the eye of man has ever rested upon; to Zuni, where a seven-storied pueblo housed the inhabi- tants; and to far-away Hopiland — or, as the Spaniards called it, the Province of Tusayan — where the Hopis lived high on the summits of inaccessible mesas and performed strange religious ceremonies in which they handled deadly rattlesnakes and carried them in their mouths. Magazine writers began to exploit these wonders, and scientists who never saw them also had to have their say, and the results were the scattering over the whole country of a vast amount of false knowledge. We heard of the Cliff-Dwellers, first of all that they were descendants of the Aztecs ; hence the score or so of Aztec and Montezuma names found in the West. Then we were told that they were a dwarf race, because only a dwarf people could live in houses that had such small doorways. Next, as more clifif-dwellings were discovered, we were informed — still by the so-called scientists, most of whom had never seen a cliff-dwelling in their lives — that they were inhabited by a people who had fled to them for refuge and defense against a hostile and fierce foe, who, eventually, had exter- minated them and left not a solitary descendant. Therefore they were a lost race, a people without a history, and, because they had no knowledge of writing and had left no written records, it was utterly impossible that we could ever know anything about their past, or how they had been swept so completely out of existence. Then the real scientists got to work. They called a halt on the guesswork. They said : " We don't know, and we CLIFF -DWELLINGS OF THE SOUTHWEST 25 never can know, unless we quit this foolish and absurd ' theorizing ' and try to learn some facts upon which to base our theories. We'll excavate some of these ruins; we'll see if they have any message for us; then we'll talk to the Pueblo Indians who inhabit these modern houses, which in some respects look so much like these ancient ruins, and see what they can tell us of the ruins, and then, perhaps, putting this and that together, we may gain some real knowledge of these ruins and their former inhabitants." Accordingly, Lieutenant Gushing went to live at Zuni with the Pueblo Indians. Mr. A. IM. Stephen went to Hopiland and did the same with the Hopis. Dr. Washington Mat- thews, whose duties as an army surgeon took him to frontier posts in Arizona and other points, began to study the Navahos; and Jackson, Holmes, Bandelier, the Mindeleffs, Colonel James Stevenson, Major Powell and others began to excavate the ruins and gather up material; and later, Fewkes, Hodge, Hough, Hewett, and others shared in the work until today we are convinced that we know much that could never have been learned had we remained foolishly content with our hit or miss guesswork. 1. The ruins of the Province of Tusayan. These are briefly referred to in Chapter iv. 2. TJie ruins of the Salt and Gila River Valleys. One of the most notable, as it was one of the earliest ruins described by the first white explorers of the Southwest, is the Casa Grande, situated about midway between the sta- tions of Casa Grande and Florence, in the Gila River Valley. The popular conception regarding it is of a solitary "great house," standing alone in a plain, the only ruin of 26 OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS its kind, and possessing a mystery as great as, though dif- ferent in kind from, the cHff-dwelHngs. This, however, is erroneous. Casa Grande is but one of many similar South- ern Arizona ruins, and this structure is surrounded by other buildings and plazas covering an area of very great extent. The ruin was first seen and described by Lieutenant Juan Mateo Mange, the nephew of the Governor of Sonora, in 1694, at the time he was acting as escort for the indefati- gable missionary, Eusebio Francisco Kino, or Kuehne, the Jesuit, whose devotion to the christianization of the Indians led him to the most perilous expeditions and endeavors. Scores of travelers have since visited and described it, but not until 189 1-2 was it carefully studied by Cosmos Mindeleff, one of the Bureau of Ethnology's experts. He called attention to that which the casual observers had prac- tically ignored, namely, the large number of surrounding ruins, which, being less imposing, indeed mostly having crumbled to mere mounds, did not seem worthy of atten- tion. He estimated that the whole area covered by the Casa Grande group of ruins included about 1800 feet north and south, and 1500 feet east and west, or a total area of about sixty-five acres. Regarding Casa Grande as a specific type of structure widely distributed throughout the Gila Valley, but, as far as is known, not found elsewhere, Mindeleff took this as an indication of the existence of a definite culture existent in this valley. Environment stamps itself indelibly upon the buildings any aboriginal people erect, because the prob- lem of transportation was one they had not solved. The difference in the surroundings of this people, where rocks were exceedingly scarce, and adobe or other mud abounded, CLIFF-DWELLINGS OF THE SOUTHWEST 27 and that where rocks were the prevailing material, reflected itself in the architecture. These people, under different climatic conditions, had to work out about the same prob- lems of existence as had their cliff-dwelling brothers of the north. Public interest in Casa Grande once aroused, it mani- fested itself in the formation and presentation of a petition to Congress for an appropriation for its preservation, and in 1899 the sum of $2,000 was set aside for this purpose. While this was altogether inadequate for the work essential to be done, it was a start, and the amount was wisely- expended under Mr. Mindeleff's direction. The results were deemed so important that twice in later years Congress appropriated $3,000, making in all the sum of $8,000. These later amounts were expended by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, and the excavations carried on by him have widely broadened and deepened our knowledge of Casa Grande and all the ruins of the Gila and Salt River Valleys. Indeed, they conclusively proved that instead of this ruin being isolated and alone, it is one of scores of similar, though smaller, buildings, housing a population that occupied a large area, larger, indeed, than several of the eastern states, and all with the same degree of ethnic culture. These people lived in clusters of houses, surrounded by a common wall, which inclosed also massive houses that served as temples or as citadels, for protection. It is doubtful whether they were all occupied at the same time, for it has ever been the custom for these aboriginal people to keep "on the move," and as soon as a drought, or some other untoward circumstance, rendered a site unfavorable, they left it and occupied another. 28 OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS These builders had two ways, at least, of erecting these large structures, the chief of which was the exact counter- part of our reinforced concrete, save that there was no steel or other reinforcement. Moulds were made, in situ, into which the native adobe, or other natural cement, was placed, tightly jammed down, and left to solidify before the next block was added. Where there was less need for strength the walls w^ere made by fastening upright poles together and covering them with the mud cement, or mak- ing the mud wall, and then supporting it with poles on either side. The conclusions to which Dr. Fewkes arrived as to the relationship of these ruins with the cliff-dwellings in the north and east are exceedingly interesting, and the student who desires to be better informed should carefully read the monograph which appears in the Tzventy-eighth Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Not far away from the Gila-Salt population was another aboriginal people, working out their life problems in their w^ay, and we will now proceed to a brief consideration of what they have left behind them. 3. The ruins of the Lozver and Upper Verde Valleys. In the early days of United States occupation of Arizona, the Apaches, as well as the Navahos, gave the settlers an immense amount of trouble. Conjoined with them in their deviltry were the Tontos (really the Yamapais), and the Wallapais. It took our army officers a long time to learn how to handle the Indian problem, and, when the Indians were out on the warpath, how to fight them. To help out, military camps were established over the country, and one of these was set down in the heart of CLIFF-DWELLINGS OF TFIE SOUTHWEST 29 the Verde country, and named Camp Verde. One of the medical officers of this camp was inclined to keep his eyes open, and he soon found out that the Verde region was lined, in its canyon walls, its mesa tops, its valley bottoms, with ruins of several kinds. Mindeleff, Hough, and Fewkes, in late years, have studied them, and now we know some- what of their character, history, and the traditions connected with them. The Pueblo Indians have clearly defined tradi- tions telling that their present population is made up of an aggregation of clans, or families, that came in one at a time from different directions, and that certain of their clans, or families, came from the Verde country. Several kinds of houses were found, but these seemed to be more the result of physical environment than anything else. The Cliff-Dwellers built in the cliffs not so much because a warlike foe was bent on their destruction, but because the cliffs were there ; they overlooked the corn-fields, and melon and squash patches, and therefore were the most convenient, easily-accessible house sites they could find. They built on the mesa tops when the mesas were more convenient, and they built on the bottom lands when such offered the most advantageous sites. These facts soon knocked out of the heads of the scientists the idea that the Cliff-Dwellers were a separate and distinct race of people. They were the same people as those who built on the mesa tops and the valley bottoms. This also disproved the idea of their being driven out of existence by a warlike foe. And we soon began to realize that Indians know nothing of the science of war as we understand it. They never plan a campaign, and carry out warfare in our sense. Driven by hunger, or restless- ness, or, perhaps, desirous of avenging some real or 30 OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS supposed injury or insult, a band of them starts out to make a raid. The nomad, or wandering Indians, to which class the Apaches, Wallapais and Tontos belong, not having any fixed homes, were not in the habit of accumulating food supplies. It was a great temptation when they came upon a settle- ment where the inhabitants were industrial agriculturists, who stored away corn, melons, and the like for future use, and who dressed buckskin, and wove cotton, which they grew themselves, and made sleeping mats of yucca fibre, and baskets, and pottery, I say it was a great temptation to the wandering bands who had none of these things and who trusted to luck and their own thieving capacities to get them, to raid those who had been so provident as to have them. To protect themselves, therefore, when these raids began, the sedentary, or home-loving agricultural Indians, banded together. They built their great com- munal houses, with outer walls like rude forts, and with only a few entrances, easily defended. They tilled their fields and generally had some one on the lookout during the " raiding season," and when an alarm was given they hurried to their homes, closed up the gateways and thus were practically safe from the harrowing process. The cliff-dwellings were no more fortresses than the big com- munity houses on the mesa tops. They were first of all houses, with outlooks over their cornfields, and then so planned that they would be easily defended in case they were raided by these wandering bands of thieving and marauding Apaches. And that is practically all there is to the cliff-dwellings. As to their vast number, and the indications these give CLIFF-DWELLINGS OF THE SOUTHWEST 31 of a tremendous population, we have learned that the ancestors of the present Pueblo Indians were all the time looking for good cornfields. Arizona is a country that is uncertain as to its rainfall in the valleys. It is naturally a country for irrigation. Now, while the Indians under- stood the art of irrigation, they were not engineers and builders enough to erect great dams and thus create storage reservoirs for cases of emergency or drought. The result was that, if one dry season came, they could stand that, perhaps two, or even three, in succession; but if a drought continued longer than that they were compelled by inex- orable necessity to move on, and they seldom moved back over land they had once before occupied. Like the rest of us, they were convinced always that "it was better on before." The result was they were a people of perpetual migrations, and at each migration they deserted their former homes and built new ones. Here, then, we have the secret of the vast number of ruins found throughout this country. The principal and best known ruins of the Verde region are the so-called Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well. The former is located in a cliff about five miles from Camp Verde, up Beaver Creek, where the canyon wall makes a great curve, like a basin set on edge, and in the cavity thus formed, eighty feet or so above the foot of the cliff, as swallows build under the eaves of a house, the Cliff-Dwell- ers stuck their human nest. It is about sixty feet wide and not quite so high, four stories in front and one story higher in the rear. It is supposed it was never reached except by ladders, but the Indians say this is not so, though no person today could ever imagine how the primitive builders, no matter though they were as agile as mountain goats, could 32 OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS ever have scaled that cliff. Certainly if they ever did so it was less precipitous than it is now, though the ruin itself is little changed since it was deserted. The floors were made of adobe, or some other tenacious mud, which was also used as mortar and plaster. The fires were built in a sort of firehole in the floor, and ashes are still found there. The rafters and walls are smoky, for there was no chimney, and the smoke got out as best it could through small apertures in the walls above. There are about thirty rooms in all in the " castle," but not many doorways. Had it not been for white vandals, members of the superior race that thinks first of all of money, it would have stood for centuries, as it had done in the past, but these gophering ghouls undermined the walls, digging for treasure, dynamiting or blasting wherever they thought it would hurry their excavations. Fortunately a few public- spirited men of Arizona, led by Dr. Miller, of Phoenix, determined to save it from ruin. They went before the legislature with a broad-minded bill for its salvation and further preservation, prohibiting further irresponsible exca- vations, and providing for the establishment of a State Museum, to which the generous Doctor philanthropically offered the whole of his magnificent collection of over a thousand pieces of ethnological and archaeological interest. But times were not yet ripe in Arizona politics for such a bill. It failed of passage, so Dr. Miller proceeded to interest his friends, and soon raised enough cash, with the gift of his personal services, to replace the damaged founda- tion, run iron rods through the building and securely anchor it to the cliff, roof it with corrugated iron where needed, construct easy approaches to it, clean out most of the rooms, CLIFF-DWELLINGS OF THE SOUTHWEST 33 and put it, generally, in fair condition. It is now made a national monument, and as the years go by and thoughtful Americans wake up to a full appreciation of their historical memorials the name of Dr. G. W. Miller will be one of those highly honored because of his far-seeing philanthropy in saving this wonderful ruin for future generations. About six miles farther up Beaver Creek is another won- derful cluster of cliff ruins, but they are secondary in interest to the place where they are found. This is a crater- appearing hole in the heart of a mound-like elevation by the side of the creek. As one walks up the gentle slope it looks like hundreds of other hills — a thousand — one may find in the Southwest, but as soon as he reaches the top he stops and takes a deep breath in very amazement and sur- prise. For there, before him, in a moment appears a vast hole, rudely circular in form, about 400 feet across in the widest part, and from sixty to eighty feet deep, at the bottom of which is a black-velvet- faced pool of water that seems as if it had sprung up in some magical fashion from the River Styx, or some equally spooky source. One's first impulse is to throw a rock into it, and looking about for one, one walks around the edge and there, on the creek side, where it has cut deep into the side of the mound during flood times, so that it appears a mere thin shell, resting right on the knife-blade edge, is a ruined pueblo. Some of the remaining walls are 3^et eight feet high, and it was evi- dently built there so as to overlook the cornfields on the creek bank beneath. Mr. C. F. Lummis says of it : The fort-house absolutely controlled the only reasonable entrance to the well ; the only other path down to the lake's edge could be held by boys against an enemy. 34 OUR AMERICAN WONDERLANDS Clambering down this cliff path to the little platform at the water level, one is suddenly aware of a cave mouth even gloomier than the gloomy lake. A sad little sycamore stands before it, and beyond stretches that strange, dark, unscratched mirror of the dark pool. The cave is a natural limestone cave, burrowing hundreds of feet under the hill; but at the first turn in it the explorer shivers with sudden wonder. For here, too, were the homes of the hunted Pueblos. Away back in the gloom is a strong wall of prehistoric masonry, with a narrow doorway ; and back again another door and another wall, and so on. The limestone floor rings in places bell-like to the tread, and deep under it one can hear the chuckle of subterranean water sprites. Here and there, too, it is broken through, and there is the buried brook ready to be drunk from as in the old days. * * * Here are still the frag- ments of the Cliff-Dwellers' pottery and of their agate tools; and in one room the unforgetful mortar preserves the perfect imprint of a baby's hand that pressed it wet a thousand years, maybe, ago.* Many of the cliff ruins of the Upper Verde are mainly caves, hollowed both by nature and man out of the soft strata found in the faces of certain cliffs. Hammered with the rude stone implements of the primitive man, great flakes fell off, and thus a small cave could speedily be enlarged to the size required. Then, for protection, a w^all was built in front, or on the sides, and the back of the cliff and its upper wall, formed the back and roof of the human habitation. There are literally hundreds of such rooms and cave- dwellings in this region. Another class of dwellings used to exist here, the remains of which can now be pointed out. These were built on foundations of heavy boulders, and consisted of the primi- tive man's foreshadowing of what today is known as rein- * C. F. Lummis, "Our Western Wonderlands," in Land of Sunshine. n O o u CD U < < CD < o N 1— < Pi < < H m O