\'u'.' '''<,'< ' y^^'^^'i -♦BO LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORN lA. Yd 4 c cessions No . \J O iV^^ A^^^^^Lc/ Shelf No. SS ^ ^ inches. exceed two pounds ; some represent animals (fig. 82) chiefly birds, almost always roughly hewn. A fragment of white marble is mentioned in which the parts the artist wished especially to accentuate are colored red. It would indeed be difificult to enumerate all the varieties which have rewarded excavations. We must not omit to mention the metallic ornaments of the Mound Builders. At Connett's Mound more than five ^ G. H. Perkins : " On an Ancient Burial Ground in Swanton, Vermont," Am. Assoc, Portland, 1873, POTTERY. WEAPONS, AND ORNAMENTS. 175 hundred copper beads (fig. 83) have been collected. These beads were intended to make bracelets or necklaces. At Circular Mound, near the Detroit River, some similar beads were threaded on a string made of bark. They had been shaped from a thin sheet of copper, first cut out and then rolled without any trace of soldering.* In other in- stances the beads were of oval form, and their manufacture must have presented serious difficulties. Besides the ornaments just mentioned we meet with celts. A " celt " is an implement of stone or bronze, used some- times as a weapon, but generally for industrial purposes, performing the office of a chisel or an adze. Celts vary considerably both in shape and size, but usually have the Fig. 83. — Copper beads from Connett's Mound, Ohio (natural size). outline of a plane-iron such as carpenters use, though of course much thicker when of stone, and with the cutting edge more or less arched. There are also scrapers, scissors, knives, lance- and arrow-points of different forms, all made by hammering pieces of native copper. To the early and late aborigines of America the malleable properties of cop- per were well known. At Swanton a copper hatchet was found originally provided with a wooden handle, of which fragments could still be distinguished ; in Wisconsin a lance-point and a knife that might be compared with our modern weapons (fig. 84) ; at Joliet, Illinois, a sharp blade, and at Fort Wayne a knife. On a skeleton discovered beneath a mound at ZoUicoffer Hill, a copper ornament of ^ Andrews : " Expl. in S. E. Ohio." " Report, Peabody Museum," 1S77. 1/6 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. quite peculiar form was found/ The cross surmounting it led people to suppose it to be of European origin ; but Dr. Jones mentions the same subject as an ornament on some engraved shells and copper objects, also found in Tennessee.'' A skeleton taken from one of the Chillicothe mounds bore a cross upon its breast, and a figure with a cross engraved upon its shoulder was discovered be- neath a mound in the Cumberland valley. The cross occurs again on one of the bas-reliefs of Palenque, and on the monuments of Cuzco, in the very centre of the worship of the sun. When Grijalva landed in 1518 on the coast of Yucatan, his surprise was great to meet with the sign of his own faith in the temples of the natives.* Similar instances occur all over the continent of America and are mentioned, though it is impos- sible to attach any importance to them. The cross is of great antiquity in all countries. It is found on the most ancient monuments of Egypt, where it symbolizes eternal life. It is, moreover, one of the simplest forms of ornament and as such, and as suggested by many flowers and other natural objects, we should ex- pect to find in all parts of the world Copper weapons that it has been made use of by primitive man. ^Putnam: "Arch. Expl. in Tennessee." "Rep., Peabody Mus.," 1878, vol. 11., p. 307. '^ Hey wood : " Expl. of the Aboriginal Remains of Tennessee." "Smith- sonian Contr.," 1876. ^ Herrera : "Hist.Gen.de los hechos de los Castillanos en las Islas y Fig. 84 found in Wisconsin, POTTERY, WEAPONS, AND ORNAMENTS. ^77 The pottery of Missouri and the discoveries of Putnam in the caves of Kentucky have aheady revealed the nature of the clothing worn by the Mound Builders, and mummies found in the caves of the western states enable us to judge of them still better. The bodies were wrapped in coarse cloth, over which was a kind of net with wide meshes, in which were stuck feathers of brilliant colors, the whole en- veloped in a third covering of skin. The ancient inhabitants of America manufactured different kinds of tissues. A few years ago the excava- tion of a mound near the Great Miami River, two miles north of Middletown, Ohio, yielded several fragments of half- burnt cloth mixed with charcoal, and hu- man bones also injured by fire.^ This cloth which had been coarsely woven by hand was doubtless used to wrap the body in be- fore cremation, or, at least, the partial burning which preceded interment. It cannot reasonably be attributed to the present Indians, as the mound showed no traces of disturbance. Other instances confirm what we have just stated. In Iowa some copper axes have been recently discovered carefully wrapped in very well preserved cloth,'' and in January, 1876, excavations in a mound in Illinois ^ brought to light several turtles in beaten copper of remarkable workm.an- ship. Most of these turtles measure not more than 2 1-8 inches and the copper has been reduced by beating to a thick- FiG. 85. — Copper ornament found in a stone grave at Zollicof- in length, fer Hill, Tenn. Tierra Firme del mar Oceano." Madrid, 1725-30, Dec. 2d, Book III., chap. I. The first edition was published in 1605. 'Foster: "Description of samples of ancient cloth from the mounds of Ohio." "Rep., Am. Assoc," Albany, 1851. 'Short : "The North Americans of Antiquity," p. 37. ^ Bulletin 0/ the Buffalo Society of Natural History, March, 1877. N 178 PRE.HISTORIC AMERICA.' ness of 1-64 of an inch. These jewels, for such they must be called, evidently of great value, were enveloped suc- cessively in a vegetable tissue, some stuff of brown color made of the hair either of the rabbit or some other animal,^ and lastly in a covering made out of the intestines of some animal. In the same mound were found teeth of a deer perforated for suspension and covered with very thin plates of copper. These teeth were wrapped like the turtles we have just described. The Ohio mounds, which have afforded results so fruitful for science, have also yielded a very well-preserved piece of skin about eight or ten inches long, ornamented with nu- merous oval copper beads. This was a fragment of a garment which had belonged to a Mound Builder.^ The copper which the Mound Builders used so frequently came from the shores of Lake Superior." The works of ancient miners are scattered over a region 150 miles long and from four to seven miles wide, now called the Trap-zone. Keweenaw Point juts out like a buttress into the lake for a distance of seventy miles, and the mineral deposits which abound there have been worked in remote ages, though all traces had been obliterated, and all memory of the old miners lost, until, in 1848, the work of a mining company laid them bare. The depth of the excavations, which were always open to the sky, varied from twenty to thirty feet, the latter forming the extreme limit to which these inexperi- enced workmen dared to penetrate, and the copper was found in masses varying from a few ounces to thousands of pounds. In one mine, which had been choked up in the * Examination with the microscope has not succeeded in satisfactorily de- termining the nature of this hair. It is known, however, that the Nahuas manu- factured a tissue as fine as silk out of rabbit's hair. "^ School-house Mound, Ohio. Andrews : " Report, Peabody Museum," vol. II.. p. 65. ' C. Jackson : " Geological Report to the U. S. Government," 1849. Fos- ter and Whitney: " Report on the Geology of the Lake Superior Region," part I, 1850. Ch. Whittlesey : "Ancient Mining on the Shores of Lake Superior " ; Am. Assoc, Montreal, Canada, 1857. Swineford : " Review of the Mineral Resources of Lake Superior," 1876. POTTERY, WEAPONS, AND ORNAMENTS. 1 79 course of years with earth and vegetable refuse, the remains of several generations of trees, was found, at about eighteen feet from the surface, a block of metal measuring two feet long by three wide and two thick, and weighing nearly six tons. This mass had been placed on rollers from six to eight inches in diameter, the edges of which still bore the marks of a sharp instrument. The miners had rolled the mass up about five feet, and then they had abandoned an undertaking beyond their strength or the means at their dis- posal. Their mining processes were very simple ; the work- men lighted great fires in the mine, and when the rock had become friable they broke it with powerful blows of a stone hammer or mallet. Several of the mallets used have been found, the heaviest weighing as much as thirty-six pounds ; also a great number of small serpentine or porphyry ham- mers. Knapp, who was the first to direct these excavations, states that he took out from these mines ten cart-loads of stone implements of all kinds. In an unusually deep exca- vation, a quite primitive ladder was found, consisting of the trunk of a young tree, with the branches cut at unequal distances to serve as rungs. In other places shovels, levers, and dippers of cedar wood were discovered, preserved from destruction by the water in which they were soaked. Everywhere copper implements were found side by side with stone, mostly bearing marks of long service. One mallet weighed more than twenty pounds. Like all the other cop- per objects it had been made by hammering unheated. Various analyses of the copper of Lake Superior have proved its identity with that collected from the mounds. Both yield the same proportion of silver, and we know that the latter metal is always present with copper, in varying quantities. The deposits of Isle Royal, Lake Superior, were even richer than those of Keweenaw Point.' They extended for a distance of forty miles, and the ground was riddled with ancient excavations dug out to get at the ore. It has been * H. Gillman : " Ancient Works of Isle Royal." " Smith. Cont.," 1873. N 2 l8o PRE-IIISTORIC AMERICA. estimated that the vegetation rising from the old mining works of the Great Lakes represent an approximate duration of several centuries. But we have already referred to the uncertain character of what may be called vegetable evi- dence. Traces of native mining operations have been found in sev- eral other parts of North America, in Arkansas, Missouri, and on the slopes of the Ozark Mountains, for instance/ There were also copper mines in Mexico,^ but there is nothing to show when they were worked. Captain Peck noticed near the Ontonagon River, in northern Michigan, at a depth of twenty-five feet, some sledges and other tools in contact with a vein of copper.^ A little above them lay the fallen trunk of an old cedar ; the roots of a fir in full vigor surrounded the cedar. This fir was estimated to be at least a hundred years old, and to that time must be added the age of the cedar it had replaced, with the yet longer period necessary to the filling up of the abandoned cutting by the slow accu- mulations of successive winters, which supplied the trees with the vegetable earth necessary to their growth. Copper seems to have been the only metal in common use amongst the Mound Builders. Few well authenticated discoveries of gold are known ; silver was rare, and so far has been found chiefly under some mounds of Mound City, in very thin leaves covering shells or copper ornaments, and this plating is so well done that the work of the artificer can only be made out with difficulty. This silver must have come from Lake Superior, where it is found associated with native copper in a metallic state. It has been generally supposed that iron was unknown,* and in numerous excavations made at many different points and in many different regions, not a scrap of it has been found. We have previously mentioned the recent and au- thentic discovery of meteoric iron by Putnam and Metz in * Schoolcraft : " Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge," vol. I,, p. loi. ' F. von Hellwald : " Congres des Americanistes," Luxembourg, 1877. ' Lubbock : " Prehistoric Times," p, 289. * Iron ore and galena occur, but no iron or lead, Bancroft, vol. IV., p. 778. POTTERY, WEAPONS, AND ORNAMENTS. ^f'f '^ the Little Miami mounds, which show that it was considerea very valuable, since copper ornaments were plated with it as others were with gold or silver. Previous statements with regard to the discovery of iron in the mounds are, with- out exception, unsatisfactory. The Mound Builders are supposed to have been quite ig- norant of any process of fusing metals,^ and their weapons, or implements of copper, were, as we have more than once remarked, shaped by hammering. A recent discovery, however, is claimed to modify this opinion and to prove that in one place at least the Mound Builders understood the art of smelting metals. Some recent excavations in Wisconsin have yielded not only implements of copper, but the very moulds in which they are supposed to have been cast. It is desirable that other facts should confirm an assertion upset- ting the hitherto generally received opinion.' It has been held by some and with much probability, that the moulds were used in the process of shaping cold copper, a piece of approximately similar form having been put into the mould and hammered until it took the shape of the cavity. The experiment was successfully tried by Dr. Hoy with one of the stone moulds. Traces of cultivation attributed to the Mound Builders are numerous in the western states, especially in Michigan and Indiana.* These are parallel embankments, which often cover a considerable area, several acres for instance, to which have been given the significant name of Garden-beds, We meet with similar embankments in Missouri and in all the * There is no evidence that metal was ever obtained from ore by smelting. The Mound Builders were ignorant of the arts of casting, welding, and alloy- ing. Bancroft, vol. IV., p. 778. "^ The above was written when I heard of a letter from Putnam, of Nov. 17, 1 88 1, called " Were ancient implements hammered or moulded into shape?" The learned professor concludes with me that there is so far no serious proof of the use of moulding. " Besides beating," adds Putnam, " these men employed one other process ; the metal was rolled between two flat stones, by which means the required form was obtained." " Schoolcraft : " Ancient Garden-Beds in Grand River Valley" (Michigan), vol. I., p. 50, and pi. VI. Conant. r.. 6c 1 82 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. districts west of the Mississippi ; they extend into the valleys of the Ozark Mountains, from Pulaski county to the Gulf of Mexico on the south, to the banks of the Colorado and to Texas on the west, and to Iowa on the north. Their diameter varies from ten to sixty feet, and their height from two to three feet. Numerous and detailed excavations have yielded no relic, no bone, no fragment of pottery, no heap of cinders or of coal that could witness to the residence or the burial of man. They cannot therefore be compared either with the kitchen middens or the sepulchral mounds. Professor Forshey attests their presence in Louisiana, where they are of considerably larger dimensions, their diameter varying from thirty to one hundred and forty feet. It should be added that the diameter of one hundred and forty feet is an isolated case. Their greatest height is five feet, which diminishes to a few inches in the vast marshes stretching away from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. At certain points these embankments touch each other, and between Galveston and Houston, between the Red River and Wichita, they can be counted by thousands. According to Forshey, who de- scribed them to the New Orleans Academy of Sciences, these embankments cannot have served as the founda- tions of the homes of men. He remarked that none of the known burrowing animals execute such works, whilst hurri- canes could not have accumulated materials with such regu- larity. He added that in his opinion it was impossible to say any thing definite with regard to their origin, which seemed to him inexplicable. Other archaeologists are more positive ; they consider that these embankments could have been used for nothing but cultivation, and that they were in- tended to counteract the humidity of the soil, still the greatest obstacle with which the tillers of the rich plains of the lower Mississippi valley have to contend. According to certain authorities the Mound Builders cul- tivated maize, frijoles or black kidney beans, introduced by the Spaniards into Europe, and even the vine. A recent ex- plorer, Amasa Potter, in describing the excavations of a POTTERY, WEAPONS, AND ORNAMENTS. 1 83 mound in Utah, tells of having found a handful of corn, a few grains of which carefully collected and planted yielded the following year an ear of exceptional length, containing a number of grains of a shape quite distinct from that of any cereal of to-day ; but the whole account of this dis- covery is so extraordinary that it is impossible to accept it. To sum up : the vast region between the Mississippi on the west and the AUeghanies on the east and between the Ohio on the north and the Gulf of Mexico on the south, was occupied for centuries, the exact number of which it is impossible to estimate in the present state of our knowledge, by man. Judging from the number of structures left to bear witness, this population was numerous ; tolerably homo- geneous, for everywhere we recognize similar funeral rites, and much the same arts and industries ; sedentary, for nomads would not have erected such temples or constructed such intrenchments ; pastoral and agricultural, for the chase could not have supplied all their needs ; subject to chiefs, for a despotic authority must have been indispensable to the erection of the works left behind them ; and lastly they must have been traders, for beneath the same mounds we find the copper of Lake Superior, the mica of the AUeghanies, the obsidian of Mexico, and the pearls and shells of the Gulf. All testify to the fact that the men, whose traces we are seeking, had long since risen from the barbarism of savagery, and that they had attained to a state of comparative culture. It is certain that, as with all the savage races whose evolution history enables us to follow, this culture could only have been acquired slowly and by degrees. What then, we must now ask, were the men, whose works so justly excite our astonishment ? Did the Mound Builders disappear ? Were they aboriginal, or were their architecture, their industrial art, and their agriculture of foreign origin ? If they migrated from neighboring regions, or from distant continents, what were those regions and what those con- tinents? By what route did they travel, and if they disap- peared how was it that all recollection of their disappearance 1 84 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. was effaced from the memory of their conquerors or their successors? It is impossible to disguise either the bearing of these questions on the development of the American races ; or the fact that at present we can but partially solve them. The conditions of the problem and the opinions which have been successively enounced may be briefly stated. Those who have made this subject their special study have been divided into two parties, and religious prejudice has even been invoked to aggravate the difficulties already in themselves so great. To the most recent and cautious investi- gators the Indians at the time of the conquest represent in a general way the so called Mound Builders, while others, on the contrary, assert that the builders of the great mounds have completely disappeared, and these persons absolutely refuse to admit the possibility of the native races of North America being their descendants. We must examine in turn the arguments and objections which are not wanting for or against any of the theories put forth. One thing is certain : The analogy between the mounds is such that they cannot but be the work of a people in about the same stage of culture. '' They are all built by one people," observes Conant, on p. 39 of his " Footprints of Vanished Races," and it is not less certain that centuries may have been required for their erection. The men who worked the mines of Lake Superior, who erected such mounds as those of Newark, Portsmouth, Cincinnati, Chillicothe, and Circleville, and such fortifications as those of Ohio, must long have dwelt in these regions, though it is impossible to fix the limits of their occupation. The question of the time of their residence is so intimately connected with that of their origin, that it is impossible to separate them. One preliminary remark must be made : in the caves and beneath the tumuli of Europe have been found numerous well-preserved human bones, often dating from the most re- mote antiquity, while this is less commonly the case in America. These excavations have often yielded, as the last y POTTERY, WEAPONS, AND ORNAMENTS. 1 85 vestiges of the human body, but a few Httle heaps of white dust ; though hundreds of skeletons have been taken out, but a small proportion of them have been treated with the care necessary to their preservation. It has also been noticed that mounds are rarely met with in the lower levels ^ of the districts watered by the Ohio or its tributaries. These structures nearly all rise from terraces formed by ancient alluvial deposits, and some have retained to this day traces of great inundations which altered the valleys. It is likely that their builders chose their sites so as to avoid the great floods, the disastrous effects of which they must have annually experienced at the outset. Recent discoveries enable us to add that some of the mounds rise from the most recent alluvial deposits. This fact would prove that the erection of mounds went on for centuries. The giants of the forest have covered many of the arti- ficial earthworks, and generations of tree in their turn suc- ceeded the residence of man. Such changes surely needed a long period of time. '' The process by which nature re- stores the forest to its original state, after being once cleared, is extremely slow," says General Harrison'' in a speech already quoted. "" The rich lands of the West are, indeed, soon covered again, but the character of the growth is entirely different, and continues so for a long period. In several places upon the Ohio, and upon the farm which I occupy, clearings were made in the first settlement of the country, and consequently abandoned and suffered to grow up. Some of these new forests are now sure of fifty years' growth, but they have made so little progress toward attain- ing the appearance of the immediately contiguous forest as to induce any man of reflection to determine that at least ten times fifty years must elapse before their complete * The difference of level between the high and low water is thirty-five feet for the Upper Mississippi, from thirty to thirty-five for the Missouri, and forty-two for the Ohio. ^ " Trans. Hist. See. of Ohio," vol. I., p. 263. See also " Arch. Americana," vol. I., p. 306 ; and Squier and Davis' "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," 1848, p. 306, 1 86 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA, assimilation can be effected. We find in the ancient works all that variety of trees which give such unrivalled beauty to our forests, in natural proportions. The first growth of the same kind of land, once cleared and then abandoned to nature, on the contrary, is nearly homogeneous, often stinted to one or two, at most three, kinds of timber. If the ground has been cultivated, the yellow locust will thickly spring up ; if not cultivated, the black and white walnut will be the prevailing growth. * * * Of what immense ages, then, must be the works so often referred to, covered as they are by at least the second growth after the primitive forest state was regained ? " Barrandt ^ describes a regular town, a Mound City he calls it, on the Yellowstone River, which town had perfectly straight avenues and mounds at equal distances. Another town rather like this, on the Moreau River, contains nearly two hundred mounds, and a third rises on the banks of the Great Cheyenne, Nebraska. In Missouri and Arkansas we also see a considerable number of mounds of elliptical form, measuring from five to seven yards long, and rising from about one foot to one and a half feet above the ground. All are symmetrically arranged, with passages crossing each other at right angles, as do our streets." Excavations have yielded nothing but charcoal or fragments of coarse pottery, from which no useful inferences could be drawn. In the neighborhood numerous jasper and agate arrow-points have been picked up, and syenite and porphyry axes. ' It has been claimed by those who would see in the build- ers of the mounds a unique, civilized, and vanished race, that the symmetry above described is foreign to the charac- ter of the existing Indians, that the Indian races did not build mounds, that they did not throw up embankments, that their customs and industries have never presented so striking a similarity as the remains of the mounds seem to ^ •' Smithsonian Report," 1870, '^ J. Dille : " Smithsonian Report," 1866. ' " Narrative of a Journey across the Cordillera of the Andes." London, 1825. POTTERY, WEAPONS, AND ORNAMENTS. 1 87 indicate for their builders, that the 'Indians could not or would not dig canals, hammer copper into utensils, or make such pottery as that found in the mounds. It is also said that the Indians have no traditions in regard to the mounds, or ascribe them to a foreign race or to some mythi- cal people, and have no reverence for them such as would be expected if the works were the tombs of their ancestors. Of these arguments it may be said that there is hardly one of them which has not already been refuted by scientific researches of recent days, and most of them would never have been offered if the persons who advanced them had had our present knowledge of the American races, the mounds, and the methods of scientific archaeology. This is no reproach to the early investigators. Archaeology as a science is young, and yet those who depend upon many of the early writers for their general principles are in the posi- tion of the blind led by the blind. It should, however, be distinctly understood that the reference to " Indians " in connection with the mounds, is a strictly general term. The richest, most cultured, and most sedentary of the Indian tribes existing when the white race poured into America like a resistless flood, have been de- stroyed ; of many tribes none remain. Of others only a most feeble remnant exists or lately existed in a region to which they have been exiled from the lands of their fathers. Those who constitute the greater portion of our Indian population to-day are those who were nomads, wanderers, the Bedouins of America, the idle wanderers who were not tied to the soil by their progress in culture, and who proba- bly never troubled themselves about mounds as long as they could shift their wigwams from one good hunting ground to another. It is of these that one thinks as Indians when the contrast between Mound Builder and Indian is mooted. Again, even among those who were not of the nomadic category there is no doubt that their facility in many ab- original arts wilted before the sun of civilization, while the methods and tools of the white man, like foreign weeds. 1 88 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. sprang up in the vacant place. Why spend hours of work making fragile, if artistic, pots when an otter skin would purchase three good kettles outlasting a wilderness of pots ? Why wearily weave the macerated fibres of wild herbage to a coarse, unsightly fabric when a basket of wild berries would sell to the white man for a fathom of bright calico? The Indian, whatever romance may be reflected upon him by the novelist in trying to hold the mirror up to nature, is, in business matters, as he understands them, severely practi- cal. The white man's tools, fabrics, weapons, kettles are the better ones, and the Indian adopts them. After three centuries of this sort of thing why should the disappearance of many historically recorded aboriginal methods astonish us. It is also to be remembered that America holds many peoples of different culture and habits. We know that most of them are ultimately related though put in various linguis- tic families. Were their heaps of refuse and the relics of their villages their only record, who would claim kindred between the Pueblos of the South and the fishing Indians of Canada ? the Northern Tinneh and the Apache, or many other contemporaries ? These reservations made, the prob- lem of the mounds becomes less misty. Although it is true that we meet with no structures amongst the Indians of the extreme north which at all recall those of the Mound Builders, and although the laziness of the ab- origines of the present time is so indomitable that they have often not even dreamed of turning the mounds to account for the burial of their own dead, facts of a different kind may be quoted with regard to other regions. The Kickapoos living in southern Illinois, and the Shawnees, who dwelt near Nashville, buried their dead, until quite recent times, in stone graves. This fact, we must add, has been called in question, especially by Carr in his " Observations on the Crania from the Stone Graves of Tennessee," ^ and, if it be true, there is nothing to prove that the Indians did not use sepulchral chambers dating from before their arrival in the locality. ^ " Report. Pe^'-'^Hv Museum," vol. TI^, pp. o6i. etc. / POTTERY, WEAPONS, AND ORNAMENTS. 1 89 The testimony of the Spanish historians is more impor- tant. Garcilasso de la Vega ' tells of the Indian mode of founding a town at the time of the conquest. According to him the Indians collected large quantities of earth with which they formed ^ platform many feet in height, large enough to hold from ten to twelve houses, or if necessary fifteen to twenty. There dwelt the chief, his family and his chief attendants. At the foot of the mound a square was marked out, of the size the town was to be; the principal chiefs took up their residences in it, and the common people gathered about them. Further on, Garcilasso " described the town of Guachoule near the source of the Coosa, not far from the country of the Achalaques, part of the Cherokee tribe, \\\ which the house of the chief was erected on an eminence terminating in a platform, on which six men could stand up- right. The confirmatory testimony of early explorers shows that the valley of the Mississippi, as well as the districts now forming the states of Ohio, Florida, and Georgia, was inhab- ited by warlike nations, who tilled the ground, lived in forti- fied towns, erected their temples on eminences, often arti- ficial, and worshipped the sun. These were the men who repulsed Narvaez when he endeavored to conquer Florida in 1528. It is but fair to remark that Narvaez' army consisted of but 400 foot soldiers and twenty cavalry, though provided with civilized weapons. It was against them that Hernan- dez de Soto fought for four years, giving them battle with great slaughter in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. Everywhere he found a numerous population. The towns were surrounded with walls of earth, and towers strengthened the broad trenches which completed the defences. At Pascha, west of the Mississippi, for instance, the Spaniards found a fortified town surrounded ^ " Hist, de la Conquete de la Floride, ou Relation de ce qui s' est passe au voyage de Ferdinand de Soto pour la Conquete de ce pays." La Haye, I735. vol. I., p. 136. ' Vol I., p. 294. See also A. J. Pickett, " History of Alabama," Charleston, 1857, vol. I., p. 8. IQO PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA, by a trench sufficiently wide for two canoes to float in it abreast. This trench was nine miles long and communicated with the Mississippi. Squier in his turn tells of finding among the Creeks, Natchez, and other tribes of the south, traces of structures which, if they do not exactly resemble the regular enclos- ures of the west, seem at least to have some analogy with them, and the description we borrow from him of the Chunk Yards ^ is certainly a fresh proof in favor of the opinion he advances. ** The Chunk Yards "" are rectangular areas, generally occu- pying the centre of the town, enclosed and having an entrance at each end. The public square and rotunda, or great winter council-house, stand at the two opposite corners of them. They are generally very extensive, especially in older towns. Some of them are 600 to 9CX) feet in length and of proportionate breadth. The area is levelled, and sunk two, or sometimes three feet below the banks or terraces surrounding them, which are occasionally two in number, one behind and above the other, and composed of earth taken from the area at the time of its formation. These banks or terraces served the purpose of seats for spectators. In the centre of the yard or area there is a low circular mound or eminence, in the middle of which stands the * Chunk Pole,' which is a high obelisk or four-square pillar, tapering upward to an obtuse point. This is of wood, the * " Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," p. 121. ' Their name is derived from an Indian game. Catlin describes it among the Mandans and gives it the name of Tchungkee ("Illustrations of the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians," London, 1866, vol I., p. 132). Adair had already described the Chung kee among the Cherokees (" Hist, of the Am. Indians," London, 1775, p. 401). Jones met with the same game among the Indians of the South ("Antiquities of the Southern Indians"), and Bartram among those of Ca/olina. Carr gives an illustration of a carefully polished sandstone of elliptical form measuring about four inches at its widest part and nearly two and three fourths thick. This stone was found under Ely Mound, Virginia, and similar ones have been met with in various places. They are supposed to have been used in the favorite game of tlie Indians. POTTERY, WEAPONS, AND ORNAMENTS. IQI heart or inward resinous part of a sound pine-tree, which is very durable. It is generally from thirty to forty feet in length, and to the top is fastened some object which serves as a mark to shoot at, with arrows or the rifle, at certain appointed times. Near each corner of one end of the yard stands erect a smaller pole or pillar, about twelve feet high, called the ' Slave Post,' for the reason that to them are bound the captives condemned to be burned. These posts are usually decorated with the scalps of slain enemies, sus- pended by strings from the top. They are often crowned with the white dry skull of an enemy." * * -s^- -5^ * p^r- ther on the same author describes *^ a circular eminence, at one end of the yard, commonly nine or ten feet higher than the ground round about. Upon this mound stands the great rotunda, hot-house, or winter council-house, of the present Creeks. It was probably designed and used by the ancients who constructed it for the same purpose. * * -» A square terrace or eminence, about the same height with the circular one just described, occupies a position at the other end of the yard. Upon this stands the Public Square." * Recent discoveries confirm this account. ' Under a coni- cal mound measuring 19 feet high by 300 feet in circum- ference at the base, in Lee county, Virginia, were found a number of posts of cedar wood, arranged at regular intervals so as to form a circle, with a much higher one in the centre doubtless intended to hold up the roof or covering. This was the council-chamber, the assembly-room, of the tribe, greatly resembling that of which Bartram, quoted above, writing in the last century, gives a description. *'The council or town house," he says, speaking of that of the Cherokees, "■ is a large rotunda, capable of accommodating * These extracts, which are taken from Squier and Davis' "Ancient Monu- ments of the Mississippi Valley," pp. 121-123, are in reality quotations by these authors, taken with others from a MS. by W. Bartram, author of " Travels in North and South Carolina." "The Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley" will be found in vol. I. of the " Smithsonian Contributions to Know- ledge," published by the Smithsonian Institution, at Washington, in 1848. * ** Report of Peabody Museum," vol. II. p. 75, etc. 192 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. several hundred people ; it stands on the top of an ancient artificial mount of about twenty feet perpendicular, and the rotunda on the top of it being about thirty feet more gives the whole fabric an elevation of about fifty feet from the common surface of the ground ; but it may be proper to ob- serve that this mount, on which the rotunda stands, is of a much more ancient date than the building, and perhaps was raised for another purpose. The Cherokees themselves are as ignorant as we are as to by what people or for what purpose these artificial hills were raised ; they have various stories concerning them." The Indians of the South then not only used the ancient mounds for the houses of their chiefs, or for their council- chambers, but they also erected similar mounds in their own chunk yards. These facts greatly modified Squier's first impressions, and led him, as he himself tells us, to a conclu- sion he little expected when he began his researches. In his last studies he decided that the earthworks in the western portion of the state of New York were erected by the Iroquois, and that their erection only preceded their discov- ery by a short time. He adds, it is true, that in the i6th century there was not a single Indian tribe between the At- lantic and the Pacific, except the half-civilized people of the South, who had sufficient means of subsistence to be able to give up time to unproductive labor ; nor was there one tribe in such a social condition as would admit of the com- pulsory erection by the people of the structures under no- tice. Subsequent researches have removed many of the supposed difficulties, and are well summarized by Lucien Carr in the paper from which we have already quoted. Southall dwells on the facts which seem to him to prove, not only an Indian origin for the mounds, but also their re- cent construction.^ His work describes the Iroquois gov- ernment which included five nations. These were the Mohawks, also called in some French narratives the Agniers, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas, or * " Recent Origin of Man," ch. xxxvi., p. 530 et seq. POTTERY, WEAPONS, AND ORNAMENTS. I93 Tsonontouas. According to the Jesuit fathers these nations numbered in 1665, 2340 warriors or altogether 11,700 souls, according to the generally accepted method of estimating such populations. They devoted themselves to agriculture, and were able for nearly two centuries to maintain their independence against the Dutch and French. Their territory stretched from the St. Lawrence to Tennessee and Ohio ; they were not ignorant of navigation, and early travellers report having seen their canoes as far southeast as Chesapeake Bay. Since then they have given up their nomad habits and we have some very exact descriptions of their villages and dwellings.' It was the same in many other parts of the country. Strachey, travelling in Virginia at the beginning of the 17th century,'^ relates that he found the Indians liv- ing in houses made of wood, cultivating maize and tobacco, and harvesting peas, kidney-beans, and fruit. The Mandans, dwelling on the upper Missouri, not far from the mouth of the Yellowstone River, dug out earth for a depth of about two feet, and built their huts in the hollows thus obtained. These huts, which were of circular form, made of solid ma- terials and roofed in with turf, were from about thirty to forty feet in diameter. Several families lived together; the beds, which were ranged round the circular walls, had cur- tains of dressed deer-skin. The Iroquois, Natchez, Dcla- wares, and Indians of Florida and Louisiana made vases, the ornamentation and delicacy of which were not in any way inferior to the pottery of the Mound Builders, and the curi- ous pipes, of which we have spoken, are met with among the Indians of the present day. Lastly, two centuries ago, when French missionaries first visited the districts bordering on Lake Superior, the Chip- pewas used copper weapons and tools. These facts, with many others which might be quoted, would appear to justify * See especially the account by Greenhalgh who visited several Seneca villages in 1677, ''^nd Morgan's " League of llie Iroquois." " " Historic of Travailc into Virginia Britannia" (written in 1618). O 194 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. a belief that the Indians once possessed a civiHzation supe- rior to the condition to which their descendants have been reduced by defeat, invasion, indulgence in too much alcohol, and other causes. We have given a summary of the different opinions held, and have stated the conclusions to which they lead most modern anthropologists. Some discussion of the physical characters of these races may be useful, The Indians of America have been held to form a distinct variety of the human race. Their skin is swarthy, varying from the pale olive to a warm brown, often with a bright color on the cheeks. The stories of their copper-colored complexion are, at least in North America, due to the ridiculous miscon- ception of the early voyagers who took no account of the reddish paint with which they were smeared. Like the whites, their complexion is darkened or burned by the sun, sometimes to a considerable degree, but nobody ever saw a naturally copper-colored American Indian ; their hair is black and wiry and almost invariably straight ; their eyes are black or very dark-brown ; their lips are thick or thin, ac- cording to the tribe or individual ; their forehead is com- paratively low ; their face is generally long with high cheek- bones ; their hands and feet are small and often delicately made. These characteristic traits have rarely been known to vary during the three centuries in which they have been in contact with the whites, but marked differences occur be- tween the various tribes as to physiognomy, physique, tem- perament, personal attractiveness, and tint of complexion. This has been observed by all students of the Indians who have been fortunate enough to have wide experience among them. Much stress has been placed on supposed funda- mental differences between the bones of the Mound Builders and those of other American races. These differences were more apparent while the material was scanty, and tend to disappear as we come to know more of the Indians of vari- ous parts of America, and to have larger mound material for comparison. It has been said that the Mound Builders are POTTERY, WEAPONS, AND ORNAMENTS. I95 characterized by a general conformation which places them apart amongst human races, and differentiates them espe- cially from the Indians of North America. For myself, however, I do not attach as much importance as do some eminent anthropologists to diiTerences between bones, especially the bones of skulls. Too often we find beneath the same mound, dating from contemporaneous burials, amidst similar stone implements and pieces of pottery, brachycephalic and dolichocephalic skulls, skulls of the Caucasian, and skulls of almost negroid type. All varieties, from extreme long heads to rounded or nearly square heads have been found among undoubted Eskimo crania.' The external conformation of the heads can only be guessed at, and therefore any conclusion might turn out to be pre- mature. Moreover, however true these assertions may be, there are, as we have previously intimated, Indians and Indians. The Indians of the north should not be confounded with those met with by the Conquistadores in the south, and who were certainly in a much more advanced state of culture. It may be supposed that the wild tribes from the north and the northwest first drove the mound-building people from Illinois and Indiana ; that those of Ohio, protected by a solid line of fortified camps or villages, offered a more efficacious resistance, but that they, in their turn, were driven beyond the Mississippi ; that the struggle went on in Kentucky and Tennessee, until the day when the remnants of this ancient people were driven back to the districts bordering on the Gulf, where the vanquished were gradually merged with the conquerors, and that thus united they contended bravely and often with success against a foreign yoke."* Perhaps too it may be possible to meet with traces of ' We have mentioned numerous facts leading to a similar conclusion in Eu- rope. See, also, " Les premiers hommes et les temps pre-historiques," vol. I., ch. iii., and vol. II., ch. xii. ^ Force : A quelle race appartenaient les Mound Builders ("Cong, des Americanistes," Luxembourg, vol. I., p. 121.) 02 19^ PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. people akin to the Mound Builders amongst the Aztecs, whose stone teocallis resemble the conical mounds in form, and amongst the Mayas,^ of whose remarkable monuments we shall presently speak, and who also had to contend with formidable enemies.' There can be no doubt whatever that tribes who were builders of mounds lived in Central America for centuries, but we have no chronological scale by which we can estimate the duration of their residence there, still less determine a definite emigration to or arrival in the valleys of the Mississippi or of the Missouri. The trees growing from the mounds of Ohio are rarely more than one or two hundred years old ; while in the valleys of Florida and on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico they are not even so old as that. One conclusion may be drawn : that the mounds had been abandoned when they became overgrown with trees. But were these trees the successors of others, and can we say how many generations have disappeared since the erection of the mounds, or whether the latter were generally contempo- raneous ? We were met by a similar problem in dealing with the shell heaps and we can only give a similar an- swer. From the mounds themselves we can learn nothing. A lapse of thirty centuries or of five would account equally well for the development of the civilization they represent. Stronck ascribes the erection of some of the mounds to the earliest days of our own era, and thinks that some of them must have been abandoned between the sixth and twelfth ^ Robertson speaks of having disinterred a considerable number of Mound Builders' skulls, and says that they have in every case been of a type somewhat resembling that of the natives of Yucatan (" Congres des Americanistes," Luxem- bourg, 1877, vol. I., p. 43.) ^ The examinations of the organic and monumental remains, and of the works of art of the aborigines of Tennessee, by Dr. Jones, in his opinion establish the fact that they were not the relics of the nomadic and hunting tribes of Indians such as many known to exist at the time of the first explorations by the white race ; but on the contrary that they are the remains of a people more closely related to but not identical with the aborigines of Mexico and Central America, " Smithsonian Contr.," vol. XXII., p. 88. POTTERY, WEAPONS, AND ORNAMENTS. 1 9/ centuries.^ The margin, it is evident, is wide. Force,^ in fix- ing on the seventh century as the most flourishing period of these people, and Hellwald," in making them contemporary with Charlemagne, would appear to endorse to some extent the hypothesis of Stronck. Short, in an excellent work on the North American Indians, tells us that one or at the most two thousand years only can have elapsed since the Mound Builders were compelled to abandon the valleys of the Ohio and its tributaries, and but seven or eight hundred since they retired from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Lastly the early explorers found mounds occupied and even being constructed within the last few hundred years. So we must content ourselves with the conclusion that, whatever the period of their initiation, it is probable that what maybe called the epoch of mound-building, but recently terminated, has been of very long duration. These estimates, divergent as they are, may serve to give some idea of our ignorance in regard to the actual antiquity of these ruins. One thing is certain, no excavations of the mounds up to this date (1883) have yielded a single bone of those gigantic pachyderms, those extraordinary edentate creatures which frequently occur in earlier epochs. Must we not therefore conclude that these animals were extinct before the times of the Mound Builders.? One of the mounds, however (fig. 36), as already stated, is claimed to represent a mastodon, and some pipes from Iowa to represent elephants (fig. 72) ; and if these highly problematical assumptions are correct, one might presume that the Mound Builders knew, at least by tradition, of the animals they imitated ; but this point, like so many others, is still very obscure, and not free from com- plications due to fraudulent recently manufactured" relics." We must await in the future what the present cannot give us ; and meanwhile be on our guard against brilliant hypotheses, startling guesses, and over-rash conclusions. 'Repertoire chronologique de I'hist. des Mound Builders, "Cong, des Americ," Luxembourg, 1877, vol. I., p. 312. '^ A quelle race appartenaient des Mound Builders. •" Cong, des Americanistes," Luxembourg, vol. L, p. 50. CHAPTER V. THE CLIFF DWELLERS AND THE INHABITANTS OF THE PUEBLOS. The nineteenth century, now approaching its decline, has played a grand role in the history of humanity, and never have such great things been accomplished with such marvel- lous rapidity. We justly count amongst those who have had a glorious share in the common work, the bold travel- lers who have opened, or are opening, up whole conti- nents to civilization and progress. In America, as in Africa and Asia, the pioneers of science daily announce new dis- coveries. The vast regions of California, Arizona, New Mexico. Nevada, Colorado, and Utah, were, a few years ago, absolutely unknown. They are now intersected with rail- ways ; commerce and industry will shortly possess the land ; populous towns have sprung up, and new states contribute to the development of the United States, and the greatness of this people, youngest born of the nations, which is un- doubtedly predestined to play an important part in the fu- ture history of the world. While awaiting the brilliant future of the states recently or to be admitted to the Union, we have to cross much half desert, rude, and desolate region where the trees, chiefly pines, are rare and stunted, the vegetation is feeble and meagre, and nature would at first sight appear to be doomed to eternal solitude. The very wild animals have almost deserted these dreary wastes which are only haunted by wandering Indians, perhaps the wildest and most barbarous of all the existing aborigines of North America, who not long since would flee at the approach of the traveller unless they felt themselves strong enough to rob him. We must cross the San Juan river to reach the alluvial districts desr- THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 199 tilled doubtless to yield a harvest so rich that it is impossible to overestimate its importance. Things were different here in the past. These cailons, as Fig, 86. — A Canon of the Colorado, arc called the narrow gorges shut in between perpendicular rocks (fig. 86) with their deep ravines, these arid valleys 200 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. covered with brushwood rarely more than a few feet high, this dreary lifeless nature, presents a most striking contrast with the ruins that rise up at every turn, bearing witness that for centuries, which it is impossible to estimate, these countries were inhabited by a numerous, active, and intelli- gent population. In many man has built houses, fortifica- tions, reservoirs, forming true cities ; the very rocks are adorned with painted or sculptured figures ; everywhere man has left behind him indelible marks of his presence. The Spanish, who were the first to cross Central America/ gave the name of pueblo, which signifies a market-town or village, to groups of buildings, a great number of which, pre- senting every appearance of great antiquity, were already in ruins at the time of their victorious march. These buildings are found in the valleys drained by the San Juan, Rio Grande del Norte, Colorado Chiquito, and their tributaries for an area of two hundred thousand square miles.^ The earliest inhabitants whose traces can be recognized evidently fol- lowed these valleys in their forward march, halting here and there where the soil was fertile, to be driven away by new- comers, who, like themselves, were seeking water and pas- turage. The struggle for existence is a universal law wTitten in every country in letters of blood. Cabegade Vaca speaks of some pueblos in ruins and others still inhabited ^ ; many he says were larger than the town of Mexico. The houses, often consisting of several stories, one behind the other as in our illustration (fig. 87), were of stone. The inhabitants lived in the upper stories,* and the ground floor, generally dark, served as a storeroom for food and fodder. These basements are known amongst the Spanish as Casas de comodidad or Almacenas (see Castaileda de Na- gera, Relacion de voy. de Cibola). The upper stories were ^New Mexico was finally subdued in 1597 and 1598 by Don Juan de Onate. The first Spanish expedition took place in 1540, under Cabe9a de Vaca, ship- wrecked on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico in 1535. 'Barber, " Cong, des Ame'ricanistes," Luxembourg, 1877, vol. I., p. 25. '" Quarta Relacion * * * Collecion de Documentos," vol. II., p. 475. * Putnam, " Bull, of the Essex Institute," Dec, 1880. THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 201 reached by means of ladders, and when these ladders were drawn up the occupiers enjoyed comparative security, and could defend themselves from attacks which must have been frequent enough judging from the countless quartz, obsid- ian, and agate arrow-points found everywhere about these dwellings. The buildings were nearly all of considerable size, and we shall describe some large enough to lodge several hundred families. Some, as the Taos pueblo (fig 87), were situated in the valley and were occasionally surrounded by a wall completing the defences ; others, as the Pueblo of Acoma for instance,^ which is supposed to have occupied the site of the present village of Acuco, rises from several plateaux or ter- FiG. 87. — Pueblo of Taos, New Mexico. races called mcsaSy often situated several hundred feet above the valley, and only to be reached by all but impracticable paths. We can imagine the astonishment of the explorers when they saw all these ruins rising before them. '' Im- agine," says a recent traveller, '' the dry bed of a river shut in between steep inaccessible rocks of red sand-stone, and a man standing in that bed looking up at the habitations of his fellow-creatures perched on every ledge. Such is the scene spread out before us at every step." Another travel- ler speaks of the evident proofs of a considerable population ' Y' hallamos a un pueblo que se llama Acoma, donde nos parecio habria mas de seismil animas. Antonio de Espeja, ** Carta," 23d April, 1584. Doc. ineditos del archivo de Indias, vol, XV., p. 179. 202 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. having lived in these deserts, adding that there was not one of the six miles he had to explore that did not afford certain proof of having been inhabited for a considerable length of time by men absolutely distinct from and certainly superior to the wandering savages who alone traverse them now/ Lastly, to quote another of the many accounts, Major Powell, United States geologist, expresses his surprise at seeing nothing for whole days but perpendicular cliffs every- where riddled with human habitations, which resemble the cells of a honeycomb more than anything else. In these districts, now nearly uninhabited, dwelt numer- ous people to whom has been given the name of Cliff Dwel- lers, from the rocks in which they made their homes. One point we can pronounce upon with certainty : we know beyond a doubt one of the chief causes of the depopu- lation of the country to be the diminished rainfall. The rainfall is very unequal in the United States. It averages about three feet on the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida, On the slopes of the Pacific, north of San Francisco, the west winds bring very abundant rains, the average reaching some four feet. From the coasts of the Atlantic, and from the delta of the Mississippi, the quantity of rain gradually diminishes as the interior of the country is approached. In some parts of Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska, the average rainfall of the year diminishes to a foot and a half, and in parts of Colorado it is even considerably less. The very small rainfall watering all the districts between the plains of the far West and the Pacific coasts explains the poverty of the vegetation. The rivers, the very streams, are dried up, and we only find in the valleys the traces, already ancient, of dried-up water- courses. The rains of spring are of short duration, but plentiful. They pour down upon an impermeable soil with a rocky foundation, forming impetuous torrents known as washes. At certain times and places these washes rise to a height of ^Holmes : " Report on the Ancient Ruins of S. W. Colorado, examined during the summers of 1875 and 1876." THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 203 thirty to forty feet, carrying everything before them and often causing inundations. After these torrents the water does not long remain in the arroyos, but evaporates with great rapidity. At other seasons rain is unknown, and the intense heat of the cHmate adds to the effect of this constant aridity. Can it be attributed to geological or climatic changes? Possibly it may, and Colonel Hoffman mentions an arroyo forty feet above the present level of the water about fifteen miles from the town of Prescott, Arizona. This is a curious fact, but it should be corroborated by many oth- ers before so important a decision can be arrived at, and it is possible that, as in Algeria, one cause of the persistent aridity was the reckless destruction of forests by the Cliff Dwellers. Holmes, one of the first to study the ruins of the Far West, on a truly scientific method, adopts the following classification, which it will be useful to quote.* I. Lowland villages, in which dwelt the purely agricultural classes, the sites chosen being always in the most fertile val- ley and close to rivers. n. Cave-Dwellings, caves artificially enlarged, often closed and strengthened with adobes or bricks of kneaded clay dried in the sun, such as are still used by the Indians for building their huts. in. Cliff-Houses, true fortresses to which the people of the valleys probably retired when danger threatened. The habitations in the valleys are regular pueblos ; they form parallelograms or circles marked out, where the nature of the ground permitted, with great regularity. All are built of stone carefully laid, and the crevices generally filled with clay and mud. The circular ruins met with are some- times those of towers used as defences or buildings sixty feet or more in diameter, enclosing several series of little apart- ments with one in the centre often half under ground, to which the Spaniards have given the name of estufas, mean- ing literally stove or sweating-room, in reference to their use as hot air bath-rooms or sweat-houses. ' L. c. p. 5. See also Jackson: ** Ruins of S. W. Colorado in 1875 and 1877." 204 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA, The estufas have been much discussed. Some think they were council-chambers where the chiefs of the tribe met to discuss public affairs ; others look upon them as spots con- secrated for the presence of the sacred fire, so long the ob- ject of veneration to the Indians.' Others think the estufas were wells, but the testimony of Ruiz settles the question. Mariano Ruiz lived for a long time amongst the Pecos In- dians as a son of the tribe {^Hijo del Pueblo), and he relates that these Indians preserved the sacred fire in an estufas until 1840, when the five families who alone survived became affiliated with another tribe. The fire was kept in a kind of oven and was never allowed to emit flames. Ruiz himself was in his turn charged to keep it up but he refused, influ- enced by the superstitious fear of the Indians, that he who should leave his brethren after having watched over the sacred fire would inevitably perish within the year. On ac- count of his refusal he was never allowed to enter estufas.' It is certain that these estufas occur in all habitations, even in those situated above precipices, or on rocks not to be scaled without extreme difficulty, so that it is evident that great importance was attached to them by the inhabitants of the pueblos. In New Mexico and Colorado estufas are still met with, even in Christian villages, where they are looked upon with superstitious terror, perhaps as a last relic of the mysterious rites practised by the ancestors of the inhabi- tants.^ Besides the towers rising from the midst of the pueblo there are others generally round, rarely square or oblong (fig. 88), set up on points commanding a wide view, or at the entrances of canons. It is evident that these were posts of ' " These estufas, which are used as places of council and for the perform- ance of their religious rites, are still found at all the present occupied pueblos in New Mexico. There are six at Taos ; three at each house, and fhey are partly sunk in the ground by an excavation. They are entered by a trap door- way in the roof, the descent being by a ladder." Morgan : " Peabody Museum Report," vol. II., p. 547. Am. Assco., St. Louis, 1877. ' Bandeller, " Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos." — " Cong, des Americ," Luxembourg, 1877, vol. II., p. 230. ' Simpson, " Expedition to the Navajo Country," p. 78. THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 20$ observation, where sentinels might be always on the watch to warn the inhabitants of any irhpending danger. The site of these posts was always admirably chosen ; one of them overlooks the whole of the MacElmo valley, commanding a view for several miles up and down ; another is situated at the spot where the Hovenweep divides into two branches. These towers have neither doors nor windows, and could doubtless only be entered from the roof. Near some of these dwellings long lines of walls have been made out varying from twelve to eighteen feet in height and built of adobes or simply of earth. These were probably corrals or enclosures for cattle. Evidently these people were more civilized than the Mound Builders. The cliffs themselves consist of sedimentary rocks, layers of hard sandstone very impervious to the action of the ele- ments alternating with beds of very friable rock containing fossil shells. The last-named beds have been in part disinte- grated by atmospheric action, and are riddled with holes and caves of every size, floored and roofed by the sandstone. In other places erosion has acted all along the outcrop of the bed so as to produce galleries, often of great length, though seldom very deep. Here and there a lofty promon- tory has been detached from the main cliff and has become even more difficult of access than the rest. The early inhabitants of the region under notice were wonderfully skilful in turning the result of the natural weathering of the rocks to account. To construct a '' cave dwelling" the entrance to the cave or the front of the open gallery was walled up with adobes, leaving only a small opening serving for both door and window. The ''cliff houses" take the form and dimensions of the platform or ledge from which they rise. The masonry is well laid, and it is wonderful with what skill the walls are joined to the cliff and with what care the aspect of the neighboring rocks has been imitated in the external archi- tecture. Some explorers consider these houses to be more recent than the pueblos or the caves ; the few arrow-points, 2oC PRE-IIISTORIC AMERICA. stone implements, and fragments of pottery which have been picked up do not justify an expression of opinion. Several burial-places of the Cliff Dwellers have been found, but the difftculty attending their excavation, and the dangers to which the members of the United States survey who undertook it were exposed, have prevented any repetition of their examination. Nothing has been found but a few human bones, with weapons, implements, and pottery always placed near them. Like the Mound Builders and all the ancient races of America, the Cliff Dwellers were actuated by a hope of a future life for their departed ones, as it proved by this provision for their supposed needs. We must also mention enclosures of considerable extent containing upright stones like the cromlechs of Europe, arranged in circles. Excavations have been made in one of these enclosures on the left bank of the Dolores; the original soil, which had not been displaced, was quickly reached, and rested on the surface of the rock itself. At a depth of six inches was found a layer of cinders mixed with fragments of pottery, but no bones justifying us in supposing the enclos- ures to have been burial-places, nor has the chemical analysis of the cinders yielded any trace of animal matter, so that the idea of cremation is excluded.' Having enumerated, in a general way, the various struc- tures attributed to the Cliff Dwellers, a few details respect- ing each will render their importance clearer. The Rio Mancos ^ flows between cliffs, formed of alter- nate beds of cretaceous limestone and a clayey deposit, in many parts disintegrated and worn away by the action of water. One of the indentations thus formed, situated about forty feet above the level of the river, is between four and * Jackson, /. c, pp. 415, 421, etc. "^ The Mancos rises in the La Plata mountains, on the southwest of the Col- orado, and flows into the San Juan. The other tributaries of the San Juan, to which we shall have occasion to refer, are the La Piedra, Los Finos, Las Ani- mas, La Plata, the MacElmo, Hovenweep, and the Montezuma. The two last are almost always dried up. On the south, the San Juan receives the Navajo, Chaco, and Chelly. I^^t—r&d,^ gL4^J^^jL«ul.u.J ^[ ^ l _^_^SMJ.-~lk.^LAm=.:,.^_T~' jj i'sp Fig. 88. — Tower near Epsom Creek. 208 PRE-rilSTORIC AMERICA. Fig. 89. -Cliff-house on theRio Mancos. six feet deep.^ In this nar- row space the Cliff Dwellers had set up their homes. Seven of these homes still remain, four in a sufficiently good state of preservation for the mode of their con- struction to be made out. The walls are of stones, ce- mented with clay mixed with cinders and charcoal.' This mortar was strengthened by the insertion, in the intersti- ces, of pebbles or little bits of pottery, and to this day we can make out in this masonry the marks of the tools used, and even the fingers of the workmen. All the openings are very narrow, and the doors and windows are only a few inches in width or height. In the midst of the ruins a cellar was discovered, choked up with a mass of rubbish, once a store of food, from which half-calcined grains of maize have been taken, of a species still culti- vated in the country. A hatchet of polished stone and a few fragments of pot- niolmes : Loc. cit., p. 393, pi. XXXV. "^ Castafieda (" Voy. de Cibola," II., ch. iv., p. 16S), says: "They have no lime, and they replace it by a mix- ture of cinders, charcoal, and clay." ^ THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 209 tery were the only other objects found in the excavations, which had to be rapidly executed. Another group (fig. 89), a short distance from the first, rises from the indentations of the rock, which towers above the river to a height of about two hundred feet. The lower structures occupy a free space, sixty feet long by about fif- teen feet at its widest part (fig. 90). The walls are about one foot thick, and are flush with the very edge of the preci- pice. They are erected with skill, the angles are regular, the lines do not diverge from the perpendicular, and, when the difficulties the builder had to contend with in laying his foundations in such a position and at such a height are taken Fig. 90. — Cliff-house on the Rio Mancos (ground plan). into account, these aerial dwellings may well excite our ad- miration. In the centre we find the inevitable estufa, and, as far as we can now tell, it could only be entered by an opening of twenty-two inches ; and, moreover, in order to reach this strange door, a regular tunnel, thirty feet long, had to be crawled through. The various rooms were sep- arated by division walls, which did not reach to the rock above, so that communication between them was easy by means of movable ladders. Some hastily conducted excavations yielded two vases of coarse pottery, closed with stone covers of equally rude workmanship. These vases, which would hold three gallons, were empty ; one of them had been mended with a fragment of the same color, stuck upon it with viscous clay ; they 2IO PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA, were placed on a bed of bark fibres covered with a mat of woven reeds/ another proof of the value placed upon them by their owner. Between the two houses the rock is absolutely vertical ; at a place where the slope is a little less abrupt some steps roughly indicated rather than cut in the rocks have been made out. At present they offer very little assistance in climbing the cliff. It is probable, however, that these in- dentations, never very deep, have suffered by weathering. At the level of the upper story another ledge has per- mitted the erection of another structure. This second plat- form is about one hundred and twenty feet long by ten at its greatest width. The work appears never to have been completed. The Cliff Dwellers were probably discouraged by the difficulties in the way of bringing their materials to the spot. The finished parts had been inhabited, and the rooms communicated with each other by means of low and narrow doors. In one of these rooms the explorers thought they recognized traces of a fire, in others the excavations yielded some grains of maize and some kidney beans ; but unfortu- nately the explorers, exhausted with a long march, could not or did not search further. In some instances the houses of the CHff Dwellers were at a very much greater height. Some are mentioned, by Holmes, eight hundred feet above the level of the river, so well con- cealed that even with the aid of a telescope they can hardly be distinguished from the rocks protecting them. We lose ourselves in conjectures on the means employed to reach the places from which the buildings rise, or to take to them provisions and other necessaries of life. Ives, in his report on the Colorado River of the West, tells us that to-day the Moquis often build at very great elevations, carrying the stones and earth needed in packs on their shoulders. For a long time it was supposed that all the Cliff men had to go down to the river to draw water; but fresh researches * Holmes : Loc cit., pi. XLV. THE CLIFF DWELLERS, 211 have led to the discovery in certain localities in the cliffs themselves of springs, the waters of which supplied their needs and were stored up in natural or artificially enlarged reservoirs. Fig, 91. — Two-storied house on the Rio Mancos. Fig. 92. — Cliff-house on the Mancos (ground plan). A mile farther on, still following the banks of the Rio Mancos, Jackson discovered a structure seven hundred feet above the level of the river (figs 91 and 92). This building, to which he gave the name of the Two-story Cliff House, 212 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. is better preserved than any of those surrounding it. One of the rooms measures nine feet by ten, another is six feet square, while the height of the building is twelve feet, and there is a space of between two and three feet between the walls and the rock which overhangs them like a roof. These rooms, which appear to us so small, were large for the Cliff Dwellers, and Jackson speaks of another place where a space of fourteen feet long by six wide and five high was divided into two rooms of nearly equal size, to which entrance was gained through a little square hole. Examples might easily be multiplied ; at Montezuma, for instance, there are cells of which the largest are not more Fig. 93. — Interior of a room in a cliff-house. than nine and a half feet square, whilst the smaller ones are not quite four feet square. It seems astonishing that human creatures could exist in such cramped spaces ! The inside walls of these rooms (fig. 93) were covered with several coatings of clay moistened with water. This mortar was laid on with the hand ; the marks of the fingers of the workmen leave no doubt on that point. The small- ness of these fingers has even led some to suppose that the work was done by women. The same care was bestowed on the outside coating, and the mortar is gray or pinkish in color, exactly imitating that of the neighboring rocks. It is impossible to say THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 213 whether this is the result of the action of time, or if the workmen selected the clay with a view of better concealing their homes. Were these cliff-houses only places of refuge, to which the inhabitants of the valley retired on the approach of danger? Holmes says that we are tempted to suppose they were, when we note the all but total absence of the bones of men or animals, or of the refuse of all kinds so plentiful in the kitchen middens, and which are proofs of long residence. Fig. 94. — Pueblo of the MacElmo valley (ground plan). The coatings of clay have remained as fresh and compact as when they were first laid on ; a fact especially noticeable in the Two-story Cliff-House ; and if it had been long inhab- ited it must have undergone a thorough repair just before it was deserted. Other explorers, it is true, speak of char- coal and traces of fire as proving a lengthy sojourn of man ; but archeologists too generally come to the study of such remains with preconceived notions, which notions are too often reflected in the impressions of travellers. 214 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. The MacElmo valley contains ruins no less important than those just mentioned. We reproduce (fig. 94) a plan of one of them, which is useful as giving an idea of the gen- eral arrangement of a pueblo. The large tower or estufa presents a certain resemblance to the singular structures in the Balearic Isles to which the name of Talayoti has been given. It is built of unhewn stone, and is surrounded by a triple wall. The space between the two external walls is only five feet, and it contains fourteen cells. Another estufa, with walls more than three feet thick, is situated at Fig. 95. — Tower on the summit of a rock in the MacElmo valley. one of the extremities. The rooms, or rather the cells, are rectangular and all extremely small. This pueblo is in the heart of a rather barren district, and and is about a mile from the MacElmo river, which always dries up in summer. The unfortunate inhabitants must then have been reduced for several months in the year to fetching their water from the Dolores, at a distance of fifteen miles, if we suppose the conditions to have remained unchanged. This is, however, quite an inadmissible idea, for no agricul- THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 21$ tural population could have lived under such conditions. ** To suppose an agricultural people existing in such a local- ity, with the present climate, is manifestly absurd," says Holmes (p. 399) ; " yet every isolated rock and every bit of mesa within a circle of miles is strewn with remnants of human dwellings (fig. 95). We must therefore admit, as we have already stated, considerable climatic changes since the time when the country was peopled." The same remark applies with even greater force to the ruins of Aztec Spring in Colorado, so called after a spring (E, fig. 96) that Captain Moss speaks of having found, but which has disappeared since his journey. These ruins (fig. 96), situated on the Mesa Verde, at an equal distance from the MacElmo and the Mancos, cover an area of 480,000 square feet, and represent an average of 1,500,000 cubic feet of masonry. The principal building forms a rectangle (A), eighty feet by one hundred, surrounded by a double wall and divided Into three separate rooms. The walls are twenty-six inches thick and vary from twelve to fifteen feet in height ; between the two walls are twenty cells whose purpose it is difficult to guess, but which may have been store-rooms. Three estufas (B, C, and D) rise in the centre of the en- closure, and as far as can be judged in their present condi- tion, they may well have served as cisterns for keeping the water needed by the inhabitants. The division walls are of adobe brick, the outer walls of blocks of fossiliferous limestone from the Mesa Verde, all symmetrically hewn and cemented with clay mixed with the dust of the decomposed carbonate of lime abundant in the neighborhood. It is doubtless thanks to this mortar that the ruins of Aztec Spring are so well preserved. The Hovenweep, now entirely dry (the name is borrowed from the Ute language and signifies desert caiioii), once flowed between abrupt and desolate cliffs. Everywhere in the valley we meet with series of ruins, including at every turn those strange dwellings of several stories perched — 2l6 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. that is just the expression for it — on all the ledges or ter- races of the cliffs. Here we note the exceptional circum- stance that the houses are circular, their diameter not ex- FlG. 96. — Aztec Spring (ground plan). ceeding twelve to fifteen feet, the angles are rounded, and the walls built of stones, each as large as three ordinary bricks. THE CLIFF DWELLERS, 21/ Every thing seems to have been done with a view to de- fence; the houses were all but inaccessible, and little watch- towers had been erected at every point commanding an ex- tended view. On a natural terrace measuring scarcely three hundred feet by fifty, situated at the very source of the Hovenweep, the Cliff Dwellers had managed to erect no less than forty different houses. Montezuma valley' is at certain points ten miles wide. It is covered with ruins: towers with a triple enclosure, mounds made up in a great measure of pieces of broken pot- tery. The cliffs overlooking the valley present a long series of caves, ledges, and rock-shelters, invariably turned to ac- count by man (fig. 97). In many places holes have been observed, cut in the rock at regular distances, in which the feet and hands could be successively placed. These were the only means of access ; no tree native to these valleys could have supplied ladders long enough to reach these eagles* nests. In one of these rock-shelters the explorer discovered the skeleton of a man, wrapped in a covering with broad black and white stripes. This man had, how- ever, no connection with the ancient inhabitants of these aerial dwellings. According to all appearances he was a Navajo, a victim to the incessant warfare between his tribe and the Utes. We must also mention seven erect stones in the Monte- zuma valley, which rise in the midst of its desert like the menhirs of Brittany or Wales. Later observations, however, lead to a belief that these were not menhirs, but pillars in- tended to strengthen defensive works. Defence, in fact, seems to have ever occupied the thoughts of these men ; for in a radius of fifteen miles, at every point commanding the valley or that could serve as a post of observation, we find blocks torn from the neighboring rocks and piled up one on the other, the interstices being filled with small stones to consolidate the mass. Every thing bears witness to the presence of a numerous population ; such works can indeed only have been constructed by numbers. ' Jackson, /. c, p. 427 et. seq. 2l8 P RE-HISTORIC AMERICA, The rocks of the Rio de Chelly enclose habitations ex- actly similar to those we have just described. In fact we are doomed to inevitable repetition in describing the remains of the Cliff Dwellers, of whom these buildings, a few frag- ments of pottery, and wretched flint implements are the only Fig. 97 — House in a rock of Montezuma cafton. relics. On the Rio de Chelly, as in the Montezuma valley and on the banks of the Mancos or the MacElmo, natural and artificial caves, depressions, and the smallest ledges have been turned to account. The buildings are often of excep- THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 2ig tional Importance, and Jackson, (/. c, p. 421) speaks of some ruins at an elevation of seventy feet which he calls a Cave town. They are 545 feet long by a maximum width of forty feet. Nearly all include a ground-floor and one story ; one of them indeed has two stories, and is supposed to have been the house of the chief. The walls are everywhere very thin, none of them exceeding one foot in thickness, while some are but half as much. The stones are imbedded in a thick mortar and coated with it inside and out. Seventy-five sepa- rate rooms have been made out, with the inevitable estufa in the centre, and behind the house are two little reservoirs for holding water. None of these houses have any openings but the windows which almost all face an inside court, and examination has resulted in the discovery of no means of ac- cess but broken pieces of rock and natural fissures which might be used as a help in climbing ; several corrals or interior courts, are still full of dung reduced to dust ; how did these Cliff men ever get cattle up to such a height, and how could they subsist them on steep rocks with no outlets? Any number of guesses may be made, but it must be admitted that none are completely satisfactory. The height of the rocks of schistose sandstone which crown these structures is no less than two hundred feet above the foot of the Mesa. The descent from this point is therefore even more difificult than the ascent from the valley. The Mesa is arid, desolate, and covered with stunted vegetation. At the foot of the rocks we see a number of upright stones surrounding rectangular spaces such as those of which we have already spoken. Here, too, excavations have produced nothing to suggest that these stones marked burial-places. Some red earthenware, knives, hatchets, awls, and finely chipped stone arrow-points are all that have been found. We give a drawing (fig. 99) of a house built at a height of seventy feet about two miles from Cave Town. This will help us to realize the difficulties of access and the means employed to surmount them. The house is one 220 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA, story high ; the ground-floor measures eighteen feet by ten, and this narrow space forms two separate rooms, whilst the first story consists of only one. The overhanging rock serves as a protecting roof. Eight miles from Cave Town is another group of similar buildings of smaller size. The whole of Epsom Creek valley, so called after a stream of brackish water which is said to taste something like Epsom salts, is covered with ruins of a smaller size than those already noticed. These are chimney-like caves (fig. 98), which Jackson calls *' cubby-holes," and are situated now on the banks of a stream, now wedged like sandwiches between the layers of rock. These dwellings generally con- tain but a single room, the walls of which are so perfectly Fig. 98. — Cave-Town near the San Juan. coated that even now there is not a crack in the mortar. The entrance to the valley was defended by a tower (fig. 88) on an inaccessible elevation, which Mr. Jackson made many fruitless efforts to scale ; on the opposite bank of the stream rises another circular tower forty feet in diameter, of which the antiquity is attested by its crumbling walls covered with moss and brushwood. A few miles up stream, on the banks of a deep ravine, are ruins presenting the aspect of a fortified town. Explorers found themselves face to face with a great mass of rectan- gular form, with towers connected with each other and ar- ranged on either side of the ravine, so as to command all Fig. 99.— Cliff -house in the Canon de Chelly. 222 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. the approaches. The dominant idea amongst these people seems to have been dread of the attacks of enemies, hence the necessity of being always prepared to repulse them. " The San Juan valley," said the San Francisco Evening Bulletin of July 8, 1864, ''is strewn with ruins for hundreds 'i:-^. miles ; some buildings three stories high, of masonry, are still standing." The buildings on the banks of the La Plata, twenty-five miles from its junction with the San Juan, and five miles south of the Southern Pacific Railroad, should also be men- ^^^ Fig. 100. — Casa Grande in the Gila valley. tioned, if only on account of their peculiar arrangement. They stretch away irregularly throughout the valley ; each family had its own home. Every thing bears witness to a state of culture different from those hitherto noticed. The family seems to have come into existence, and isolated dwellings, such as we meet with in all countries of Europe, show still better the independence of their inhabitants. "These houses," says Holmes (I.e., p. 388), "seem to be distributed very much as dwelling-houses are in the rural districts of civilized and peaceable communities." THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 223 Cliff houses are as numerous in Arizona as in New Mexico, but their sites seem to have been better chosen, and the foundations are of stone, though there is nothing to lead us to suppose them to be older than the walls of adobes rising from them. We have now reached the extreme southern limit of the districts occupied by the Cliff Dwellers, and the vast heaps of broken earthenware met with at every turn bear witness to the great length of their residence. Amongst all these ruins, the Casa Grande (fig. loo) merits special mention. It rises from a little eminence in the valley of the Rio Gila, two miles and a half from the river, and it appears certain that it had existed for several centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards, who knew of it from the time of their very earliest expeditions ; indeed, it is generally admitted that it is to it that Coronado refers under the name of the chichilticalle or the red house. The first at all complete description, however, which has come down to us, is that of Father Mange, who visited the Casa Grande with Father Kino, in 1697,.^ It appears that at that date the ruins included eleven different buildings, surmounted by a protective wall of moderate height. Now these build- ings are reduced to three, only one of which is still in a state permitting of its examination. It is built of large adobes measuring four feet by two, and it is fifty feet by forty feet in size. The walls are five feet thick at the base, and gradu- ally decrease in breadth toward the top.'' The inside is di- vided in five rooms (fig. loi), much larger than any hitherto described. The central of these rooms are eight feet long by fourteen wide ; the others are as much as thirty-two feet long by ten wide.^ Fragments of cedar-wood beams, still inserted in the walls, prove that the buildings originally con- sisted of three, perhaps in its central portion of four, stories. * "Doc, Hist. Mex.," Series IV., vol. I., p. 282. Bancroft : loc. cit., vol. IV., p. 621, et seq. "Bartlett : "Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora, and Chihuahua." New York, 1854, vol. II., p. 271, et seq. ^ Judging by the plan, these measurements appear to be mere rough approxi- mations. 224 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. No staircase, nor any thing to take its place, can be made out, so that communication between the stories must have taken place by means of ladders. A vast conflagration has everywhere left indelible traces, and this is supposed to have bee-n the work of the Apaches, the wildest and most indomi- table of all the Indian tribes. The Casa Grande was the centre of an important estab- lishment. Bartlett tells us that in every direction as far as the eye can reach we see crumbling walls and masses of rub- bish, the remains of old buildings ; while Fathers Mange, Kino, and Font say that the plain was covered for a radius of ten miles with hillocks of adobes turned to dust. In fact volumes would not suffice to describe all the ruins in these Fig. ioi. — Ground plan of the Casa Grande* regions or all the people who have inhabited them. We can only name those of the valley of the Rio Salado and its tributary the Rio Verde, the former of which flows into the Gila.^ Several acequias, or canals for irrigation also bear witness to the industry of the inhabitants.^ Father Mange speaks of one near the Casa Grande, intended to receive the waters of the Gila. This canal was twenty-seven feet wide by ten deep and was three leagues long. These figures, we must add, appear exaggerated to later travellers, though they mention another canal in the Salado valley which must have been nearly as wide, and was four or five feet deep. The Cliff Dwellers then did not shrink from such undertakings, any more than did the Mound Builders, when they were ^ Bancroft, vol. IV., pp. 632 and 635. * Whipple, Ewbank, and Turner ; " Report upon the Indian Tribes." THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 225 helpful to their commerce or their agriculture. They illus- trate perhaps better then their buildings to what a degree of culture these people had attained. We must now compare with the Casa Grande of the Rio Gila some other yet more extensive ruins, resembling them in every respect, situated in Chihuahua. These buildings, to which the Spaniards have given the same name of Casas Grandes, deserve mention here, as they are evidently the work of the same race and date from the same epoch as those of Arizona. These Casas Grandes are situated in the San Miguel val- ley, not far from the present boundary between the United States and Mexico. The country is occupied by the Apaches, who make all exploration dangerous.' Masses of rubbish in the midst of which rise parts of walls some of them fifty feet high, indicate the old site of the town. The walls were built of adobes. These adobes were of very irregular length and twenty-two inches thick, while the walls themselves were nearly five feet wide and simply coated with clay moistened with water. The chief building was 800 feet long on the fronts facing north and south, but only 250 on those to the east and west. The " Album Mexicano " says 1380 feet by 414, and Bartlett, from whom we quote our figures, probably did not include detached buildings in the sum total. In 185 1 when Bartlett visited them there were neither stones nor beams to be seen, and the state of dilapidation was such that neither the marks of a floor nor of a staircase could be made out ; nor could he tell the number or height of the stories. Other less conscien- tious explorers assert that the principal buildings were three stories high and surmounted by a terrace. He had the same difficulties to contend with in examining the internal arrangements ; but in one place he made out * Arleguy: " Chron. de la Prov. de S. Francisco de Zacatecas," Mexico, 1737, p. 104. Clavigero: "St. Ant. del Messico," vol. I., p. 159. Escudero : " Noticias del Estado de Chihuahua," p. 234. "Album Mexicano," Mexico, 1849, vol. I., p. 374. Bartlett, "Personal Narrative," New York, 1834, vol. II., p. 347. Q 226 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. six chambers twenty feet by six in extent, and this restricted space, was still further curtailed by a little niche three to four feet high at the end of each chamber, the use of which is unknown. A short distance off, other buildings surround a square court. Here too we find the little cells which are one of the characteristic features of the Casas Grandes as of the cliff-houses and the pueblos. This is an important indi- cation of similar habits, and of the similar origin of the builders. There are more than 2000 mounds in the neighborhood of the Casas Grandes, and it is probable that they were burial- places. Excavations have not, however, produced a single human bone. All that has been picked up are a few stone axes, clumsy earthenware statuettes and fragments of pot- tery, decorated with red, black, or brown ornaments on a generally white ground. A few miles farther off rises a regular fortress, not built of adobes, but of well-dressed stones put together without mortar of any kind. The walls are from ten to twenty feet thick, and the summit is reached by a path cut in the rock. There is nothing to show whether this fortress was erected to defend the Casas Grandes, or even if it existed when that little town flourished. Important ruins are to be seen on either side of the Col- orado Chiquito, one of the upper branches of the Colorado. They date from different epochs, and on foundations of un- wrought stone we find, as in Arizona, walls made of adobes or of wood. Numerous fragments of fine light pottery, sel- dom painted, bits of obsidian and of rocks mostly foreign to the locality, also witness to the presence of man.* Among the ruins is one building measuring 120 feet by 360, situated on an isolated eminence. The walls have all but crumbled away, but we can still see that they were ^Sitgreaves, " Report of an Expedition down the Zuniand Colorado Rivers," p. 8, Washington, 1853. Whipple, "Report and Explorations near the 35th Parallel." B. Molhausen, " Tagebuch einer reise vom Mississippi nach dem kusten der Sud See," Leipzig, 1858. THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 22/ twelve feet thick. Inside we find the same little cells we have so often described. We must also mention a fort, if we may so call it, which rises from the western bank of Beaver Creek.^ The river flows between deep caftons, presenting a deso- late aspect. Toward the middle of a cliff with perpendicular walls and no means of access, at a height of a hundred feet, rises a square tower of admirably dressed stone, which may have been from thirty to thirty-five feet high. Each story rising behind the one below contains but a single room, the dimensions of which vary from four to eight feet square by a height of three to five feet. The floors are of beams roughly squared, and the openings are few and very narrow. It is extremely difficult to penetrate this tower. Through- out the valley, as far as Montezuma Wells, rise similar towers, which have been justly compared by a traveller to swallows' nests. It must have required unheard of labor to transport and work the stones under such conditions. We ask ourselves what manner of men were the builders and what can have been their aim ; but we are unable to answer these constantly repeated questions. But we have not yet exhausted the surprises which await us in these regions ; that is, if we can accept with full con- fidence the account of Captain Walker, who speaks of having discovered in 1850, on the banks of the Colorado Chiquito, a regular citadel, situated in the centre of a town, the ruins of which extend for more than a mile, and of which the streets running at right angles with each other are still recognizable.'' *' A storm of fire," he says, *' had passed over the town ; the stones are calcined by the flames ; the very rock from which the chief building rises bears traces of fusion ; every thing testifies to the intensity of the heat." Before entirely rejecting an account which no one has yet confirmed we must remember that more important traces * Dr. Hoffman : " Ethn. Obs. on Indians Inhabiting Nevada, California, and Arizona," U. S. Geo!, and Geog. Survey, 1876. ' San Francisco Herald, quoted by Bancroft, " Native Races," vol. IV., p. 647. 228 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. exist in Missouri, on the Gasconade River, not far from St. Louis, of an ancient town with regular squares, roads cross- ing each other at right angles, and houses of unwrought stone without any traces of mortar. We may also mention similar ruins at Buffalo Creek and on the Osage River.* Some time ago Major Powell ascended for some hundreds of miles the Great Colorado, still so little known. He tells of having noticed in dreary and deserted regions traces of a population now completely passed away. Everywhere in the valleys are pueblos, and cliff-houses are seen at every turn in the wild and picturesque cafions, among rocks about 4,800 feet high, and where the cliffs sometimes lean so closely together that one is tempted to believe that the river sinks into a subterranean passage like the tunnels of a railway. Round about these abandoned habitations the travellers found fragments of pottery, arrow-points, and chips of quartz, similar to those which haye been picked up every- where in Central America. We have described numerous buildings situated in the valleys at the foot of the rocks on which the cliff-houses were built, all the approaches to which were defended by watch-towers or other posts of observation. Every thing tells of constant reprisals, of incessant peril, and formidable enemies. But there are yet other more considerable ruins, of more imposing appearance as a whole, the former in- habitants of which do not appear to have been exposed to the same dangers. These formed peaceable communities, exclusively agricul- tural, in which communism under the authority of a despotic chief appears to have been the prevalent system. Gregg, who crossed New Mexico about 1840, was the first to describe them,' and he tells us that the ruins of the Pueblo Bonito in the Navajo country, at the foot of the mountains included houses built of slabs of sandstone, a mode of con- *Conant : " Foot-prints of Vanished Races," p, 71. '"'Commerce des Prairies," vol. I., p. 284, New York, 1844. The pueblo of which Gregg speaks under the name of the Bonito Pueblo is probably the Pintado Pueblo. THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 229 struction quite unknown in the country at present. These houses are still intact, though their antiquity is such that we are absolutely ignorant of their origin. In 1849, Colonel Washington, Governor of New Mexico, organized'an expedition against the Navajos, who infested the northern part of the territory, and it is to Lieutenant, afterward General, Simpson, attached to the topographical fCZimcTj nnn nan nnn DDD annnonnnggap □□maiiziczioaaczirDC: r3ii-ia!-iiiii3iiz]c:]ci](inD[ZJUu ^^^ -— ^<%^ CoA de eeizdreA Fig. 102.— Ground plan of the Pueblo Bonito in the Chaco Canon. department of the army, that we owe the first regular plans of the ruins met with by the soldiers at every turn in cross- ing the Chaco Canon.' The Bonito Pueblo is the most important of these villages (fig. 102). It will be well to describe it with some detail,'^ to be able to compare it with oth er pueblos closely resem bling ' " Report, Secretary of War," Thirty-first Congress, First Session. « Ruins of Chaco Canon examined in 1877. Jackson, /. c„ 432. 440, ct seq., pi. LVIII. 230 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. it in their chief arrangements. We must add, however, that most of them are of rectangular plan, and that they present a unity of design that we do not find to the same extent in the Bonito Pueblo. This pueblo, built doubtless by degrees as the necessities of the moment dictated, rises below the perpendicular rocks which limit the Chaco Canon, and forms an irregular half of an ellipse measuring five hundred and forty-four feet by four hundred and fourteen. An inside court is divided into two almost equal portions by a row of four estufas. Two wings are placed perpendicularly to the principal building. The left wing is divided into three rows of parallel rooms, measuring from twelve to twenty feet long by from twelve to fifteen wide, larger than those of the cliff- houses. The outer walls are in ruins, but the division walls in pretty good preservation still reach up to the second story. This wing forms a quarter of a circle, and although the whole of this portion has suffered very much we can still make out five rows of cells, with nine cells to each row. Lastly we must mention three estufas, half underground, a little in advance of the buildings. In the right wing the walls are better preserved ; they are still thirty feet high, and four different stories, one above the other, have been made out.^ This part of the buildings appeared to the explorers to be the most recent portion of the whole pueblo, some of the beams which supported the floor are still in their places, and from them we can judge how the different rooms, the largest of the pueblo, were arranged. The state of decay of part of the ruins is such that it is impossible to decide on the exact number of the rooms. In a neighboring pueblo, that of Pintado, one hundred and fifty have been counted, and every thing points to the con- clusion that there were even more in the Pueblo Bonito. ^ There are also several stories in the neighboring pueblos. The Pueblo Pintado has four ; the second, ten feet high ; the third, seven. The Pueblo of the Arroyo has three stories, and many others might be quoted. 'P'-^ 0" TFTB--^ mi THE CLIFF DWELLERS. any Neither the inner nor the outer walls show stairs, so that it is probable the inhabitants went from one story to another by means of ladders — a mode of access still obtaining in the pueblos now inhabited. The windows are extremely small, and their lintels consist of pieces of cedar or pine wood scarcely squared and merely laid side by side. The floors must have been of wood, but most of them were used by Colonel Washington's soldiers to feed their camp- fires. The walls of the eastern side are pretty well preserved, and rise to the height of the second story. On this side are the two largest estufas of the pueblo, their diameter exceed- fOEl^ ^ •h *^ r • ' ;'^ - \- 1--- \ - \ A 1- "1 •!.[■■ 1 . r- y. [ 1 "\ \ -v^l !-' •i 1 i4-L _ r_n 7K \ rV _IJI wL • 1 ~I' jT~T^ 1^ r ^r - Fig. 103. — Different kinds of masonry used in the buildings of the Chaco Valley. ing fifty feet. They were situated in the centre of a court, and covered by a mass of masonry, forming a rectangle of one hundred and fifteen feet by sixty-five. Farther on, masses of rubbish mark the site of buildings, the use of which cannot be made out, connecting the large estufas with two small ones, which touched the chief buildings. In the court itself, a series of excavations, filled with rubbish of all kinds, suggests a set of subterranean passages, and it is to be regretted that this interesting point has not been verified. The masonry, generally remarkable for the care and pre- cision with which it is executed, contrasts strangely with that now to be seen amongst the sedentary Indians. The 232 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. people of the pueblos always selected the largest stones to frame the openings, and they placed them exactly at right angles. In the very diverse buildings which make up the Pueblo Bonito, this masonry presents remarkable differ- ences (fig. 103) ; it does not all seem to date from the same period, and it may be that parts have been restored at more recent epochs than that of the original buildings. In many parts the walls are strengthened with round pieces of wood, three to four inches in diameter, set upright ; and, by others, ten to fifteen feet long by six to eight inches in diame- ter, arranged horizontally. We find a similar plan adopted in the islands of Greece,^ subject, as they are, to disas- trous earthquakes, and the same causes may have led the inhabitants of New Mexico to take the same precautions. Let us not weary of calling attention to the similitude in the intellect of man and the identity in his ideas all over the surface of the globe. For, truly, it is one of the most curious points of the study in which we are engaged. We must also note the great number of estu«fas which everywhere rise amidst the ruins under notice. Jackson has counted twenty-one of them. They are generally remark- able for their size and the solidity of their construction. Nearly all of them were on a level with the soil, and their height was greater than that of the other buildings. There were no lateral openings to be seen, and it is probable that, as in the Pintado Pueblo, the entrance was from a hole in the roof. Most of these estufas are completely in ruins, and their site alone is marked by a pile of earth and stones. Those few still standing prove the intelligence of the architects and the skill of the workmen. In some pueblos the estufas are strengthened with buttresses ; in the Hungo-Pavie Pueblo, for instance, the estufa is flanked by six buttresses, forming regular pillars ; and, in the Pueblo Pintado, there are four very similar ones. Instan- ces of this peculiarity might be multiplied. Every discovery confirms the importance of these estufas. * " Les premiers Hommes et les Temps pre-historiques," vol. I., p. 414. THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 233 We have noticed them in the diff-houses, we find them again in the pueblos, and to this day they are to be seen amongst the Moqui Indians, where they consist of square rooms used as workshops for weaving. The Moquis, both male and fe- male, assemble in them to avoid the great heat of the day, or, according to more credible accounts, to practise their mysterious rites. This constant presence of the estufa is another point of comparison which must not be forgotten. In the course of his researches Jackson discovered outside the enclosure of the pueblos, on the east, some little struc- tures raised on a bank of stones forming the lower stratum of the rock. The calcareous bed had indeed been length- ened by a layer of masonry, formed of large and small stones arranged alternately. Yet farther off was another more im- portant mass of ruins covering an area of 163 feet by 73, and including two estufas. All appearances pointed to the con- clusion that these ruins were connected with the Bonito Pueblo. Time doubtless failed the explorers for the excavation of the two heaps of cinders on the south of the pueblo ; but it is very certain that these middens would have yielded many objects which would have made us better acquainted with the ancient inhabitants of the pueblo. Amongst the other pueblos discovered we must mention that of Una Vida, the estufa of which is the largest hitherto found, its diameter exceeding sixty feet ; the Pintado Pueblo, already referred to more than once ; the Weje-Gi Pueblo ; the Penasca-Blanca Pueblo, of elliptical form, with an in- ternal court measuring 364 feet by 269, the largest of any after the Bonito Pueblo, the buildings covering altogether an area of 499 feet by 363 ; and the Arroyo Pueblo, in which three stories can be made out, with floors of interlaced wil- low branches covered with beaten earth. Near these large pueblos were several other very small ones. That marked 9 in the plans drawn by Jackson is only seventy-eight feet by sixty-three ; yet it has two estufas and some twenty rooms. A detailed description of these pueblos would involve us ia 234 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. constant repetition. Everywhere we meet with the same class of structures with their remarkable regularity, their walls of stones or adobes, and their estufas overlooking the rest of the buildings. We must add, however, that the Pueblo Alto, which can scarcely be seen from the valley, is situated, like the cliff-houses, at the top of a hill of consider- able height. It is reached by a flight of twenty-eight steps roughly cut in the rock, and on either side holes can be made out, in which the hands could be placed to facilitate the ascent. Arrived at the Mesa we find ourselves opposite a building forming a parallelogram, presenting every appear- ance of great antiquity, and probably much older than any of the structures in the valley. Close by we see a huge heap of rubbish of all kinds, chiefly fragments of pottery. This heap has been measured by American engineers, who esti- mate its contents at 25,000 cubic feet. We can but repeat our regrets that the explorers could not undertake any ex- cavations, which would doubtless have aided in the elucida- tion of the problems we have stated. The traveller is well rewarded for the fatigue of the ascent of the Pueblo Alto. Beneath his feet he sees the ruins rising from every part of the Chaco Cafion, while beyond stretches a vast panorama ; on the north the basin of the San Juan and the La Plata chain ; on the east the Sierra Tunecha ; on the south the snowy crest of the Sierra San Mateo ; on the west the Jemez Mountains, overlooked by the Pelado with its eternal snows. All else is changed, nature alone has remained immovable, and the man of the 19th century enjoys the same view, alike imposing and attractive, which must have charmed the ancient inhabitants of the pueblo. At the Chettro-Kettle Pueblo, General Simpson, during his first exploration, was able to examine a chamber still in a remarkable state of preservation.* We cannot do better than quote the description he gives, which proves that the * "Journal of Lieutenant James A. Simpson in the Report of the Secretary of War " ; 31st. Congress, 1st Session. (Senate) Ex. Doc. No. 64, pp. 79, 80. . THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 235 men of old, buried though they were in regions so difficult of approach, knew how to build their home with as much art as the people whom we have been in the habit of look- ing upon as the initiators of civilization. " This room," says General Simpson, " is fourteen feet wide by seventeen and a half feet long, and ten feet in elevation. It has an outside door-way three and a half feet high by two and a quarter wide, and one at its west end, leading into the adjoining room, two feet wide, and at present, on account of rubbish, only two and a half feet high. The stone walls still have their plaster upon them, in a tolerable state of preservation. On the south wall is a recess or niche three feet two inches high by four feet five inches wide and four feet deep. Its position and size naturally suggested the idea that it might have been a fireplace ; but if so, the smoke must have returned to the room, as there was no chimney outlet for it. In addition to this large recess, there were three smaller ones in the same wall. The ceiling showed two main beams, laid trans- versely ; on these longitudinally were a number of smaller ones in juxtaposition ; the ends being tied together by a species of wooden fibre, and the interstices chinked in with small stones. On these again transversely, in close contact, was a kind of lathing of the odor and appearance of cedar, all in a good state of preservation." Jackson, who visited these ruins twenty-eight years later than General Simpson, did not find this room north-west of the main building,^ but he mentions others no less curious, which were reached by holes made in the masonry, the first story alone having a series of little windows. The walls of the Chettro-Kettle Pueblo measured 935 feet long by forty high, and contained 3 1 5,000 cubic feet of masonry. When we remember that each stone making up this sum total had to be hewn from the quarry, carried a considerable distance, dressed and set in its place ; further that the posts had to be brought from a long way off and the openings to be made, it is difficult ^ " Ruins of S. W. Colorado in 1875 and 1877," p. 439. 236 PRE-IIISTORIC AMERICA. to avoid concluding that a great number of workmen, di- rected by skilful architects, must have been employed on this building, which at least in the art of masonry, marks an advanced stage of culture. The same remarks apply with equal force to a pueblo on the banks of the Las Animas River, which flows into the San Juan about sixty miles from the Chaco Cailon. This pueblo has been visited by the Hon. L. H. Morgan, and de- scribed by him with scrupulous fidelity/ The chief build- ing, 368 feet, and its two wings, 270 feet long, are higher than any others yet discovered. They contained five, perhaps even six, stories, and seventy rooms or cells on each story. The walls, never less than two feet, are here and there three feet six inches thick. Some of the rooms communicate with each other by trap-doors ; others have two doors and four lateral openings, small enough, it is true, but at least admitting air and light, luxuries nearly unknown amongst these people. There too we find estufas ; there are two in the principal structure, a third in a building annexed to it, and a fourth, sixty-three feet and a half in diameter, rises in the centre of the court. There are other pueblos, nearly as large, in the valley of Las Animas, but Morgan estimates its population at only five thousand at a time when all the pueblos were inhabited. At the other end of New Mexico there are ruins no less re- markable,'' and there is so great a resemblance between them and those we have been describing that it is impossible not to attribute them to the same races and the same period. These pueblos are scattered over the whole of that part of the valley of the Rio Grande bounded on the north by the Rio de las Frijoles, on the south by the San Domingo, on the east by the plateau stretching away to Santa Fe. We choose from among these ruins those in the valley of the Rio Pecos, a little river flowing into the Rio Grande, in ^ " On the Ruins of a Stone Pueblo on the Animas River in New Mex- ico." Am. Assoc. St.Louis, 1877. "Report, Peabody Museum," vol. II., p.536. ''A. F. Bandelier : " Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos." Arch. In- stitute of America," Boston, 1881. THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 237 the neighborhood of which are found rich placeias, as the Spanish called mines containing precious metals, and cerillos, in which blue and green turquoises are still found. Bande- Her has recently visited the Rio Pecos valley, which is from twenty to twenty-five miles long by six to eight wide, and is situated at a height of six thousand three hundred and forty- six feet/ We cannot do better than follow his description of the chief buildings, supplementing it, however, from other sources, and will retain the initials A and B, by which he designates two groups, the name and history of which are both completely unknown. The Pueblo B rises on a mesa overlooking the Rio Pecos. Its foundations rest on siliceous rock, and the arrangements of the building vary according to the sinuosities or asperities of the site, so that they are far from presenting that regu- larity which strikes us so forcibly in the pueblos of the Chaco or of the MacElmo. The building is four hundred and forty feet long by sixty-three at its widest portion. It has no lateral wings, no internal court, and for the first time we find no estufa. As many as five hundred and seven cells have been counted, separated by very thin division walls. The largest measure nine feet by sixteen, the smallest seven feet by nine. Bandelier estimates their height at seven feet and a half, and if his calculation be correct the total height of the building would be thirty-six feet. How could such a tiny place be the home of a human being?" Very different layers can be made out in the masonry ; some are of gray or red schistous sandstone, others of a conglomerate formed of a quantity of stones varying in size from that of a pea to that of a nut. One part only, consid- ered the most recent, is of adobes of considerable size, measur- ing eleven inches by six. The inside surface of the masonry ^ Emory: "Notes of a Military Reconnoisance from Fort Leavenworth in Kansas to San Diego in California." Washington, 1848. 'Castaiieda de Nagera : "Relation du Voy. de Cibola." Juan Jaravillo : " App. VI., Ternaux Compans," series I., vol. IX. G. Castano de la Cosa : *' Memoria del Descubrimiento que — hizo en el Nuevo Mexico," Mexico, 1590 ; Doc. ined, de los Archives de Indias, vol. XV., p. 244. 238 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. is covered with a very carefully spread white coating, the constituents of which could not be determined, and the walls are strengthened with posts of cedar or pine wood imbedded in the masonry in their natural state, only the bark having been removed. Other posts served as supports to the floor, consisting of brushwood, chips of wood, and a thick coating of moistened clay, this arrangement being the same as that described above. No trace has been found of side-doors or staircases ; the different stories, which are placed one behind the other, were reached by trap-doors. Castaneda, speaking of one of the earhest of the expeditions of the Spanish, that of 1540, in which he took part, relates that the roof of the houses formed terraces, by which the inhabitants passed from one to the other. Such doubtless had also been their mode of communication. We may add that it is the plan still in use amongst the Indians of Zufli, Moqui, Acoma, and Taos ; no change has taken place in these secular customs. In one of the rooms some cinders and fragments of char- coal have been picked up, sole traces of the domestic hearth. It was impossible to ascertain what method was employed to ensure the escape of the smoke, but this was probably because of the state of dilapidation in which the building was found, as General vSimpson describes a hole for the escape of the smoke exactly above the hearth in the San Domingo Pueblo. Pueblo A. is situated on the north of Pueblo B. It in- cludes several buildings surrounding a court. The height of these buildings must have varied very much ; that on the east was five, that on the north two, and that on the south four stories high.^ BandeHer gives the size of the court as two hundred and ten feet by sixty-three. The perimeter of the whole is one thousand one hundred and ninety feet, and as many as five hundred and eighty-five rooms have been counted. This pueblo is the largest hitherto discovered. Its construction differs in no respect from that of those already described' ; no staircase, window, or hearth is to be * Bandelier, /. <:., p. 78, THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 239 seen, and three little estufas recall the usual customs of the people under notice. Mr. E. Lee Childe, in a recent publica- tion {Correspondent, lOth Nov., 1881), describes an Indian village of New Mexico which he had just visited. ''Before us," he says, '' on the right and the left, are two rows of these adobe habitations, low, with no openings outward, no doors, no staircases. The fiat terraced roofs are reached by a mov- able outside ladder. All the windows and doors open on to an inside court, which can only be reached by going down another ladder. Each house is thus a kind of little fort, into which, the ladder once withdrawn, neither man nor beast can penetrate. This tribe forms part of the Pueblo Indians, who have adopted agricultural customs, cultivating the ground and breeding cattle." Does not this read like a description of the ancient dwellings we are endeavoring to make known ? Round about the pueblos and inside the different cells have been picked up innumerable fragments of pottery, arrow-points, chips of obsidian, black lava, agates, jasper, quartz, stone axes and hammers, and copper rings. Among these objects we must mention especially two little earthen- ware figures, very Hke the idols of the Mexicans. Thus far this is the only fact that throws any light on the religion of the inhabitants of the pueblos.^ This habitation in common, these cells all exactly resem- bling one another, with the absence of any larger residence, point to the conclusion that the men of the pueblos led a communal existence.^ " The next morning," says a recent ' The researches of Mr. Frank Gushing at the Zuni Pueblo will doubtless throw a flood of light on the whole subject. The few preliminary words which have appeared in the Century Magazine and elsewhere promise the most inter- esting results. Mr. Gushing is now (1884) about to prepare his final report. Ant. de Espejo : " El Viaje que hizo en el anno de ochenta y tres." Hakluyt, " Voyages," vol. III. If we accept Goronado's account Pecos was already in ruins in 1540. Later, under the direction of the Franciscans, the pueblo was re- built, a church and convent erected, and in 1680 the population exceeded 2,000. Vetancurt : " Gronica," p. 300. Bandelier, /. c, p. \io et seq. '^ Bandelier, /. <:., pp. 54, 60, Z(^, et seq. Force, Cong, des Am., Luxem- bourg, 1877, p. 16. 240 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. traveller, " I was waked at dawn by a strange chant. Hav- ing at once drawn aside the curtains of the ambulance, I dimly made out the profile of the chief, who was standing at the summit of the pueblo. When he had finished chanting, he gave out a proclamation. He had scarcely finished when I saw figures moving rapidly. It was explained to me that the chant of the chief was an act of adoration, and the object of the proclamation was to make known what was to be the task of the different families made up of the five hundred persons living in the pueblo." The present may help us to understand the past. They were certainly an agricultural race, for every sedentary population must be so from mere force of circumstances. Moreover, near the Rio Pecos culti- vated fields have been made out, and irrigative works of considerable extent, including acequias or large canals, and zatijas or irrigating ditches. This was doubtless the Huerta del pueblo, the garden cultivated by all in common. In many places the outlines have been traced of fields in which maize was cultivated, and these fields are remarkable for the luxuriant growth of a robust variety of sun-flower. The common property was under the same kind of government as that generally adopted in Mexico before the Spanish Con- quest. The land, the property of all, was divided every year amongst the different families forming the tribe, who were probably very closely related to each other. But each family had a right to the produce of the toil of its members ; they reaped the seed they sowed, they gathered the fruits they planted. These assertions seem to be well founded ; for according to Mariano Ruiz, who lived for a long time amongst the Pecos Indians, this mode of cultivation was till recently practised by them ; in fact it lasted until the extinc- tion of the tribe, and to quote their own words: '' La tierras son del pueblo, pero cada uno piede vender sus cosechas." The Cliff Dwellers and inhabitants of the pueblos have left behind them as many fragments of pottery as the Mound Builders. Jackson tells us that all who have visited these regions have been strongly impressed by the fragments of THE CUFF DWELLERS. 24 1 pottery everywhere strewing their path, and that even in parts where no vestige of human habitation has been found. The pottery was doubtless of a kind to enable it to last longer than the adobes, which have crumbled to dust. Ban- delicr, again, in speaking of the ruins of the Rio Pecos, says that wagon-loads of painted pottery lie at the feet of the tra- veller ; and Schoolcraft* speaks of the profusion of fragments of pottery left behind them by the ancient tribes who lived on the banks of the Rio Gila, as proofs of their long resi- dence there. Holmes is even more explicit, and, according to him, the number of these fragments is quite confusing. Fig. 104. — Vases found on the banks of the San Juan. On a surface, roughly estimated at ten feet square, he was able to pick up fragments belonging to fifty-five different vases, jars or amphorae, dishes or bottles. All explorations lead to the same results, and everywhere the heaps of frag- ments of all kinds are of much greater importance than those found at the present day near villages occupied by seden- tary Indians. To explain this, recourse has been had to a strange supposition. It has been said that the inhabitants of the country, forced to flee before a sudden invasion, had broken their crockery before leaving their hearths forever — either under the influence of a superstitious horror, or to ' "Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge," vol. III., p. 83. 242 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA, prevent their property becoming the booty of a hated enemy. What is more certain is, that the pieces of pot- tery found on the surface of the ground show no signs of deterioration, although they have been subjected for centuries to all the inclemencies of the seasons. Generally, the earthenware of the Cliff Dwellers is far superior to that of the Mound Builders (fig. 104) ; it was made of a fine clay, very plentiful in the neighbor- hood of the homes of the Cliff Dwellers, and, to give it con- FiG, 105. — Funeral urn found in Utah. sistency, this clay was mixed with a small quantity of sand, bits of shell, or even with pellets of earth moulded and baked. Often after kneading his clay, the potter cut it into thin strips, which he laid one upon the other, giving them the form required with his hand. This is the mode still em- ployed in the glass-works of Europe in making crucibles and other things requiring delicate workmanship. We give a figure (fig. 105) of a jar, or funeral urn, found in Utah, near a structure of adobes now completely in ruins.^ This illus- tration will help us to understand the details of the manu- * This jar belongs to the Peabody Museum, and is capable of holding three gallons ; another, found near Epsom Creek, holds no less than ten gallons. THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 243 facture. All the pieces of pottery found had been subjected to the heat of fire ; and, although that heat had never been great enough to change the original color of the clay, the baking had made them so hard that, when struck, they give out a very clear metallic sound. Lightness was evidently a quality much esteemed ; the internal and external surfaces were carefully smoothed before baking, and the workman often succeeded in making the body of the largest pots no thicker than a quarter of an inch. A great many of these pots retain traces of paintings, and several have been coated with a varnish converted by baking into a brilliant polish, worthy to be compared with that of our modern enamelled manufactures. Beneath some sepulchral mounds near the Great Salt Lake have been found some pieces of pottery, in- ferior in execution to those of Ohio and Mississippi, which still retain this polish. These jars contained burnt human bones, yet another proof of the practice of cremation at cer- tain periods by certain races.^ The varnish was generally black, blue, or brown, more rarely red or white. We do not know what were its constitu- ents ; they varied probably according to the locality. We know for instance that the Spanish found some vases in the pueblos that were full of varnish ready for use,* and at the present day the people of Guatemala use a resinous gum to coat the surface of their pottery when they take it from the fire.^ A vase is mentioned found at Ojo Calienta, New Mexico, still covered with a very fine powder of mica ; so that this may have been yet another mode employed. The decoration of the vases is generally executed with great precision ; the ornaments stand out from the surface either in relief or in a different color.* Some, for instance, are black on a red or white ground. A few of the fragments picked up are of a bronze color, but it is impossible to say * Bancroft : Loc. cit., vol. IV., p. 714. ' " Castanedade Nagera : " Rel. du Voyage de Cibola," Ternaux Compans, vol. IV., first series. * Bancroft : I. c, vol. I., p. 398. * Ch. Rau : " Indian Pottery," " Smith. Con.," 1S60, vol. XVI. R 2 244 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. by what processes this color was obtained/ Fragments have also often been found on which lines and geometrical draw- ings have been traced, as among the Mound Builders, with a pointed instrument or with the nail of the potter; other vases have more complicated designs, which by a very remarkable coincidence resemble to a positively confusing degree those of the Etruscans (figs. 104 and 106). The draw- ings on the pottery of Arizona resemble the ornaments traced on the walls of the temple of Mitla, which again re- call the processes used in ornamentation by the ancient people of Italy.' Fig. 106. — Fragments of pottery. Other pieces of pottery are covered with representations of human figures and of animals. A fragment is mentioned as having been found on the banks of the Gila on which an unknown artist had engraved a turtle ; another was supposed to represent the head of a monkey. Birds are numerous, and while the Mound Builders appear to have preferred the duck as a model the Cliff Dwellers generally chose the owl ' Putnam : Bull of the Essex Institute, 1880. * Hoffman : " Ethn. Obs. on Indians Inhabiting Nevada, California, and Arizona," U. S. Geol. Survey, 1876, p. 454. The modern pueblo pottery, which is produced in enormous quantities, begins to show evidences of the influ- ence of civilization and of modification for an archaeological market. Collec- tors should be on their guard against pots with the " Swastika" on them, or other equally remarkable designs, which are now, it appears, manufactured to order. Cf, Putnam : " Peabody Museum Report," for 1882. THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 245 or the parrot. To sum up : if the pottery of the CHff Dwellers is superior to that found in the mounds it still more excels that now manufactured by the potters of the Rio Grande or of the San Juan. The Moqui and Zufii Indians know very well how to make pottery, and to produce the symmetrical forms or artistic ornamentation characteristic of the ceramic work of their predecessors inhabitants of the pueblos. A few implements of quartz or other rock of various kinds are, with the pottery just noticed, nearly the sole relics of this ancient civilization which have come down to us. Arrow-points are often found at the foot of the cliff-houses and round about the pueblos. They bear witness, as we have already remarked, to the constant struggle in which the men under notice passed their lives, compelled to be always defending their homes. Near the Rio Mancos has been found a polished celt exactly similar to those of Eu- rope.' This celt was eight inches long by two and a half at its widest part. One side is slightly concave, the other per- fectly flat. It was hidden in one of the cells of a cliff-house under a heap of maize. A polished scraper of silicious schist has also turned up, which may have been used to prepare skins, schist being too brittle to be used either for drilling or hammering purposes. A good many metates or stone hand-mills for grinding corn have also been found. These consist of blocks of basalt, naturally concave or artificially rendered so, upon which another stone was pushed backward and forward, which fact supplies us with another proof that the Cliff Dwellers were an essentially agricultural people, living on the produce of the fields they tilled. These metates are at present in common use on the borders of Mexico, both by Indians and by the not much more civilized " greasers." It is a curious fact that these people often obtain their metates, here, as in Yucatan, from the ancient pueblos or mounds. Lastly, a mat made of rushes may be referred to, of a * Holmes : U. S. Geog. Survey, pi. XLVI. 246 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. variety {Scirpus valictus) still very common on the banks of the Mancos. Some ropes woven of the fibres of the yucca, some sea-shells, a few amulets in stone or turquoise, a few bead necklaces, and our list is closed. We have alluded to the very small number of excavations hitherto undertaken, and the obstacles which checked the explorers, zealous as they were in the cause of science ; and it will readily be be- lieved that very few of the objects left on the surface of the ground were likely to escape the rapacity of the Utes and Navajos, who are always wandering about amongst the ruins. It is remarkable that, except for the copper rings found at Pecos, not a weapon or ornament of metal has been found.* Were such articles carried off by the Indians, or were the early inhabitants of the pueblos of New Mexico and Colorado ignorant of iron and bronze ? This latter hypothesis seems probable, for the roughly squared beams supporting their home appear to have been shaped with stone implements. We cannot pronounce a decided opinion on the question, for it can only be decided by scientifically conducted excavations. Among the most remarkable characteristics of the archse- ology of the region are the paintings, sculptures, and engravings on rocks, met with in New Mexico, Arizona, Col- orado, and even in Texas. Among others which may be cited are those of the Sierra -Waco, thirty miles from El Paso. These rock-drawings have caused the coinage of a new ^oxA, pictography, which we use in our turn, although we are by no means persuaded, as are certain archaeologists, that the Cliff Dwellers intended by means of pictography to give a record of their own history, the struggles in which they had taken part, their migrations or their haunts. The figures are, as a rule, of such great simplicity that the descendants of the artists could learn nothing from them of the main facts of the history of their ancestors. It is more probable that these figures, curious though they be, were generally the outcome of the painter's or sculptor's fancy. *" The implements and ornaments are not numerous, include no articles of any metal whatever, and do not differ materially from the articles now in use among the Pueblo Indians." — Bancroft, /. c, vol IV., p. 677. THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 247 It is not only on the rocks that wc find the representations under notice ; the numerous erratic blocks of the valley of the Gila are covered with roughly outlined figures of men and of animals ' (fig. 1 07). But it is chiefly on the banks of the Mancos and the San Juan, and in the canons stretching Fig. 107. — Erratic blocks covered with figures. Arizona. away westward, that these pictographs abound. Some are cut into the rock to a depth varying from a quarter to half an inch'' (figs 108 and 109); others are merely traced in broad red or white lines. The former, in many cases at an * Bartlett : " Personal Narrative," vol. II., pp. 195, 206. '^ Holmes : pis. XLII. and XLIII. 248 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. all but inaccessible height, must have involved considerable toil. Are they the work of the Cliff Dwellers ? Nearly every thing points to the conclusion that they are, for they are almost all near the clifT-houses. We must add, however, that inscriptions and figures are, on the other hand, very rare near the most ancient pueblos ; and the most recent are often, perhaps, of later date than the Spanish Conquest. The appearance of these inscriptions might have warranted us in attributing them to pre-historic Cliff Dwellers, had not one of them represented a horse,^ and we know that this animal was unknown in America before the arrival of the conquerors. We must also notice a figure resembling rudely a hatchet (fig. 109), met with repeatedly in these engravings. Its form recalls the hatchets engraved on the megalithic monuments of Brittany. This is a curious fact, but its importance must not be overrated. Among the most interesting of the engravings on rock we will mention one on the banks of the San Juan, about ten miles from the mouth of the La Plata. It represents a long series of men, animals, and even birds with long necks and long legs, all going in the same direction." Two men are standing up in a sledge harnessing a deer which may be supposed to be a reindeer, and other men follow or direct the march. These engravings are evidently connected with the migration of a tribe. Jackson also speaks of a cliff near the MacElmo covered for an area of sixty square feet with figures of men, stags and lizards, and Bandelier speaks of pictographs^ the weather- worn condition of which testifies to their antiquity. The latter, situated near the Pecos ruins, represent the footprints of a man or child, a human figure and a very complete cir- cle enclosing some small cups which may also be compared with those on the megalithic stones of France. On the * Holmes: pi. XLII., fig. 2. ^ Holmes: pi, XLHI., fig. i. ^ ** Ruins of the Rio Pecos, " pp. 92, et seg. THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 249 banks of the Puerco and Zuili rivers/ two of the tributaries of the Colorado Chiquito, drawings have been noticed ^ wiiich resemble hieroglyphics. Their meaning is unknown, indeed we cannot even assert that they have any meaning. The rocks surrounding Salt Lake City, Utah, the capital city of the Territory, are covered with sculptures which re- mind us of those of Egypt. ^ Some of the human figures of Fig. io3. — Pictography on the ban!;s of the San Juan. Fig. 109. — Pictographs on the banks of the San Juan. life size, incised in very hard blue granite, arc situated more than thirty feet above the level of the ground. The height at which some of these sculptures occur has suggested that since their production some geological phenomenon, such as the depression of the lake, may have taken place. ' It was on the banks of the Zuni that Coronado speaks of having seen the seven villages of Cibola in 1540. " Mulhausen : " Tagebuch einer Reise vom Mississippi nach den Kusten der Sud-See." Leipsic, 1858. ^ Remy and Brenchley : "A Journey to the Great Salt Lake City." London, 1862, vol. IL, p. 362. 250 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA, This is yet another hypothesis to add to the many already noticed. The desire to reproduce the figures, animals, and events which have arrested their attention is one of the most char- acteristic features of the various American races. On the rocks of Ohio and Wyoming signs have been noticed which have been looked upon as hieroglyphics.* Amongst these engravings one of the most important is in Licking county; it covers a surface from fifty to sixty feet long, by from ten to twelve feet wide. Unfortunately nearly all the figures have been destroyed, only a few slight traces still remaining. We may also mention those of Perrysburgand Independence, Cuyahoga county, and those of Belmont county. If these really are inscriptions it is impossible now ^o decipher them, but there is little probability of their being more than rude pictographs. Here afid there beside these signs we see en. graved a trident, an harpoon, a bear's foot or a human hand or foot, several of which are mentioned as cut into the rock to the depth of an inch and a half. In Vermont, too, the rocks bathed by the Connecticut River are covered with engravings. On one of them a hu- man figure can be made out, on another twenty heads of different sizes, the largest being twenty inches long and the smallest five inches.'^ Several of them have two rays, two horns if you like, on the forehead, and the central figure has as many as six. The eyes and the mouth are indicated by circular holes, and the nose is nearly always missing. An engraving at Brattleboro is still more curious ; it represents eleven different subjects, including mammals, birds, and ser- pents. Some similar pictographs, to which authorities are dis- posed to assign a very great antiquity, are to be seen on the walls of caves in Nicaragua.^ One is mentioned near Nihapa HVhittlesey : "Rep. Am. Ass.," Indianapolis, 1871. Th. Comstock, same, Detroit, 1875. ■■"G. W. Perkins : " Remarks upon the Arch, of Vermont," " Rep. Am. Ass.," St. Louis, 1878. '"Report, Peabody Museum," 1880, vol. II., p. 716. THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 2^1 representing a serpent covered with feathers. The artist gave imagination full scope. Some caves in the mountains of the province of Oajaca also show man's handiwork.' But here we only find clumsy paintings in red ochre. Amongst these can be distinguished impressions of the hand in black recalling those noticed by Stephens on the ruined walls of the buildings of Uxmal. Pinart, in his journey across Sonora,' met with a great many inscriptions on rocks. He describes one engraved on the three faces of a basaltic rock near the Rio de Busanig. Although they are much defaced, we can still make out on the northern face a human hand, beneath two concentric circles grouped round a central point. The upper part also bears a number of little round holes ar- ranged symmetrically, and on a second rock rising above the first several other circles have been traced. Near Cahorca rises a rocky circular hillock to which the Papagos have given the name of Ko Ka. It consists of a heap of rocks bearing pictographs on their flat surfaces. In several places more ancient designs, including a series of lines or of symmetrical figures, can be distinguished, but they have been in a great measure obliterated by later in- scriptions traced in white paint. Such engravings or paintings are met with in all the re- gions which once formed Spanish America. They are men- tioned as existing near the extinct volcano of Masaya, in the United States of Colombia ; on the banks of the Orinoco, in Venezuela, where they are in such a state of decay that they can hardly be recognized ; on the Isthmus of Panama, where they were noticed as early as 1520 by the Spaniards.' Lieutenant Whipple describes them on the rocks of Arizona. Professor Kerr on the Black Mountains near the sources of the Tennessee ; and in crossing the White Mountains, between the towns of Columbus, Nevada, and Benton, Cahfornia, we meet with numerous representations of men and animals, or ^Brasseur de Bourbourg : *' Voy. surTIsthme de Tehuantepec," p. 123. ' "Bull. Soc. Geog." Paris, Sept., 1880. 'Diego Garcia de Palacios : " Carta dirigada al Rey de Espana," auo 1576. Fig. 1 lo. — Specimens of the rock sculptures of the Bushmen of South Africa. Fig. III. — Engravings found on rocks in Algeria. 254 PRE-HISTORTC AMERICA. with Signs that cannot be deciphered/ Neither the Pah Utes, occupying the California seaboard, nor the Shawnees, who encamp near Columbus, claim them as the work of their ancestors. Twenty miles south of Benton, the road follows a narrow defile, shut in on either side by almost perpendicular rocks, rising to a height of forty or fifty feet. These stone walls are covered with figures of unknown origin. The ancient inhabitants of Tennessee have also left behind them paintings on the cliffs overlooking their great rivers. Some represent the sun and the moon ; others, mammals, the bison for instance.' These paintings were done in red ochre, and, like the sculptures of Utah referred to above, they are at almost inaccessible heights. A colossal sun, engraved on a rock overlooking the Big Harpeth, is visible four miles off. At Buffalo Creek these workmen of the past have drawn an entire herd of bisons, walking in single file. Father Mar- quette, during his voyage up the Mississippi, saw similar scenes engraved on the cliffs between Illinois and the Mis- souri ; and more modern travellers bear witness to the faith- fulness of his account.^ In speaking of South America we shall describe rock sculp- tures, similar to those first noticed ; but with regard to them we shall also be unable to say who executed them or when they were made. The only conclusion which we can arrive at is that resemblances exist between the instincts of man in all regions. Everywhere man, however degraded we may consider him to have been, traced as with childish vanity, upon the rocks, on the walls of caves, and on erratic blocks, his own image or the scenes taking place before his eyes, and from this point of view nothing could be more curious than a comparison between the rude figures of the Americans and the engravings executed by the Bushmen of South Af- ^ Hoffman : " Ethn. Observ. on Indians Inhabiting Nevada, California, and Arizona," U. S. Geol. and Geog. Survey, 1876. "Jones' "Antiquities of the Southern Indians," New York, 1873, p. 137. ^ " Voyages et Decouvertes du P. Marquette dans 1* Amerique Septentrionale." Thevenot : " Relation de Divers Voyages Curieux," Paris, 1681. J. G. Shea *' Discovery and Explorations of the Mississippi Valley," p. 41. THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 255 rica, (fig. no), or with those engraved on the rocks of Al- geria. This similarity, in every clime and at every period, of the taste, instinct, and genius of man is the best proof that can be brought forward of the common origin of the human race. As already stated it appears certain that the Cliff Dwellers and the inhabitants of the pueblos belonged to the same race, and that this did not materially differ from the Moquis and Zuftis of the present day. The buildings, whether of stone or of adobe, are always alike and always regular ; the rooms are everywhere extremely small ; the absence of stairs and of trap-doors giving access from one story to another, points to a life led in common ; and everywhere we find estufas, places for meetings alike of a religious and secular character. Both the Cliff' Dwellers and the people of the pueblos manu- factured pottery of a similar kind, and used the same kind of arrow-points and the same kind of implements. All the relics which have come down to us point to the same conclusion, and it appears no less certain that the peo- ple under notice differed in many respects from the Mound Builders of Ohio and Mississippi, the Mayas of Yucatan and the Nahuas of Mexico. There are no structures left by the Cliff Dwellers resembling either the truncated pyramids, mounds shaped like animals, or other earth mounds of the Northern United States. In the Territory of Utah, however. Dr. Parry found a mound containing several specimens of pottery a good deal like that of the pueblos. Dr. Palmer, after many excavations in the neighborhood, confirmed this fact, but added that the mound in question was derived from crumbled walls, originally of adobes. Still less do they resemble the palaces, temples, and re- markable buildings erected by the Mayas or the Aztecs. The rarity of pipes, which are so numerous amongst the Mound Builders and northern Indians is no less remarkable. We give a drawing (fig. 112) of one of the few pipes found as yet in the district inhabited by the Cliff Dwellers. It is of clay, and the mouth-piece is at the end of the handle. 256 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. Coronado, the first Spaniard to visit these regions, notices no resemblance between the Mexicans and the inhabitants of New Mexico. Father Escalante, who crossed the country in 1776, more than two centuries after Coronado, describes ruins now unknown, pueblos inhabited when he saw them, now crumbled to dust ; and nothing in his narrative supports what has been called on the other side of the Atlantic the Aztec theor}^^ As yet, nothing justifies us in deciding that New Mexico was peopled by colonists from Anahuac. Two distinct classes of remains appear to have been observed in Central America ; the Cliff Dwellers on the west and the Mound Builders, who have been identified by some with the Aztecs, on the east. These people may have sprung origi- nally from the same source, but their separation doubtless Fig. 112. — Pipe found amongst the relics of the Cliff Dwellers. took place at a very distant period, and there is not sufificient evidence yet available to prove the case one way or the other.'' One thing is certain : numerous pueblos existed in New Mexico at the time of the Spanish invasion, and some of them, such as Zuiii, Acoma, Taos, Jemez, and Pecos have ^ Dominguez and Escalante : " Diario y Derrotero Santa Fe a Monterey," 1776. "Doc. Hist. Mex.," 2d series, vol. I. Short, p. 331, speaks of having examined a MS. by Escalante in the Library of Congress, Washington, which confirms this conclusion. ' In the fifth report of the Archaeological Institute of America Bandelier gives an account of studies carried on in 1883 for the society in New Mexico and Arizona. He finds a well-defined system of growth, from the temporary Indian lodge to the many-storied pueblo building, which clearly does not owe its origin to any external influences. He has since been seeking in the mountains of Northern Mexico traces of any possible connection between the ancient pueblo people and the Aztecs, and it is announced that his report of important studies at Cholula and Mitla is nearly ready for publication. THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 257 been inhabited until now. The pueblos of the sedentary Indians of New Mexico are grouped as follows: I., be- tween the frontier of Arizona and the Rio Grande, Zufii, Acoma, and Laguna; II., on the banks of the Rio Grande Taos, Picuries, Tehua, Queres, Tiguas, and Piros; III., to the west of the Rio Grande, Jemez ; and IV., to the east of the same river, Tanos and Pecos. Lieutenant Wheeler, who visited the country in 1858, speaks of having seen through his telescope two Moqui pueb- los, at a distance of eight or ten miles, perched on a rock overlooking the whole valley. The buildings were flush with the precipice, and from the Lieutenant's point of view presented the appearance of a town with walls and crenel- lated towers. The whole was singularly picturesque. Each of these pueblos is built round a rectangular court, enclos- ing the spring of water indispensable to the population. The walls, which are of stone, have no opening on the out- side. To reach the inside, these walls would have to be either removed or scaled. The different stories of the houses are one behind the other, and the upper ones can only be reached by means of trap-doors in the ceiling. Every building includes three stories, and has no opening except on to the court. The whole arrangement is such as to offer resistance in case of attack. As the court and the communications are 'common to all, the inhabitants must have led a communal existence, such as is known to be char- acteristic of all American tribes. We might well take this account as a description of an ancient pueblo, and it will help us to a second conclusion, which follows as a matter of course. New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and the northern part of Chihuahua, were formerly inhabited by a sedentary agricultural and compara- tively cultured race, who differed no more from each other than do the present inhabitants of the pueblos. The de- cline of these people probably began some time before the arrival of the Spaniards, and this decadence has gone on until the present day, when a few scattered settlements are the 258 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. sole representatives of a once numerous and powerful popu- lation. The causes of this decadence are many. Among the most important we must certainly include the perpetually recurrent invasions of the Apaches, wild and dangerous ene- mies whom the Cliff Dwellers long and energetically resisted. At last, however, this resistance became powerless to stem the torrent, the people had to leave the homes they had built, the hearths often watered with their blood, perhaps to join themselves to other tribes at a distance,' who in their turn had to defend themselves, probably with no better suc- cess, against the attacks of the same enemies. The enemies gained ground daily, and daily the Cliff Dwellers receded before them. The end was inevitable. The vanquished race was rapidly reduced in power and number, and unfortunately the Spanish conquest could not restore it. It is probable, however, that the inroads of the nomad tribes, however formidable they may have been, would not have been enough to depopulate the country. The aerial dwell- ings, so difficult of access, the towers defending the en- trances to the valleys, the arrangement of the pueblos, form- ing as they did regular fortresses, would have secured the victory to their inhabitants, had not another cause, already referred to, hastened their ruin. The destruction of the for- ests, prolonged droughts, and the disappearance of water- courses changed lands which had been rendered productive by cultivation into arid deserts and valleys choked with sand, which strike the traveller of to-day as so melancholy. Man fled from regions where further struggle with an ungrateful nature had become impossible. He receded before an enemy more dangerous than the nomads, and against whom resis- tance was impossible. It was reserved to the nineteenth century to ascertain ^ Examples of similar union of tribes are not rare in the history of the Indians. Since the discovery of America the vanquished Tuscaroras have been admitted into the confederation of the Five Nations ; the Alabamas, the Uchees, and Natchez into that of the Creeks ; and in our own day the Pecos, decimated by sickness, found an asylum amongst the people of an allied tribe. THE CLIFF DWELLERS. 259 these facts, totally unknown a few years ago. A more noble mission is reserved to those who are to come after us. It is for science to reestablish that which the barbarism of man has been permitted to destroy, and by the resources of mod- ern science to make the desert blossom as the rose. CHAPTER VI. THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA. America does not stint her surprises for those who study her ancient history. We have spoken of the mounds, so strange alike in form and construction, the dwellings, true eagle's nests, formed amid perpendicular cliffs, the pueblos, where a considerable population lived in common. We shall now consider a more advanced state of culture, monuments in ruins at the time of the Spanish invasion, temples, palaces, monoliths, statues, and bas-reliefs recalling, in their complexity those of Egypt or Assyria, India or China. These monu- ments extend over entire districts, and the pioneers who. cut their way, axe in hand, through the all but impenetrable for- ests, flattering themselves that they were the first to tread the virgin soil, found themselves face to face with ruins and sepulchres, incontestable proofs of the former presence of generations now disappeared. In stating these facts we shall incidentally confute the error of an eminent historian who did not hesitate to assert that there were not throughout the whole of America any traces of a single building of earlier date than the fifteenth century. The difficulties we meet with at every turn increase as our account proceeds. Here too we are in the presence of name- less people, of races without a written history ; and to add to our difiliculties new discoveries are daily made, upsetting preconceived hypotheses, breaking down earlier theories, and completely destroying what had appeared to be the best founded conclusions. The myths and traditions that have been collected may date back to a time before the Christian era, but the hiero- THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 26 1 glyphics (fig. 113) are certainly not so old. It is difficult on such slight data to reconstruct a past culture, the very ex- istence of which was unknown a few years ago ; and thus far no Champollion has arisen to solve the enigmas which have been preserved in stone/ Before examining the monu- ments themselves we must sum up the opinions of modern historians, who have thrown a little light where, before their researches, nothing but obscurity and chaos existed. One fact appears probable, and that is that there was a tendency of population extending over a long period from the north toward the south,'' one driving another before it as one wave of the sea follows that in advance of it. We can- not do better than compare these successive invasions, with those of the barbarous races that quarrelled over the parts of the dismembered Roman empire, or with that of the Aryans, who from the farther end of Asia fell in hordes first upon India and Persia and then upon the different coun- tries of Europe, giving to the vanquished as the price of their defeat a culture undoubtedly superior to that they had formerly possessed. The people who successively established themselves in ^ The twelfth century of our era is the limit of our very incomplete historical knowledge of America. All that has come down to us of earlier days are a few ethnological facts and legends or fables usurping the place of truth. With such materials hypothesis has run wild. The Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg (" Popol-Vuh," Introd.) says that in 955 B.C. there was in America a settled gov- ernment. The chronicle of Clavigero (" St. del Messico," book II. ch. I.) com- mences 596 years before our era. Veytia (" Hist. Ant. de Mejico," t. I., chap. II.) dates the first migrations of the Nahuas from the year 2,237 after the Crea- tion ; while Valentini ("The Katunes of Maya History") by a more reason- able calculation places them 137 years after Christ. Ixtlilxochitl (" Hist. Chi- chimeca," Kingsborough, vol. IX.) in his turn gives the year 503 A.D. as the date of the foundation of Tezcuco. All these dates, however, are, we repeat, merely fanciful. There is no positive evidence either to confirm or to disprove them. ' Bancroft's opinion, however, is that ' ' while the positive evidence in favor of the migration from the south is very meagre, it must be admittdd that the southern origin of the Nahua culture is far more consistent with fact and tradi- tion than was the north-western origin, so long accepted." " Native Races," vol. II., p, 117. 262 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. Central America were probably of Nahuatl race. The vigo- rous researches being made in America itself tend more and more to connect with this single source the Olmecs, Toltecs, Miztecs, Zapotecs, Chichimecs, and Aztecs, and it is to vari- ous branches of this conquering race that we owe the ruined monuments still scattered over Mexico, Yucatan, Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, and found as far as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The earliest were the Mayas, who are also supposed to have been of Nahuatl origin, though we are unable to assert any thing positive on this point, as the traditions, monu- ments and hieroglyphics which can with certainty be attrib- uted to them, appears to differ from those of the Nahuas, and their language presents striking disparities.* The last fact would form a conclusive argument against a common origin, did we not know with what rapidity dialects are transformed, which primitively sprang from a single source,' and if side by side with these differences we did not note re- markable resemblances, such as the monosyllabic words and the similarity in the construction of phrases^ ; all that we can really say at the present moment is that if the Mayas and the various branches of the Nahuas had really a common origin, their separation certainly preceded the Spanish inva- sion by a considerable period. The Mayas are supposed to have dwelt upon the shores of the Atlantic. They migrated probably after defeat, and later established themselves in Chiapas, on the banks of the Usu- macinta River, in the midst of a rich and fertile country.* ' Kingsborough : "Ant. of Mexico," vol. III.; Prescott, "Hist, of the Conquest of Mexico," vol. I., p. 104; Bancroft, "Native Races," vol. II., p. 772. ''Senor Orozco y Bcrra made out fifteen dialects belonging to the Maya. Among these we may mention the Quiche, Tzendal, and Cakchiquel. Maya or its derivatives was spoken in Tabasco, Chiapas, Guatemala, part of San Sal- vador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Some traces of it are perhaps too hastily supposed to have been recognized in Cuba, Hayti, and various of the West In- dia islands (" Geog. de las Linguas," p. 98, Mexico, 1864). ^Bancroft, " Native Races," vol. III., p. 769. * Orozco y Berra, /. c, p. 128. THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 263 Their empire flourished long, the rule of their chiefs or of the tribes subject to them ' extended over the greater part Fig. 113. — Specimen of hieroglyphics found in Central America. of Central America.' Nachan or the Town of Serpents, of * The Mayas had as many as three districts tributary to them, the Capitals of which were : Tula or Tulan, generally placed two leagues from Ococingo, Mayapan in Yucatan, and Copan. ' Brasseur de Bourbourg : " Hist, des Nations Civilisees du Mexique et de I'Amerique Centrale " ; Bancroft, vol. II., p. 523; vol. III., p. 460, etc.; vol. v., pp. 157 and 231. 264 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. which the ruins at Palenqu^ exhibit the grandeur, was their capital, while Mayapan, Tulan, and Copan, were the chief towns of the tributary districts forming the confederation of Xibalba or of the Chanes (Serpent). Such are the only at all trustworthy data that we possess. Legends add some details in which a few facts are mixed with much that is fabulous. The Maya confederation, it is said, was founded many centuries before our era, by a mes- senger of the gods named Votan, who came, according to tradition, from the other side of the Caribbean Sea, and the time of his arrival is placed by the legend ten centuries before the Christian era. Perhaps there may have been several Votans, and the descendants of the first retained his name as a title of honor. The most ancient traditions made him come from a land of shadow, beyond the seas ; on his arrival, the inhabitants of the vast territories stretching between the isthmus of Panama and California, lived in a state which may be compared with that of the people of the stone age of Europe. A few natural caves, huts made of branches of trees, served them as shelter ; their only garments were skins obtained in the chase ; they lived upon wild fruits, roots torn out of the ground and raw flesh of animals which they devoured while still bloody.^ Legends have preserved to our day the name of the Quinames, wild and barbarous giants, whose memory filled the Indians with terror, even during the Spanish domi- nation.'' Such doubtless were the men who struggled with the large animals which so long roamed as undisputed mon- archs in the forests, pampas, and marshes of the two Ameri- cas. It is curious that nearly every American tribe has legends of barbarous people who preceded them and to * Torquemada : " Mon. Indiana," vol. I., chs. 15 and 20. ' "Los Quinemetin, gigantesque vivian en esta renconada que se dice ahora Nueva Espafia." Ixtlilxochitl : " Relaciones" ; Kingsborough: "Ant. of Mex- ico," vol, IX., p. 322. Traces are also supposed to have been met with of a more ancient language than the Maya, Nahua, or their derivatives. See Hum- boldt's "Views of the Cordilleras" (Mrs. Williams' translation, 2 vols, octavo, 1814) and Bancroft, vol. III., p. 274. THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 265 whom all evil attributes are attached in the current myths. Sometimes, as among the Eskimo, Aleuts, and northern Tin- neh, these mythical nomads are believed to still exist, hidden in the recesses of the mountains or the forests. All the Central American tribes do not seem tp have lived in an equally degraded condition before the period of the Mayas. Ruins of considerable extent are met with in Guatemala. These consist of undressed stones similar to those used in the cyclopean buildings of Greece or Syria; but no tradition refers to their origin. They are, however, attributed with some reason to a race driven back by con- quest, and superior in culture to the people overcome by the Maya invasion of Central America. It was by war that Votan, placed after his death among the gods, established the authority of his tribe, and it was by war that his successors maintained its supremacy. Le- gends have come down to us of a long series of victories and of defeats, of internecine struggles and foreign wars, alliances broken off, and revolts of tributary people. A manuscript translated by Don J. Perez, called " Katunes of Maya His- tory," gives according to the translator the history of the Mayas from 144 to 1536 A.D., but according to Professor Valentini, who reckons the Ahau or cycle differently, from 142 to 1544. The Katunes give only incidents of war, as if times of peace were unworthy of attention. This manu- script escaped the general auto da fS ordered by the Spanish priests in 1569. The name of Katunes (from Kat, stone and tun, to interrogate) was given in Yucatan to engraved stones bearing dates or inscriptions relating to historical events. These stones were imbedded in the walls of public buildings. Every thing points to the conclusion that the inscriptions were not very ancient.* In accordance with the general law of human affairs the confederation declined, one invasion succeeded another, and the opposition of the Mayas to their invaders was that of a * Salisbury : " Proc. Am. Antiq. Soc," October 21, 1879. Stephens : " Yu- catan," App., vols. I. and II. 266 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. worn-out people, no longer able to defend itself against younger and more vigorous races. The result could not be doubtful. Amongst the conquered tribes, some accepted a new usurpation, others retired to Yucatan and Guatemala, where their descendants offered an heroic resistance to the Spanish conquerers.^ We know very little about the religion, the manners or the customs of the Mayas. Three Maya manuscripts are known : the Codex Perezianus, preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris; the Dresden codex, known since the eighteenth century, and long described as an Aztec manu- script ; it is published in the large work by Lord Kings- borough ; and lastly, the Troano manuscript (named after Senor Tro y Ortolano, one of its owners), found at Madrid in 1865. Some doubts have been expressed with regard to this, and also to a manuscript which figured in 1881 at the American Exhibition at Madrid, and which is looked upon as a continuation of the Troano manuscript.' The gods of the Mayas appear to have been less sangui- nary than those of the Nahuas. The immolation of a dog was with them enough for an occasion that would have been celebrated by the Nahuas by hecatombs of victims. Human sacrifices did however take place, and prisoners of war were chosen in preference ; failing them, parents offered up their children as the sacrifice most pleasing to the gods.' One remarkable distinction is noticed : the ofifice of sacri- ficer was considered the greatest dignity to which a Mexican could aspire ; among the Mayas, on the contrary, it was looked upon as impure and degrading.* At ChichenTtza, capital of the Itzas, one of the Maya *A. de Remsal : *' Hist, de la Prov. de S. Vincente de Chyapa," Madrid, 1619, p. 264. Juarros : " Hist, of the Kingdom of Guatemala," London, 1824, p. 14. Bancroft /. c, vol. I., p. 647 et seq. ; vol. V., p. 616. ''An investigation by Prof. Cyrus Thomas of the Manuscript Troano, throw- ing much new light upon the subject, is on the point of publication by the Ethnological Bureau of the United States. ^ Diego de Landa, " Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan," p. 166 ; Paris, 1864. * " El oficio de abrir el pecho a los sacrificados que en Mexico era estimado, aqui era poco honoroso." Herrera, " Hist. Gen.," dec. IV., book X., ch, IV, THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERLCA. 2by tribes of Yucatan, these sacrifices were more numerous. A deep excavation was dug in the centre of the town and filled with water. An altar, reached by a flight of steps cut in the rock, rose at the very edge of the precipice. Trees and shrubs surrounded it on every side, and to add to the awe which the spot naturally inspired, a perpetual silence reigned there. In the days of Votan's first successors, in accordance with the instructions of the messenger of the gods, nothing was offered up but animals, flowers, or incense ; but by de- grees the people went back to the most revolting sacrifices, and in the years preceding the fall of the confederation, if they were threatened with any calamity, such as the failure of the harvest or the cessation of rain, so indispensable in the ticrra caliente^ the populace hastened to gather round the altar, and to appease the anger of the gods with human victims. These victims were generally young virgins ; they marched triumphantly to their fate, arrayed in rich apparel and surrounded by an imposing escort of priests and priestesses. Whilst the fumes of the incense rose to- ward heaven, the priests explained to the virgins what they were to ask of the gods, before whom they were to ap- pear. Then, when the incense was dying out upon the altar, they were flung down into the abyss, whilst the prostrate crowd went on offering up their ardent petitions. In Nica- ragua, every one of the eighteen months into which the year was divided opened with a holiday. The high-priest announced the number of victims to be offered up and the names of those he had chosen, either among the prisoners or among the inhabitants themselves.* The unhappy wretch thus pointed out was pitilessly seized and stretched upon the altar ; the sacrificer walked slowly round him three times, chanting funeral hymns ; then he approached, quickly opened the breast, tore out the heart, and bathed his face in the still smoking blood. When the victim was a prisoner the body was at once cut up ; the heart belonging to the high-priest, the feet and hands to the chiefs, the thighs to the ' Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, " De Orbe Novo." dec. VI., book VI. 268 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. warrior who had had the honor of his capture, the entrails to the trumpeters, the rest distributed among the people, and lastly, the head was hung upon the branch of a tree as a religious trophy. If the victim was a child offered or sold by its parents, the body was buried, custom not permitting the assistants to eat the flesh of one of their own people. These sacrifices, which dated from a very remote antiquity, lasted until the Spanish conquest. Herrera^ relates that sev- eral Spanish prisoners were thus devoured, and Albornoz adds that in Honduras the Indians gave up eating the flesh of the white victims because it was too tough and stringy. Sacrifices were always succeeded by several holidays, dan- cing, banquets, and brutal drunkenness.'' Husbands had to refrain from all intercourse with their wives, and the de- vout pierced the tongue, ears, and other parts of their bodies, and smeared the lips and beard of the idols with the blood from their wounds.^ At other times blood was drawn from the male organ, and some grains of maize were sprinkled with it, for the possession of which the assistants disputed eagerly, believing it to be an aphrodisiac* In Guatemala a woman and a female dog were sacrificed before every battle. The horror these details inspire is our excuse for cutting short the enumeration. Nowhere was human barbarity greater than amongst the early Americans, and the cruelty of the executioners was only equalled by the stoicism of their victims. We do not know who the gods were who were supposed to be honored by these revolting sacrifices, and very little has been learned yet about the mythology of the Mayas. Some of their idols represent men, others animals. Peter Martyr ' " Hist. Gen. de los Hechos de los Castillanos en las Islas e Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano," dec. I, book V., chap. V.; dec. III., book IV., chap. VII. ; dec. IV., book VIII., chap. IX.; book XCIV. '^ The Mayas were acquainted with several fermented drinks. The Itzas pre- pared one of a mixture of cacao and maize. In other parts honey and the juices of the banana, figs, and other fruits, were fermented. ^Oviedo y Valdes : " Hist. Gen. y Natural de las Indias." Madrid, 1851-54, vol. IV., p. 52. * Herrera, /. c.j Peter Martyr, /. c. THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 269 speaks of one huge serpent made of stone and asphaltum set up in Yucatan, and we know that the Itzas, greatly struck with the appearance of Cortes* horse, hastened to copy it in stone and place it amongst their idols. The Mayas knew nothing of iron ; copper and gold were the only metals they used, and it is doubtful whether they understood smelting metals. Christopher Columbus is said, however, to have seen, off the coast of Honduras, a boat laden with crucibles, filled with ingots of metal and hatchets made of copper which had been fetched from a distance. Gold was very plentiful at the time of the Spanish conquest, and it was used for making ornaments of all kinds.^ The weapons in use were slings, spears, arrows, and darts pointed with silex, obsidian, porphyry, copper, or bone. The war- riors wore well-padded cotton armor, often so heavy that a soldier once prostrated could not always get up again ; their round shields were decorated with feathers and covered with cotton cloth or with the skins of animals which they had killed in the chase. The Mayas were acquainted with navi- gation. Oviedo relates that the inhabitants of Nicaragua used balsas for crossing the rivers ; these balsas were reg- ular rafts of five or six logs, bound together with creepers and supporting a deck of interlaced branches.' The Chia- panecs used calabashes for floats. In other localities naviga- tion was more advanced ; the Guatemalians hewed out the trunks of the cedar and the mahogany tree, and their canoes might be counted by thousands on their lakes and rivers. The people of Yucatan used trunks of trees in the same way, and their boats, which they guided with great skill with the help of a steering oar, were capable of holding as many as fifty people. Some say that sailing vessels were also used. ^Cortes: " Cartas y Relacionesal Emperador Carlos V.," Paris, 1866. Her- rera (" Hist. Gen.," decade III., book IV., chs. V. and VI.) speaks of golden idols and hatchets. Cogolludo (" Hist, de Yucatan," Madrid, 1688.) in his turn speaks of little figures representing fish and geese ; and Brasseur de Bourbourg ('* Hist, des Nat. Civ.," vol. II., p. 69), of finely chased vases, all of gold. "♦Hist. Gen.," vol. III., p. 100. 270 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. A balsa met with by Pizarro, near the second degree of north latitude, and the boat seen by Christopher Columbus, were reported to have been thus rigged ^ ; but these facts are very much disputed, and we only know that the last-named vessel was of the same length as the Spanish galleys of eight feet beam, that it was manned by twenty-five men, and that in the middle was a canopy of matting to protect the women and children from the heat of the sun. The houses inhabited by these people were of a very great variety, but this need not surprise us when we remember the great extent of the confederation of Xibalba, and the very different tribes composing it. The Quiches and the Cakchiquels inhabiting the highlands of Guatemala built their towns, as did the Cliff Dwellers, on points difficult of access, and surrounded them with lofty walls and deep trenches. Grijalva and Cordova, the first Spaniards to visit the coast of Yucatan, speak of houses built of stone cemented with a mortar made of lime, and covered in with roofs of reeds or palm-leaves, sometimes even with slabs of stone. ^ These houses had door-ways, but no doors, and every one was free to go in and out. In Nicaragua, the walls, like those of the jacals of the Indians, were of cane. The houses of the chiefs were erected on artificial platforms, often several feet high. Cortez tells us ' that the one he lived in, near the Gulf of Dulce, consisted merely of a roof supported on posts. The temples, with one notable exception, were not more impos- Mlerrera : "Hist. Gen.," dec, I., book V., ch. V. ; Cogoiludo : "Hist, de Yucatan," p. 4. At the present day the Haidas, living on the Queen Char- lotte Islands, build similar boats capable of holding one hundred people, and are Hot afraid to undertake long voyages in them. ^ Juan de Grijalva : " Cronica de laOrdende N. P. S. Augustin," Mexico, 1624. " Las casas son de piedro y ladrillo, con la cubierta de paja o rama, y dun alguna de lanchas de piedra." Gomara : " Hist, de Mexico," Antwerp, 1554, folio 23. " The houses vi^ere of stone or brick and lyme, very artificially composed. To the square courts or first habitations of their houses they as- cended by ten or twelve steps. The roof was of reeds or stalks or herbs." " Purchas His Pilgrimes," London, 1625-6' * " Cartas," pp. 268, 426, 447. THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERLCA. 2/1 ing than the houses of the people. The images of the gods were kept in very dark subterranean rooms. Before each temple rose a truncated pyramid, resembling those of Florida or Mississippi. It was there that the sacrifices were offered up in the sight of all the people.' We have now summed up all that is really known of the Mayas. The temples and palaces of which the ruins are still standing give a better idea of their artistic taste and social organization ; but before commencing their study we must speak of the Nahuas, who overran in their turn these countries whose resources had become celebrated. As already stated, we must include under the title of Nahuas the tribes, evidently of the same origin, who suc- cessively dominated Anahuac.'' The Toltecs ^ were the first to establish a regular govern- ment, and this government gradually spread to the neigh- boring countries. These Toltecs arrived about the sixth century of our era; later they were replaced by the Chichimecs, who in their turn were to be vanquished by the combined forces of the Aztecs, Acolhuas, and Tepanecs. Finally the Aztecs, as conquerors of their former allies, re- mained sole masters of Mexico until the Spanish conquest. Between the sixth and sixteenth centuries then there were three distinct periods in the Nahuatl rule : that of the Toltecs, that of the Chichimecs, and that of the Aztecs. Between these two limits we must place the numerous in- vasions of the various people who, driven on as by an irre- * Oviedo : " Hist. Gen.," vol. IV., p. 27. Peter Martyr : dec, VL, book V. * The prefix A in Anahuac appears to be an abbreviation of Atl, water. Anahuac may therefore be translated as the country of the Nahuas by the water. It is difficult to fix the extent of this country. It varied greatly at dif- ferent periods. We think, however, that it was limited on the Atlantic by the l8th and 21st degrees of N. lat., and on the Pacific by the 14th and 19th. Becker : " On the Migrations of the Nahuas " ; Cong, des Americanistes, Lux- embourg, i'877. ' The name of Toltecs, which we take for want of a better, is founded on very insufficient data. Sahagun, one of the most ancient Spanish historians, was, we think, the first to use it, in his "Hist. Gen. de las Cosas de Nueva Espana." 272 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. sistible force, precipitated themselves toward this comman centre/ All these people belonged to one race, all spoke dialects apparently springing from the same source. This point has be^in hotly disputed. *' From a careful examination of the early authorities, I can but entertain the opinion that the Toltec, Chichimec, and Aztec languages are one." These conclusions of Bancroft's (vol. III., p. 724) are also mine. This is an important point ; the identity or the relation- ship of languages is incontestably an ethnological fact, which establishes the relationship of nations.^ Very little is known of this past ; from the time of the de- struction of the Xibalba confederation chronological data are most confused, and the history of Central America is shrouded in mystery which can be only very imperfectly penetrated. The ancient American races preserved the tradition of dis- tinct migrations, in their hieroglyphics and pictographs. Ac- cording to these traditions it was from a country situated on the north or the northwest that the Nahuas came. This is the version of all Spanish historians, and we may mention amongst them Duran, Veytia, Torquemada, Vetancurt, and Clavigero. Bancroft, however, (vol. V., pp. 219, 616, et. seq.) thinks these people came from the south. We are obliged to add that his reasons for this opinion do not appear to us conclusive. This country called Huehue-Tlapallan in the Popol-Vuh ; Tulan-Zuiwa by other historians,^ must be the same as the country of Amaqiiemecany the birthplace of the Chichimecs. Ferdinand Alva de Ixtlilxochitl, a Christian descendant of the rulers of the country, has endeavored to trace the ancient history of his race.* It is too easy to recognize in * Bancroft with his usual accuracy enumerates these people. We can but refer the reader to him. *' Native Races," vol. II,, pp. 103, et seq. '■' F. von Hellwald : " The American Migrations," " Smith. Cont.," 1866. * An attempt has been made to identify Tulan-Zuiwa with the seven caves that play such an important part in Aztec traditions. * " Relaciones " and " Hist. Chichimeca." Kingsborough : " Ant. of Mex.," vol. IX. THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA, 273 his narrative the religious influence of the Spanish mission- aries to accord it any great confidence. According to him seven famiUes were saved from the deluge. After long and arduous journeys their descendants settled in Huehue- Tlapallan, a fertile country and pleasant to live in, adds the historian.* **/XiS Fig. 114. — Quetzacoatl (Ethnographical Department of the Trocadero Museum, Paris). Their sojourn was long and their fortunes were various ; they were at last compelled to leave their adopted country after numerous defeats, and it was then that they went ^ Bancroft (vol. V., pp. 208-218) gives a summary of the whole of this his- tory, which is legendary rather than serious. T 274 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA, southward to found a new country. A singular fact in all the legends collected is the reported arrival of white and bearded strangers wearing black clothes, who have been absurdly identified as Buddhist missionaries, who came to preach new doctrines to the Nahuas. Of these strangers there is no cer- tain information, all that is definitely alleged being that the chief was called Quetzacoatl, or " the serpent covered with feathers" (fig. 114). The first Spanish writers choose to see in Quetzacoatl St. Thomas, who passed from India to America. Legends about him are numerous, and their variety justifies us in supposing that imaginary or real actions of several Maya and Nahua gods were attributed to him. All is confusion on this point.' He was worshipped by the people as the incarnation of Tonacateatl, the serpent sun, the creator of all things, the supreme god of the Nahuatl mythology. It is to Quetzacoatl that the myths and traditions of the Nahuas chiefly refer ; numerous temples were dedicated to him, his attributes were represented in bas-reliefs, and his image (fig. 115) is met with under the most different aspects, in terra-cotta and in stone, wherever excavations have been attempted. All the museums of Europe and America are well stocked with representations of Quetzacoatl ; those in the Louvre have been described by M. de Longp^rier ('* Notice sur les monuments exposes dans la Salle , des Ant. Am^ricaines "). The new ethnological museum of the Trocadero is not less rich. Thanks to the courtesy of its learned director Dr. Hamy we are able to give from it a curious figure of the god in question, (fig. 1 14) represented seated with crossed legs as is Buddha in his images. There appear to have been very hotly contested religious disputes ; constant wars broke out between the sectarians following the god Votan and those who worshipped Quetza- coatl, and the vanquished on either side perished under hor- rible tortures, or were compelled to fly their country. 'Bancroft, vol. III., gp. 450,451, et seq, MuUer : " Americanischen Urreligionen." Basel, l86q, p. 486, etc. THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 275 In spite of wars and discord the time of the Toltcc domi- nation is enshrined in the memory of the Nahuas as their golden age. The Toltecs, they tell us were tall, well- proportioned, with clear yellow complexions; their eyes Fig. 115. — Quetzacoatl. were black, their teeth very white ; their hair was black and glossy ; their lips were thick ; their noses were aquiline, and their foreheads were receding. Their beards were thin, and they had very little hair on their bodies ; the expression of 2/6 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. their mouths was sweet, but that of the upper part of their face severe. They were brave, but cruel, eager for revenge, and the religious rights practised by them were sanguinary. Intelligent and ready to learn, they were the first to make roads and aqueducts ; they knew how to utilize certain metals ; they could spin, weave and dye cloth, cut precious stones, build solid houses of stone cemented with lime mortar, found regular towns, and lastly build mounds which may justly be compared with those of the Mississippi valley/ To them popular gratitude attributes the invention of medi- cine, and the vapor bath {te^nazcalli). Certain plants" to which curative properties were attributed were the remedies mostly used. In the towns, we are told, were hospitals where the poor were received and cared for gratuitously.' Our information respecting the commerce of the Toltecs is very vague. We know, however, that it was important. At certain periods of the year regular fairs were held at Toltan and Cholula ; the products of the regions washed by both oceans were seen side by side with numerous objects made by the Toltecs themselves. These objects were of great variety, for though iron was unknown to them the Toltecs worked in gold, silver, copper, tin, and lead.* Their jewelry is celebrated, and the few valuable ornaments which escaped the rapacity of the Conquistadores are still justly admired. The Toltecs cut down trees with copper hatchets, and sculptured bas-reliefs and hieroglyphics with stone im- plements. For this purpose flint, porphyry, basalt, and above all, obsidian, the istli of the Mexicans, were used. Emeralds, ^ turquoises, amethysts, of which large deposits were found in various places, were sought after for making ^Bancroft, vol. I., p. 24. ^ " Casi todos sus males curan con yerbas." Gomara : " Hist, de Mexico," Antwerp, 1554, fol. 117. ^ " En las cuidades principales * * * habea hospitales dotadas de rentas y vasallos, donde se resabian y curaban los enfermos pobres." Las Casas : " Hist. Apol." MS. quoted by Bancroft, vol. II., p. 597. * Ixtlilxochitl : " Relaciones." Kingsborough, vol. IX., p. 332. ^ " Gli smeraldi erano tanto comuni, che non v' era signora che non ne avesse." Clavigero : " St. Ant. del Messico," vol, II., pp. 206-7. THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERLCA. 2// jewelry for both men and women. At Cholula a famous kind of pottery was made, including vases and the utensils in daily use, censers, and idols for the temples of the gods and common ornaments for the people. The weapons of the Toltecs resembled those of the Mayas. Like them, too, they wore garments padded with cotton, forming regular armor impenetrable to arrows and javelins. Their round shields called chimallis were made of light and flexible bamboos, and those of their chiefs were ornamented with plaques of gold, insignia of the rank of their owners. Cremation appears to have been practised very early. It is said that the Nahuas burned the bodies of their chiefs, so as to be able to carry their ashes about with them in their migrations ; Ixtlilxochitl speaks of a Chichimec chief being killed in war, whose body was burned on the field of battle.' The body of Topiltzin, the last ruler of the Toltec race, was also burned. With the common people, however, burial was the usual mode of disposing of the dead^ ; such was the purpose of the hundreds of tumuli still in existence near Teotihuacan.^ Amongst the Chichimecs, on the con- trary, cremation was the general practice.* Human sacri- fices ^ accompanied funeral ceremonies ; women were burned alive upon the funeral pile of their husbands, and they ac- cepted this cruel death with joy, for it opened to them the first celestial sphere, where they could follow their husbands. If they refused to submit to this sacrifice, their future ^ "Relaciones," loc. cit., pp. 325, 327, 332, 388. ' " La gente menuda comunmente se enterrana," Gomara, loc. cit., fol. 308. ' Sahagun : " Hist. Gen.," vol. III., book X., p. 141. Ixtlilxochitl, loc. cit., p. 327. ^Torquemada: " Monarquia Indiana," Madrid, 1723, vol. I., pp. 60, 72, 87. ^ The victims were generally prisoners of war. At royal funerals were also offered up those who were bom in the five complementary days of their year, which were looked upon as of bad omen. Ixtlilxochitl, loc. cit., p. 379 and 388. Veytia : "Hist. Antigua de Mejico," Mexico, 1836, vol. III., pp» 8, etseq. 278 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. life had to be passed in Mictlan, a gloomy and solitary- abode. The Toltecs formed a grand confederation of tribes, under the government of hereditary chiefs. By a somewhat strange condition, of which we know no other example in the his- tory of races, the rulers could only reign for a cycle of years {Xuihrnolpilli). — This cycle was fixed at fifty-two years, and when this time, which, it must be admitted, was of considerable length, was accomplished, the chief handed over to his successor the power and insignia of ofifice. . An- other obligation, httle in harmony with the customs of the Nahuas, with whom concubinage was legal, was imposed upon the chief : he could not have more than one wife, and if she died before him, he was forbidden to re-marry, and he could not even take a concubine. Second marriage was also forbidden to the wives of rulers.' The traditions which have come down to us of the mag- nificence of the Toltec rulers are interesting, and probably much exaggerated. The palace of Quetzacoatl," according to these legends, contained four principal rooms: the first opened on the east and was called the Gilded Chamber ; its walls were covered with finely chased plaques of gold ; an Emerald and Turquoise Room w^as on the west, and as its name implies, the walls were encrusted with these stones ; the walls of the southern room were ornamented with shells of brilliant colors, set in plaques of silver ; and lastly, the northern room was of finely wrought red jasper. In another palace, the walls of all the rooms were hidden by tapestries of feathers ; in one the feathers were yellow ; in another, blue taken from the wings of a bird called Xeuhtototl. In the southern room the feathers were white, and in that on the north they were red.^ Side by side with the Toltecs, in the mountainous regions of the north of Mexico, lived numerous savage tribes, in- ' Bancroft, vol. II., p. 265. ' We should have remarked that the termination tl, so characteristic of the Nahuatl language, is met with again in the Indian dialects of the Pacific coast, 'Sahagun, " Hist. Gen.," vol. III., book X., p. 107. THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 2/9 eluded under the general name of Chichimecs, of which the more important were the Fames, Otomes, Pintos, Micho- caques, and Tarascos. These people, chiefly of the Nahuatl race, and coming originally from the same district as the Toltecs, were plunged in the most complete barbarism. They despised all culture, and their only occupation was to hunt game in the forests which covered a great part of their territory, even to the summit of the loftiest mountains. No flesh came amiss to them ; they ate wolves, pumas, weasels, moles, and mice ; failing them, lizards, snakes, grasshoppers and earth-worms.* Spanish historians report that in the sixteenth century the Chichimecs wandered about completely naked, or wearing only the skins of beasts, which they flung over their shoulders, with the hair inside in the winter and outside in the summer. Most of them lived in caves, or rock-shelters. Some of them, however, knew how to shelter themselves, either by placing a roof of palm-leaves upon posts sunk in the ground, or by driving trunks of trees into the earth, which were then bound together with creepers. Where wood was scarce, they replaced it with clay, dried in the sun and cut into adobes. Inside these huts hung a few reed mats, which with gourds and very rude pottery made up all their household goods. On this pottery, however, a certain artistic feeling is already discernible, and black figures, executed with taste, often stand out upon a red ground. Constantly at war with their neighbors, they often under- took raids, and could repulse with energy every attack upon their own territory. Their weapons were bows and arrows,, slings, with which they flung little pottery balls, which caused dangerous wounds, and above all, clubs, which were formidable weapons in their hands.^ The warriors wore a bone at their waist, and on this bone, in testimony of their courage, they made a mark for every * Jos. de Acosta, " Hist. Natural y moral de las Yndias." Seville, 1580. ' Ixtlilxochitl : " Hist. Chic," /. c, p. 214. Gomara : /. c, p. 298. Torque- mada: /. c, p. 38. 280 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. enemy that they killed. The prisoners were treated with unheard-of cruelty, and perished under the most horrible torture. The conqueror often scalped them on the field of battle, and the bleeding scalp became a glorious trophy. The heads of the victims were carried in triumph round the camps, in the midst of dances and rejoicings celebrating the victory. The horror and terror with which the Toltecs re- garded these people can be imagined. They called them barbarians and drinkers of blood, on account of their taste for the blood of their victims, and their habit of eating strips of raw flesh. This reputation survived their defeat, and after the Spanish conquest, Zarfate^ speaks of them as the greatest homicides, and the greatest thieves in the whole world. The very name of Chichimec, which is said to be derived from chichi iog, was a grave insult. Rude though they were, the Chichimecs had a religion. They adored the sun as the supreme god,'' and they also worshipped lightning, represented by the god MixcoatP (the Serpent of Clouds), who, like the antique Jupiter, was fig- ured with thunder-bolts in his hands. Nearly all these independent tribes, always at war with each other, obeyed chiefs selected by themselves. Some, however, acknowledged no authority, and merely elected a warrior to lead them to battle. Still some laws appear to have been observed amongst these wild races : children could not marry without the consent of their parents, and the violation of this rule involved the death of those guilty of it. Marriage was pronounced null if, the day after the wed- ding, the husband declared his wife not to be a virgin. Herrera, moreover, says that the Chichimecs could only have one wife, though it is true that they repudiated her on the * Reproduced by Alegre, "Hist, de la Campania de Jesus en Nueva Espana." Mexico, 1841, vol. I., p. 281. * Alegre, /. c, vol. I., p. 279. ^Also called Ixtac Mixcoatl, the white nebulous serpent ; recent re- searches point to the conclusion that he was the same as Taras, the chief god of the Tarascos ; or Comaxtli, the god of the Teochichimecs. Brinton, ♦' The Myths of the New World." New York. 1S68. TI/E PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA. ^^26l slightest pretext, to replace her by another. These wivB5^^^== ^ were practically slaves; on them fell all the work of the house, the preparation of food, the weaving of cloth, the making of mats and pottery, the felling of trees, and the fetching of the wood and water needed by the whole family. The cares of maternity made no break in their arduous labor; whilst they were engaged in them they merely hung a basket upon a tree, in which they put their children, whom they often suckled till they were six or seven years old. Such is the picture given to us by historians of the barba- rians who were to conquer the Toltecs. What seems still more difficult to believe, is that the conquerors at once adopted the manners, customs, and social status of the con- quered, and the Chichimec supremacy was nothing more than a continuation of the Toltec. Must we then admit that, toward the end of the eleventh century or the be- ginning of the twelfth, after unknown revolutions and struggles, these savage tribes obtained the supremacy, and in their turn dominated Central America? Is it not more natural to conclude that there is some confusion in the ac- count of the Spanish chroniclers, the sole sources of our in- formation ? This confusion may be thus explained. The name of Chichimec was given alike to the barbarous tribes of the north and to the chiefs of Tezcuco. It might then have been these latter, allied perhaps with a few wilder tribes, who were the true conquerors of the Toltecs. The culture of the Tezcuans was no less advanced than that of the nation they were destined to reduce to sub- mission. The chiefs of Tezcuco are reported to have been as magnificent as those of the Toltecs. Ixtlilxochitl ^ gives an undoubtedly exaggerated account of the palaces, gar- dens, and lakes, made at great cost, and of the manage- ment of the forests preserved for hunting, which may be ascribed to a natural desire to magnify the importance of his race in a manner which would compel the admir- *"Hist. Chichimeca." Kingsborough, "Ant. of Mex.," vol. IX., p. 251. 282 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. ation of its conquerors, accustomed as the latter were to kings and courts belonging to a totally distinct stage of culture. He has pretended to enumerate the names of towns which had to supply the service of the ruling chief. Twenty-eight amongst them had to furnish men to take care of the palace ; five others, the servants immedi- ately attached to the person of the chief; whilst eight provinces sent gardeners, foresters and laborers. Tezcuco was built on the eastern bank of the Lake of Mexico ; the waters are dried up, and the modern town is several miles off. But few traces remain of its alleged grandeur. Mayer speaks of substructures of adobes, covering squares of 400 feet. They are supposed to be the foundations of ancient pyramids ; bits of pottery, numerous idols, chips of obsidian, and other rubbish, have been picked up all about them. The power of the Chichimec chief who invaded the country of the Toltecs is still further illustrated, if we attach importance to such evidence as we have cited, by the num- ber of those who followed him in this expedition. Accord- ing to the historian quoted above (pp. 337-375), Xolotl had under his orders 3,202,000 men and women, and he is care- ful to add that he does not include amongst them the chil- dren who accompanied their mothers. The absurdity of this is obvious. Torquemada,* though he confesses that this account may appear exaggerated, relates that the historic paintings which are relied on to atttest these facts, are sup- posed to enumerate a million warriors, under the order of six grand chiefs and twenty thousand or even twenty-two thousand chiefs of inferior rank. Nothing can be more ob- scure than the date of this invasion. Veytia (" Hist. Ant. Mej.," vol. II., p. 7) fixes the Chichimec victory in 11 17; Ixtlilxochitl seems to confuse the facts, or at least he assigns to them several different dates, varying from 962 to 10 15 (" Ant. of Mex.," vol. IX., pp. 208, 337, 395, 45 1). Clavigero speaks of 11 70. Other historians will have it that the fall of the Toltec league preceded the Chichimec invasion. ' " Monarquia Indiana," vol. I., p. 44. THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 283 They differ as much about the facts as about the dates. In truth the evidence throughout is more legendary than his- torical. The Toltecs, enervated by luxury, pleasure, and the most shameful debauchery, decimated by pestilental maladies, abandoned by the allies they had oppressed and by their own subjects, who in consequence of a religious schism had emigrated in great numbers to more favored regions, yet gave proof, in this supreme danger, of manly energy. Their chief Acxtitl called all his subjects to arms ; the old men and children took weapons in hand ; Xochitl, mother of the chief, is said to have been killed fighting valiantly at the head of a legion of Amazons. But these efforts came too late ; the Toltecs were completely defeated and nearly exterminated, after repeated conflicts lasting several days.' Tolan their capital was taken ; the country submitted ; and Xolotl took the title of Chichimecatl Tecuhtli, the great chief of the Chichimecs. His descendants added to this pompous title that of Huactlatohani, lord of the world. To confirm his power, he divided the country into several provinces, which he gave in fief to his principal officers on condition of their subordination to him ; and by a skilful policy he planned that his eldest son Nopaltzin should marry a daughter of the Toltec ruling family.'* It is not our intention to narrate the supposed history of the Chichimecs. We may mention among the Chichimec chiefs who succeeded Xolotl, his son Nopaltzin, Tlotzin, Pochotl, who ruled from 1305 to 1359, Ixtlilxochitl, who died about 1419, Tezozomoc, who usurped the power of the son of Ixtlilxochitl, and reigned eight years, and lastly Maxtla, who possessed himself of the chieftainship by the murder of his eldest brother.' Their history is the relation of a succession of revolts, bloody wars, conspiracies, and * We follow the account given by Ixtlilxochitl ; that of Veytia, " Hist. Ant. Mej," vol. I., p. 302-3) presents notable differences ; so does that of Brasseur de Bourbourg (" Hist. des. Nat. Civ.," vol. I., p. 405, etc.). ' Brasseur de Bourbourg, quoted above, vol. I., p. 236. ' See Bancroft, /. r., vol. V., chs. V., VI., and VII. 284 PRE^HISTORIC AMERICA. revolutions, which was to end in 143 1 in the triple alliance of the Aztecs, Acolhuas, and Tepanecs, and then in the ephem- eral triumph of the Aztecs as conquerors of all their rivals. The Tepanecs and the Acolhuas had been the faithful al- lies of Xolotl in his struggles with the Toltecs, and their chiefs took a subordinate place in the new league. They had long been established in Anahuac when the Aztecs arrived • there. Both had probably formed part of some of the numerous immigrations which succeeded each other in Central America.^ All these men came from a country to which the unanimous accounts of the chroniclers give the name of Aztlan. Where was this land, this officina gentimn, which throughout more than five centuries sent southward whole nations, all speaking the same language ; practising the same rights ; accepting the same cosmogony ; all under the rule of sacerdotal orders strictly supervised by priests ; with the same divisions of time, the same hieroglyphical paintings, the same taste for noting and registering events ; and who understood each other without difficulty, recogniz- ing their common origin ? There are few points more ob- scure and more hotly contested than the situation of Aztlan. It has been sought in turn in California, Mississippi, New Mexico, Florida, Zacatecas, and in yet other regions. All these hypotheses have been brought forward, and there is something to be said for them all. The importance of the question is assuredly considerable, for, if there be a connec- tion between the Nahuas and the Northern Indians, it is to Aztlan that we must look for it.* 'Bancroft, loc. ci^. vol. V., p. 305. F. von Hellwald : "The American Migrations," Smith. Contr., 1866. 'Brasseur de Bourbourg ("Hist, des Nat. Civilisees," vol. II., p. 292) places Aztlan in California ; Humboldt (" Researches concerning the institu- tions and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of America," translated by Helen Maria Williams, 1814), about 42° north latitude. Foster: "Preh. Races," p. 340. Vetancurt (" Teatro Mexicano," part II., p. 20) speaks of New Mexico. Fontaine (" How the World was Peopled," p. 149) looks upon the earthworks of Mississippi as witnesses to Aztec migrations. Pritchard ("Nat. Hist, of Man," vol. II., pp. 514-5) sees in the Moquis the last de- scendants of the Atzecs. Bandelier says, in speaking of Chicomoztoc (the THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERLCA. 285 The Aztecs had left Aztlan at the same time as the people who had preceded them in Anahuac ; but according to tradition they halted for a long time at Chicomoztoc* It was not therefore until much later, between 1 186 and 1194,'' if we adopt the date given by the Codex Chimalpopoca, that they established themselves at Chapultepec. Their early settlement was full of difficulties ; overcome by their neighbors, with whom they were perpetually at war, they were forced to leave the country where they had established themselves, and compelled to take refuge in the midst of al- most inaccessible marshes, dotted here and there by a few wretched islets of sand. It was on one of these islets that they founded Tenochtitlan, or Mexico.' Hunting and fish- ing could not long supply the needs of a population which rapidly increased. By dint of hard work the Aztecs managed to make gardens in the water in which grew maize and other plants.* Then, the water of the lake being seven caves) : " These caves are in Aztlan, a country which we all know to be toward the north and connected with Florida." " Report, Peabody Museum," vol. II., p. 95, etc.). Clavigero (" St. Ant, del Messico," vol. I., p. 156) mentions the Colorado as the stream that all accounts say was crossed by the emigrants; whilst Boturini (" Idea de una nueva hist, general de la America Septentrional" pp. 126-8) has it that the Gulf of California is referred to. Lastly Bancroft (quoted above, vol. V., p. 322), who believes Aztlan to have been in the south near Anahuac, concludes thus : " We have no means of de- termining, in a manner at all satisfactory, whether Aztlan and Chicomoztoc were in Central America or in Zacalecas and Jalisco ; nor indeed of proving that they were not in Alaska, in New Mexico, or on the Mississippi," a remark with which we heartily concur. * Bancroft gives the whole of the march of the Aztecs. Chicomoztoc is sup- posed to be the seven caves celebrated in all legends. Generally, Chicomoztoc is placed in the same place as Aztlan. 'In 1 140 or in 1 189, according to two different dates given by IxtlilxochitI ; in 1245, according to Clavigero ; in 1298, according to Veylia, Gama, and Gal- latin ; in 133 1, according to Gondra. The margin as we see is wide. The Codex Chimalpopoca is dated May 22, 1538. Bancroft may be consulted (/. r., vol. v., p. 192), who gives interesting details bearing upon the question. ^ This settlement took place about 1325. Duran cited by Bancroft (/. c, vol. I., chap. IV-VI. ; Veytia : " Hist. Ant. de Mejico," vol. II., p. 156 ; Torquc- mada: *' Mon. Ind.," vol. I., p. 92, 288, et seq. ; IxtlilxochitI : /. r., vol. IX., p, 461 ; F. de AlvaredoTezozomoc, " Chron. Mexicana," Kingsborough, vol. IX. *Bandelier : '* Report, Peabody Museum," vol. II., p. 403. These gardens 286 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. brackish, they obtained, by paying an annual tribute, the right of fetching from the shore the fresh water which was needed in their homes. Such was the humble beginning of the Aztecs ; but their subsequent history is even more confused than that of the people of whom we have been speaking. One of the causes of this confusion was the constant rivalry between the two regions of Tenochtitlan and Tezcuco, and the want of care taken by the first Spanish chroniclers in distinguishing between the facts relating to each of the two countries. It seems that as we approach the end of this bloody era tradition itself is effaced. As under the Chichimec domina- tion we find whole series of wars and revolts, of struggles and submissions. Brasseur de Bourbourg (/. r., vol. III., p. 194, et seq.^) gives a full account of them. Unfortunately he is inexact on a multitude of points. The chief wars car- ried on by the Aztecs were against the kingdom of Micho- acan, inhabited by the Tarascos, a branch of the Toltecs, on the west ; and against the Miztecs and Zapotecs on the south. In the midst of this tumult the power of the Aztecs was ever on the increase. Their alliance with the Acolhuas and the Tepanecs, against Maxtla, the last Chichimec chief, end- ing with his defeat, inaugurated a new era in their history. After the victory a confederation was formed between the conquerors. Nezahualcoyotl, son of Ixtlilxochitl, from whom Tezozomoc had usurped the chieftainship, in his turn took the title of Chichimecatl Tecuhtli. Tezcuco was his capital ; that of the Tepanecs was Tlacolpan ; and that of the Aztecs, as we have seen, Tenochtitlan. From this moment the Aztecs progressed rapidly ; from the marshes where they had found a refuge after their first disasters, their power spread to the shores of the two oceans. Their conquests were won by their victorious arms alone ; no town voluntarily accepted their yoke ; no nation sought their alliances. The people, were harshly oppressed by their have been termed ' ' floating " but they were probably merely soft and swampy islets. THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 28/ foreign conquerors and loaded with odious taxes. Tribute was paid in kind, and consisted of cereals, cotton garments, pipes, rushes, aromatic spices, and various other articles. Some towns of the Pacific were compelled to send annually 4,(X)0 bunches of feathers, 200 sacks of cacao, forty wild-cat skins, and 160 birds of a rare species. The Zapotecs were mulcted to the extent of forty sheets of gold, of a fixed weight, and twenty sacks of cochineal. Certain nomad tribes had to contribute jars filled with gold dust. The towns of the Gulf of Mexico sent 20,000 bunches of feathers, six emerald necklaces, twenty rings of amber or gold, and 16,000 packages of gum. All had to contribute to the tribute, and those who were too wretched to do so were obliged to furnish a certain number of serpents or scorpions. It is alleged that Alonso de Ojeda and Alonso de Mata, men- tioned among the companions of Cortes, as the first to enter the so-called royal palace of Mexico, noticed some carefully piled up sacks. They hastened to take possession of them, hoping for a rich booty. These bags were filled with lice, and were part of the tribute of a province. Torquemada {loc, cit.j vol. i., p. 461), who Is responsible for this extra- ordinary statement, adds : " Ai quien diga, que non eran Piojos sino Gusanillos ; pero Alonso de Ojeda en sus memori- ales lo certifica de vista, y lo mismo Alonso de Mata." * The conquered people, pillaged and oppressed by Mexican traders, who were very expert in this kind of traffic, were constantly in revolt. Every fresh rising was quenched in blood, and thousands of human victims perished on the altars of Mexico in honor of the victories. In reading these de- tails, we understand the hatred of the vanquished, and the devotion manifested by the allies of Cortes." Mexico., the first houses of which had been a few miserable reed or earth huts, grew with the power of its inhabitants, and soon became a town worthy of the dominion of which *Tezozomoc may also be consulted. " Cron. Mex.," Kingsborough, vol. IX. Clavigero : "St. Ant. del Messico," vol. I. p. 275. Bancroft, /. c. vol. II. p. 233 and 234. '^ Bancroft, /. c, vol. V., p. 481. 288 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. it was the capital/ On every side rose the buildings of the rulers, and temples of the native or foreign gods'^ ; for as in ancient Rome, the divinities of the conquered people be- came those of the conquerors. Nor were more useful works wanting. Viaducts, supplemented by large bridges con- structed on scientific principles, were erected by the tribu- tary or allied tribes, rendering communication easy.' A dyke seven or eight miles long, and, according to different accounts, thirty to sixty feet wide, was intended to protect the city of Mexico against inundations.* The inhabitants were supplied with water by means of aqueducts, and as early as 1446, this water was conducted from Chapultepec to the capital through earthenware pipes. The prosperity of Tezcuco was not inferior to that of Mexico, and the figures of two of its rulers stand out to re- lieve the monotony of the history of Anahuac. Thanks to the wise administration of Nezahualcoyotl, Tezcuco had be- come the centre of the art and culture of that people.'* The chief himself was a distinguished poet. Ixtlilxochitl, his descendant in the direct line, has preserved some of his poems," which were still famous at the time of the conquest. ^ The Mexican chiefs previous to the Spanish conquest were Itzcoatl who died, 1440 ; Montezuma I. to 1469 ; Axayacatl to 148 1 ; Tizoc to i486 ; Ahuizotl to 1503 ; Montezuma II. to 1520. * Torquemada alleges that there were more than forty thousand temples or teocallis in Mexico. ^ " Hay sus puentes de muy anchas, y muy grandes vigas juntas y recias y bien labradas, y tales que por muchas dellas pueden passar diez de caballo juntos a la par." Cortes : " Cartas," p. 203. ^Veytia, vol. III., p. 247. Torquemada, vol. I., p. 157. Clavigero, vol. I., p. 233. Brasseur de Bourbourg, vol III., p. 228. ^ Sagahun describes the education given to the sons and daughters of the chief. He mentions a discourse addressed by Nezahualcoyotl to his children, remarkable for the elevated sentiments displayed in it. ' Four odes are given in Lord Kingsborough's collection (vol. VIII., pp. no- li 5). One is an imprecation against Tezozomoc, who had usurped the throne of Nezahualcoyotl's ancestors ; another is the ode on the vicissitudes of life, from which the above quotation is taken ; the third, recited at a banquet, is a comparison between the chiefs of Anahuac and precious stones. Lastly, the fourth, celebrates the dedication of a royal palace, and enlarges upon the per- ishable nature of earthly grandeur. Bancroft, (vol. II,, p. 494) gives an Eng- THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 289 We will only quote one strophe, from an ode on the vicissi- tudes of life, in which the chief, speaking of himself, writes: *' No, thou shalt not be forgotten ; no, the good which thou hast done shall not be lost unto men ; for is not the throne which thou occupiest the gift of the matchless God, the pow- erful creator of all things, who makes and who brings down chiefs and rulers ? " We may add that the succeeding strophes express similar sentiments; which it seems strange to find in a man in the state of culture of the Mexicans ; they breathe disdain of that pomp of which the chief had learned to feel the vanity; if they are genuine, they would justify to a certain degree the assertion of the Spanish historian, who tells us that Nezahualcoyotl worshipped one invisible god, the ap- pearance of whom it was impossible for mortal to conceive. Nezahualcoyotl died about 1472 ; he left only one legiti- mate son, but more than a hundred children by his concu- bines ; that son — Nezahuapilli— succeeded him ; he proved himself, like his father, skilful in war, just, always severe, often inexorable^ merciful toward the weak, generous toward his subjects. Like his father, he Was addicted to pleasure, and he is said to have had in his palace more than two thou- sand concubines. He had also several legitimate wives. The daughter of Axacayatl, of whom we shall speak, was among the number, as were three nieces of Tizoc. Among his wives Was a daughter of Axacayatl, ruler of Mexico ; she was very young, and a private palace had been assigned to her until the time when the marriage should be consummated. She was noted for her beauty, and the king paid her frequent visits ; each time he noticed, in a room where he was, a great number of statues covered with rich robes ; but, not wishing to thwart his wife in her tastes, he made no remark upon them. One day he saw the queen's ring on the finger of one of his principal courtiers. His sus- picions were awakened, and the same evening he paid a visit lish translation of two of these odes. F. W. v. Muller (" Reisen in den Ver- einit^ten Staten, Canada, und Mexico," Leipzig, 1864, vol. III., pp. 128-141) re- publishes two other odes previously unknown. U 290 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA, to the palace of Chalchiuhuenetzin. The queen, according to the asseverations of her attendants, was asleep. Neza- huapilli went into her room ; a lay figure, dressed in the queen's clothes, occupied her place in the royal bed. The king, whose suspicions were justly confirmed, pursued his researches, and in a secret part of the palace he saw his young wife, completely naked, dancing with three of his principal officers. The statues were those of her lovers, and by a strange whim she had had them represented in the costume which they had worn the first time they had enjoyed her favors. The punishment was terrible ; not- withstanding the respect due to her rank, she was strangled ; and with her perished her lovers, the women in her ser- vice, and more than two thousand persons convicted of complicity, or of even the slig'htest knowledge of her licentiousness.' This is not the only example of severity which legend narrates of Nezahualpilli. His eldest son had shown re- markable talents as a general. He was the favorite of the chief, who conferred upon him the title of Tlatecail, the greatest honor which a Tezcuan could receive. One day he was accused of having spoken too freely to one of his father's concubines. The chief examined the guilty persons, and the fact being proved, he did not hesitate to put into practice a law which he had made ; he condemned his son to death, and caused him to be executed in spite of the supplications of his courtiers.'' Another of his sons had begun the build- ing of a palace, without having obtained authority for so doing, or having distinguished himself in war by any of those actions which alone gave the right to possess a sep- arate palace ; the chief caused him also to be executed. Some years afterward, Tezozomoc, father-in-law of Monte- zuma, was accused of adultery ; the judges, out of regard for his rank, had only condemned him to banishment. Neza- * Torquemada, vol. I., p. 184. Ixtlilxochitl : "Hist. Chichemec," loc. cit., pp. 265, 267, 271. * Torquemada : " Mon. Ind.," vol. I., p. 165. THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 291 hualpilli ordered him to be strangled, thereby greatly irritat- ing the chiefs who were his allies. The last years of the life of the ruler of Tezcuco were sad. A prophecy, in which the Tezcuans placed great confidence, gave out that the god Quetzacoatl was to return to the earth, in the same form as at his first appearance. The date, fixed by this prophecy, arrived, and coincided with the dis- embarkation of the Spaniards. The superstitious mind of the chief was singularly impressed by this fact. From that time he shut himself up in his house, occupied himself no more with public affairs, and even refused to receive those to whom he had entrusted the management of affairs. His death, now supposed to have been in 15 15, was long un- known, and a legend which grew up round his name has been perpetuated to the present day ; the Tezcuans im- agined that death could not touch him, and that he had re- tired to Amaquemecan, the land of his ancestors.' The death of Nezahualpilla, and the quarrels which arose between his sons, promoted the ambitious schemes of Montezuma. He was for a short time undisputed master of Anahuac, but fortune soon abandoned him ; he knew neither how to fight the Spanish, to treat with them, or to ensure the devotion of his own people. The empire of the Aztecs was doomed, and Anahuac, like the whole of the New World, was to belong to other races, for whom by unfathom- able decrees the future of America was reserved. So far as we can judge at the present day, religious ideas were met with amongst all the American races, but with the most striking contrasts. Some tribes had not got beyond fetichism, the most degraded and primitive form of wor- ship. Idolatry, which prevailed amongst the nations of Central America, was a higher form ; the savage adored the waves of the sea, the trees of the forest, the waters of the spring, the stars of the firmament, the stones beneath his ' Torquemada, vol. I., p. 216. Ixtlilxochitl : " Hist. Chic," pp. 2S2, 388, 4 c Tezozomoc, Kingsboroiigh, vol. IX., p. 178, Fray Diego Duran places his death in 1509, " Hist, de las Indias de la Nueva Espana," written between 1567 and 15S1, and published at Mexico by D. Ramirez in 1867. I" 2 292 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. feet ; he invested with supernatural power the first object to strike his eyes or impress his imagination. The idolater is superior to the fetich worshipper ; he adores the god of the sun, of the sea, of the forest, of the spring ; he often clothes this god, before whom he trembles, with a human form (figs. 114, 115, 116), and attributes to him the passions of his own leart. Monotheism, from a purely philosophical point of view, is a great advance. It has been said that the Aztecs adored an invisible god, Teotl, the supreme master, but this Fig. 116. — Idol in terra-cotta. fact is disputed, and every thing goes to prove on the contrary that polytheism existed amongst them, and a very inferior polytheism, too, to that, for instance, which history records among the Egyptians or the Greeks.' The number of sec- ondary divinities was very considerable ; every tribe, every family, every profession had its patrons, and thought to do honor to its gods by severe fasts, prolonged chastity, baths- purifications, and often also cruel mortifications. ' " Their mythology, as far as we know it, presents a great number of uncon- nected gods, without apparent system or unity of design." Gallatin, "Am. Ant. Soc. Trans.," vol. I., p. 352. THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 293 Before celebrating the feast of the god Camaxtli, for instance, the priests were bound to rigorously abstain from indulgence for a period of a hundred and sixty days ; and during that time they pierced their tongues with little pointed sticks having about the diameter of a quill. Among all the tribes of the Nahuatl race religious holi- days were frequent, each of them being accompanied by hu- man sacrifices. On such occasions, in accordance with a strictly observed rite, infants at the breast were offered to the god of rain ; these infants were sacrificed on high moun- tains, or thrown into the lake which washes the city of Fig. 117. — Obsidian knife used by the sacrificing priests (Trocadero Museum). Mexico. In the following month sacrifices no less bloody were required by the god of the goldsmiths. Hundreds of miserable captives were successively led to the chief priest ; the breast was cut open with an obsidian knife (figs. 117, 118); the heart was torn out and offered, still palpitating, to the idol. At other festivals, if they can be so called, the skin of the unfortunate sufferer was stripped off ; gladiators clothed themselves in it for mock combats ; or in an outbreak of zeal priests prided themselves in wearing the spoils (figs. 119 and 120) until the skins fell into rags. "They smelt like dead dogs," adds Sahagun, from whom we take this detail. 294 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA, The hideous trophy was then hung up in the temple of Yapico, or, if it had belonged to a prisoner taken in war, returned to the offerer of the victim. The rejoicings in honor of Mixcoatl, the god ^ of hunting and thunder, were inaugurated by battues, in which animals — such as deer, coyotes, hares, rabbits — fell beneath the arrows of the devotees. Then came the inevitable human sacrifices ; a Fig. 1 1 8. — Sacrificial collar (Trocadero Museum). great fire was lighted, into which the men threw pipes or vases (fig. I2i), thewoipen distaffs, in the hope that the god would repay their offerings with interest in the life awaiting them beyond the grave. "^ ^ Perhaps we should say the goddess ; this point has been very much disputed. ' Bancroft (vol. II., chap. IX., and vol. III., pp. 355-412) gives a very exact account of these celebrations, to which we refer those who wish to know more about them. THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERLCA. 295 On the day consecrated to Xuihtecutli, the god of fire, the captives were carried in triumph, on the shoulders of the priests, to the platform from which the teocalli rose, and then flung into a red-hot furnace. From every side crowds gathered to gloat over the agony of the unfortunate wretches ; and dances, rejoicings, and feasts in which human flesh was the chief dainty, ended the day. The most delicate morsels were reserved for the priests. Part of the body was given Fig. 119. — Mexican carving representing an Aztec priest clothed in a human skin. back to the person furnishing the victim. Sahagun tells us that this meat was cooked with hominy. The dish was called Tlacatlaotli, and the master of the slave sacrificed was not allowed to eat it, for the slave was looked upon as one of the family. At Tlascala, one month of the year was dedicated to sen- sual pleasures. It was inaugurated by the sacrifice of nu- merous virgins. At other times, a young man and a j^oung girl, chosen on account of their beauty, were maintained for 296 PRE-IIISTORIC AMERICA. a whole year in royal luxury, and then led to the sacrifice as victims acceptable to the gods. Such were the religious rites which were observed every year. There were also extraordinary rites, on the occasion of victory, the accession of a ruler, or the dedication of a temple. The last event was frequent in Mexico, and also Fig. 120.— -Vase used in sacrifices, the head representing that of a priest cov- ered with human skin. From the Trpcadero Museum. the occasion for a sacrifice of hecatombs of victims. If the Aztecs were visited by a defeat, a pestilential malady, a fam- ine, or an earthquake, the people eagerly offered fresh sacri- fices to appease the anger of the gods. The dedication by Ahuizotl of the great temple of Huitzilopochtli,^ in 1487, ^Cancroft's text is as folloM-s : "Native Races," vol. III., p. 288,289. " Iluitzilopochtli, Huitziloputzli, or Vitziliputzili, was the god of war, and the THE PEOPLE OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 2gy is alleged to have been celebrated by the butchery of 72,344 victims ; ^ the priests were wearied with striking, and had to be successively replaced ; but the people did not tire of the frightful butchery ; they responded by exclamations of joy to the groans of the dying.^ Under Montezuma II., twelve thousand captives are said to have perished at the inaugura- tion of a mysterious stone, brought to Mexico at great ex- pense, and destined to form the sacrificial altar," but fortu- especially national god of the Mexicans. Some said that he was a purely spiritual being, others that a woman had borne him after miraculous conception. This legend, following Clavigero, ran as follows : In the ancient city of Tula lived a most devout woman, Coatlicne by name. Walking one day in the tem- ple, as her custom was, she saw a little ball of feathers floating down from heaven, which, taking without thought, she put into her bosom. The walk being ended, however, she could not find the ball, and wondered much, all the more that soon after this she found herself pregnant. She had already many children, who now, to avert this dishonor of their house, conspired to kill her ; at which she was sorely troubled. But, from the midst of her womb the god spoke : ' Fear not, O my mother, for this danger will I turn to our great honor and glory.' And lo, Huitzilopochtli, perfect as Pallas Athena, was instantly born, springing up with a mighty war shout, grasping the shield and the glitter- ing spear. His left leg and his head were adorned with plumes of green ; his face, arms, and thighs barred terribly with lines of blue. He fell upon the un- natural children, slew them all, and endowed his mother with their spoils. And from that day forth his names were Tezahuitl, Terror, and Tetzauhteotl, Ter- rible God." ^ Recent researches justify us in believing that the number of the victims has been greatly exaggerated by the Spanish historians. Admitting this exagger-. aiion, which seems to us necessary, it is probable that only in the interior of Africa could such wholesale slaughter as really occurred in Mexico be paralleled. ^ Torquemada, vol. I., p. i86. Vetancurt : " Teatro Mex.," vol. II., p. 37. ^ Sacrificial altars may be classed under three different types : (i) the Tekcatl, generally of obsidian or serpentine, and of convex form, so that the breast of the victim is placed in such a position as to facilitate the task of the sacrificing priest. "The height of the altar," says Duran ("Hist, de las, Yndias de Nueva Espana "), reached to a man's waist, and its length might be eight feet. (2) the Temalacatl, a stone of cylindrical form, to which was bound the poor wretch, who had to show his courage by defending himself from his assailants with the help of nothing but a shield. As soon as an arrow struck him, he was taken to the Tehcatl and his heart at once plucked out by the sacri-^ ficing priest. (3) the Cuauhxicalli, a concave stone with a basin in the centre,, in which the blood was collected. It is to this last type that belongs the cele- brated stone discovered in Mexico in 1791. "Ann. del Museo Nacional,'* Mexico, 1877 and 1878. 298 PRE-HISTORIC AMERICA. nately the end of these sacrifices was approaching; in 15 18, when Juan de Grijalva was disembarking on the coast, where Vera Cruz now stands, numerous prisoners were being immo- lated in honor of the dedication of the Temple of Coatlan.^ This was the last of these horrible scenes ; the Spanish con- querors at once abolished them. In addition to the extraordinary sacrifices which we have described, the alleged number of victims who perished at the annual saturnalia passes all belief. Zumarraga, the first bishop of Mexico, in a letter dated June 12, 1531, estimates it at no less than twenty thou- sand ; and Gomara ^ brings it up even to fifty thousand. These numbers, which are contradict- ed by Las Casas, in his cele- brated treatise," are without doubt most grossly exaggerat- ed ; but certain facts remain un- deniable, which show that the Aztecs had remained sanguinary and barbarous in spite of their apparent culture. Fig. 121.— Vase found in the island The hope or expectation of of Los Sacrificios. ^ jj^^ beyond the tomb exists amongst all human races. Man, however degraded he is supposed to be, shrinks from the thought of complete anni- hilation, and aspires to a happier Hfe than that he is leading. Before the introduction of Christianity, the conception of this life was one of purely material happiness, which varied according to the degree of culture. The Greeks dreamt of purer joys in Elysium than the sensual Mussulman in the arms of his houris, or the Scandinavian Viking in the midst of perpetual feasts. With the savage the idea of a future life is weak ; his notions of the past and of the future are so * Torquemada, /.