^^rS ^ov^ :^ u. 'T ^ ^"-^^^ ^^^ ^o V .""JAj:. « 4 o^ "oV^ .0- .0^ •-^0 .^" ^^^x. ^O .^" . . , . . -^^ A*^ « c ^ "^ *^ ' 'o , ^°-^^ *0 y • I A DESCRIPTIVE READING ON I ARIZONA, CLIFF R0INS iir ILLUSTRATED BY TWELVE LANTERN SLIDES ^^^l'^ ^ oen^c ^ % <^ — A©>>-^^ WILLIAM H. RAU PHILADELPHIA 1890 Copyright, i8go, by William H. Rau, h' '<^ 0/ ILLUSTRATIONS. 1. Grand Canon of the Colorado. 2. Colorado River in the Canon. 3. Canon, Grand Gulch. 4. San Xavier del Bac, Tucson. 5. Geronimo, Apache War Chief. 6. Apache Squaw and Cradle. 7. The Town of Moqui. 8. Moqui Town — Shung-A-Paw-Wee. 9. House of the Captain, Shung-A-Paw-Wee. 10. Cliff Ruins on the Rio San Juan. 11. Ruin, Cave Town Canon, Rio de Chelley. 12. Cave Town Canon, Rio de Chelley. ARIZONA, CLIFF RUINS. At the time when the western boundary of the southern portion of our Republic was declared by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to be the Rio Grande, there lay south of the territory of New Mexico, a strip of what was supposed to be an arid, worthless country, nearly if not quite destitute of water, inter- sected by a number of ranges of mountains and vast deserts, inhabited chiefly by Indians, and utterly use- less for any practical purpose that could be imagined. This tract was acquired by purchase from the Mexi- can government in 1853, and for it the United States paid the sum of ten millions of dollars. The com- missioners who made the treaty were greatly surprised and perplexed at the manifest reluctance of Mexico to part with this strip of apparently worthless land ; and those few Americans who took any interest in the acts of the commissioners, were equally perplexed to know what the United States proposed to do with the purchase. Not one of our people then realized or imagined that by this purchase the United States had acquired a large portion of the identical country for which Cortez imperilled the possession of an empire; for which Coronado's expedition was fitted out ; for which De Soto so long sought but never found ; the land of which the Spanish poets had for centuries sung, and (731) 73 2 ARIZONA, CLIFF RUINS. for which kings had so long sighed, the country that for three hundred years had yielded by far the greater portion of the immense treasury that filled the coffers of Spain. Containing the richest mines in the world, the vast quantities of precious metal found there had given to the territory its present name — Arizona, sil- ver bearing. Arizona covers a broad space, and has all sorts of climate, from the burning sands of the lower Gila, the hottest place in the United States, to the never-melting snow on its northern Sierras. Along the New Mexi- can border stretches an elevated forested region where water is plentiful and much agricultural land exists, and near her limits is some of the most wild and beautiful scenery in the world. 1. Graiia Canon of the Colorado. — None of the works of Nature on the American Continent, where many things are done by her upon a scale of grandeur elsewhere unknown, approach in magnificence the won- ders of the canons of the Colorado. In southwestern Utah the Grand and Green unite in a pathway shad- owed by walls a rriile high,- and form the Rio Colora- do, — the great Red River which had been the wonder of the world. Here is a canon or a series of closely connected canons, a thousand miles in length, bound- ed by vertical escarpments in some places 6000 feet high. The top of these cliffs is the level of the gen- eral plateau ; the bed of the river has sunk into the plain, cutting the narrow channel straight down. Just above the mouth of the Colorado Chiquito is a single canon sixty-five miles long ; andfromjust below that river gorge the Colorado's tortuous chasm stretches ARIZONA, CLIFF RUINS. " 733 on again two hundred and seventeen miles without a break. All the scenic features of the canon are on a gigantic scale, strange and weird. The Grand Canon, the most profound chasm known on the globe, is for a distance of over two hundred miles, at no point less than four thousand feet deep. The head of the Grand canon is in the northeastern part of Arizona, and it runs out in the northwestern part. Its general course is westly, but it makes two great bends to the south. There are in the canon no perpendicular cliffs more than three thousand feet in height. At that elevation from the river the sides slope back. In many places it is possible to find gorges or side canons, cutting down through the upper cliffs, by which it is possible to approach to the edge of the wall which rises per- pendicularly from the river. 2, Colorado River in the Canon. — At various places the chasm is cleft through the primal granite rock to the depth of twenty-eight hundred feet. In those parts of the canon the chasm is narrow, the walls rugged, broken and precipitous, and the naviga- tion of the river exceedingly dangerous. Following a transverse valley, we may pass through the upper line of cliffs to the edge of a chasm cut in red sand- stone and vermilion colored limestone. Making our way to the edge of the precipice, welook down direct- ly upon the river. Those who have passed through the canon, inform us that the river below is a raging torrent ; and yet it looks from the top of the cliff like a small, smooth, sluggish stream. The view looking up the canon is magnificent and beautiful beyond the most extravagant conception of the imagination. 734 ARIZONA, CLIFF RUINS. The eye looks for miles through what appears like a narrow valley formed by the upper line of cliffs. The many colored rocks project in vast headlands, wrought into beautiful but gigantic architectural forms. Within an hour of the time of sunset the effect is strangely weird and dazzling. Every moment until the light is gone, the scene shifts, as one monumental pile passes into shade, and another, before unobserved, into light. 3. Canon, Grand Gulch. — But most beautiful is this wonderful canon where the cool, dark green foli- age is contrasted with the warm and tender rose hues of the cliffs. The splendor of coloring no one can describe ; and below is the emerald river. On massive cliff walls Nature's hand, Has turned time's sun-worn pages, In faces carved and figures hewn We trace the work of ages. While watching the sides of these grand walls, list- ening to the confused mutterings of the restless waters, whose continual flow through geologic ages have so seldom awakened a sound. beyond their own echoes, — comes the thought that the time necessary for the cre- ation, full development and extinction of one single animal race, falls into insignificance in comparison with the eras that have passed while this erosive agent of nature was stealing slowly down to its pres- ent bed. 4, San Xavier del Bac, Tucson.— Tucson has great antiquity ; it was founded by one of the early Spanish expeditions that came up the Santa Cruz valley in ARIZONA, CLIFF RUINS. 735 quest of the reputed treasures of the Aztecs in the fabled ''land of Cibola." In the vicinity is one of the loveliest possible historic remains, the old mission church of San Xaxier del Bac. It is not surpassed either in Mexico or out of it for quaintness, the qual- ities of form and color, and the gentle s'entiment of melancholy that appeal to the artistic sense. Old Father Time has trodden with heavy steps on the green wooden balconies in front, broken out the floors, and left parts of them dangling free. The original sweet-toned bronze bells still hang in one of the tow- ers The space between the towers, terminating in a scrolled gable, is enriched with escutcheons and rampant lions, wreathed in foliage. Niches hold gro- tesque broken statues, and complicated pilasters flank the entrance doorway, the whole formed in stucco upon a basis of moulded brick. It is roofed with numerous simple domes and half-domes. The date has disappeared from the facade, but it is believed to be about 1 768, and the present edifice was built on the ruins of a former one, going back to 1654. The interior is frescoed with angels and evangelists, and the chancel walls are almost covered with gilding, but stained and battered. All within is broad medi- aeval richness and obscurity. All without is broad sunshine falling upon the peaceful village. A few old men trudge about, concerning themselves with their bake ovens and some water jars and strings of dried squashes ; and women pass by with tall loads of hay and other produce carried in a hamper of sticks and netting on their backs. Nobody concerns himself about visitors except a foolishly smiling boy who has brought us the key. 73^ ARIZONA, CLIFF RUINS. 5. Geronimo, Apache War Chief. — The far- famed war chief of the Apaches is not particularly handsome, his face having the look of a wrinkled old woman. But he is not an old woman, not by any manner of means. It would be a safe statement to say that were he put in the field with weapons of, his choice, few men with the same weapons could be found to cope with him. Put him on a horse with one hour's start, and it would be a difficult task for a regiment of cavalry to bring him back. The Apaches are a tribe of Indians inured to hardship from their infancy. Small in stature, almost black in color, spare and tough ; asking no quarter and showing no mercy, they have long been — and the remnants are yet — the terrors of the plains of the far southwest. The Apache warrior can travel sixty miles without water, and his fleshless body is baked so hard that the blistering rays of the sun do not affect him. He never fights in the open, but can conceal himself be- hind a shrub three inches high, flattened out on the ground like a snake, and fire with deadly aim without more than raising his head. Even the old frontiers- man is no match for him. The treatment of the Apaches by the government it is not our place to criticise, sufficient to say that this man Geronimo, utterly worthless to himself or anyone else, has for years been at the head of a band of bloodthirsty murderers that have dealt death and desolation on every side, in spite of the efforts of the troops of this country and Mexico. 6. Apache Squaw and Cradle.^-The Apache wo- men are particularly ugly, fat, and dirty, and we look ARIZONA, CLIFF RUINS. 737 in vain for the beautiful squaws so graphically por- trayed by the novelists. Their hair hangs unkempt around them, and their principal clothing consists in remnants of dirty old blankets ; the expression on their faces is cruel and brutal, a look of cunning pervading each countenance. It is almost impossible to believe that the bright-eyed boy before us is one of this bloodthirsty tribe. The Indian idea of a cradle is very different from that of our gentle mothers in this age of enlightenment ; nor is the difference in appear- ance any greater than the difference in the child's training. When one of our white babies starts in to make a row he generally succeeds; at night in his cradle so soft and warm and comfortable, he thinks that other people are asleep, a luxury he does not propose to permit, and accordingly he proceeds to awake every- one within sound of his voice. What does mamma do? Makes a light, rocks her little darling, walks with it, talks to it, and makes an idiot of herself gen- erally. Transfer your view to a night in the far West in an Apache camp. Let young Mr. *' Man-with- the-bright-eyes " start up one wail, and the mother's hand is promptly pressed over its mouth, and the howl is effectually silenced. The baby can't kick, for he has been packed in his cradle ; — packed is the word^ for when he has been poked into the basket-like cocoon, rammed down like a wad in a gun, and strapped in, there is not much chance to kick. In daytime he is hung up like a dried cod fish to a convenient tree, and baby can tliink what he pleases, but there he stays, and quietly, too ; or perhaps he endures a long weary march, strapped to his mother's back, shaded by a little basket-like construction, he amuses himself 7.>.8 ARIZONA, CLIFF RUINS. with that delightful pastime of all babies, — sucking his thumb. 7. The Town of Moqui. — The Moqui's country- lies to the north and west of the San Francisco Moun- tain. It is an arid, barren country, deeply eroded by floods, and largely formed of steep mesas, volcanic peaks, and rocky canons, with a few fertile valleys interspersed among them. Their villages, of which there are seven, are built upon the very edge of some of the steepest of the rocky mesas, in so singular a manner that, at a little distance it is impossible for a stranger to distinguish them from the rocks, of which they appear to form a part. The first three of these towns are built upon a bluff of solid rock, about three hundred feet high, and one hundred and fifty feet in width, and are reached by steep paths and by steps cut into the rock in such a manner that they can only be approached by persons on foot. The houses are built of stone, are generally two stories high, and are laid in a mortar made of mud, which is brought from the valleys below upon the backs of men, there being no soil whatever upon the rock. Entrance to the houses is by ladders, there being no doors or windows in the lower stories. Our picture shows us Moqui, one of th : principal towns, which is called after the name of the tribe. 8. Moqui Town -Sliung--a-Paw- Wee. — The town before us rejoices in the euphonious Indian title, " Shung a-Paw-Wee," and is another of the Moqui villages. All the towns or villages have large water- tanks or reservoirs, constructed upon the rock, lined ARIZONA, CLIFF RUINS. 739 with masonry ; they are generally five or six feet in depth, and are "ised for collecting and holding rain water. Below each of these large tanks are smaller ones similarly constructed, and connected with those above by means of a pipe, through which water is conducted for the use of their stock. The stock con- sists entirely of sheep and goats, which are driven each day to pasture, the nearest grass being six miles away. They never plough or irrigate their lands, depend- ing entirely upon the natural fall of rain ; their only agricultural implement is a kind of hoe, with this they plant corn, beans, onions, melons, pumpkins, cotton, and a species of tobacco-plant in the valleys around them. One very singular fact in connection with the Moquis is deserving of especial mention : the people of the principal settlement, Harro, although living within two hundred yards of another large village, speak an. entirely different language from those of the remaining six villages, and seem to have preserved their manners and customs intact, as well as their language, for centuries. And while the people of Harro understand and can converse in the language spoken by the people of the other villages, the in- habitants of the other villages can neither understand nor converse in the language spoken by the people of Harro. 9. House of the Captain, Slimig'-a-Paw-Wee. — The population of the Moqui's villages numbers,, it is supposed, something over six thousand. Their government is an hereditary one, not necessarily 74° ARIZONA, CLIFF RUINS. descending from father to son, however, as any blood relation may be selected as determined by the choice of the people. Before us is the house of the Captain, or Cacique, at Shung-a-Paw-Wee. It is built in the usual terrace style, being strongly constructed of stone, and covered with a kind of stucco, made of mud and gravel. The only means of entrance is by a ladder ; and when all are in at night and the ladder drawn up, they are secure against the world. A Moqui village is a place of which one may well say, "Every man's house is his castle." Each house has its patron saint, represented by an ugly little Aztec image, made of wood or clay, gaudily painted and gorgeously decorated with feathers. These images are suspended by a string from the rafters of the houses, and are supposed to exert a great influence for weal or woe. Every village has a council chamber under ground, where the people are wont to congregate, to sit and smoke, and talk over the affairs of the nation. The only light or air is obtained from a scuttle in the roof, which also serves as a door. No description of the Moquis would be complete without mention of their marriage customs. The proposal of marriage always emanates from the fair damsel herself, who, after selecting the happy youth, informs her father of her choice, and he forthwith proposes to the father of the lucky swain, who is never known to refuse to sanction the choice. The preliminaries being thus happily arranged, the young man is required to present his bride with two pairs of moccasins, two pairs of fine blankets, two mattresses, and two sashes. The young woman, in her turn, is ARIZONA, CLIFF RUINS, 741 obliged to furnish a goodly store of eatables cooked by herself, as a proof that she is capable of making home attractive. Then the marriage is celebrated with dancing and feasting. 10. Cliff Ruins on the Rio San Juan. — In many parts of Arizona are found the rums of the homes of the Cliff Dwellers ; ruins which excite our wonder and admiration, and at the same time fill us with sad- ness, for these mute sentinels silently point to a civili- zation centuries old, which has not even the poor con- solation of a history to record its rise and fall. On the Rio San Jaun are very extensive ruins. Situated on a ledge at the foot of a precipitous cliff is an immense structure, built of pieces of hard, fine- grained, compact, gray sandstone — a material quite unknown in the present architecture of the region — to which age and the atmosphere have imparted a reddish tint. The layers or slabs are not thicker than three inches, and sometimes as thin as one-fourth of an inch. The masonry displays a combination of science and art, which can only be referred to a higher state of civilization and refinement than is to be found in the works of either the Mexicans or the Pueblos of to-day. So beautiful, dimJnutive, and true are the details of -the structure, as to give them at a little distance the appearance of a magnificent piece of mosaic work. The filling and backing of the walls is done in rubble masonry, the mortar, how- ever, showing no indications of the presence of lime. Their thickness at the base is a little more than three feet, while higher up it is less, diminishing by retreat- ij^g jogs on the inside from bottom to top. From the 742 ARIZONA,. CLIFF RUINS. immense size of this ruin it was probably the dvveUing- place of a whole community. 11. Ruin, Cave Towu Canon, Rio de Chelley. — On the Rio de Chelley are many of the remains and inter- esting relics of this earliest civilization in America. Located on a slanting ledge of rock, overhung by huge chiffs, from the valley below it is almost imposs- ible to distinguish them. They seem quite inaccessi- ble, and can be reached only by a staircase out in the face of the cliff. The structures rise several stories in height. The system of flooring was unhewn beams about six inches in diameter, from which the bark had been carefully removed ; they were laid trans- versely from w^all to wall, small peeled sticks about one inch in diameter, being laid across them; these were covered with grass, which with a layer of mud mortar, furnished the floor. These beams show no sign of saw or axe, but bear the marks of having been hacked off by some very imperfect implement. Many questions suggest themselves, not one of which we can answer satisfactorily. What could have induced these people to seek so lofty and inac- cessible a site? How did they procure water? From ■ whence came the large quantity of broken pottery with which the ground is covered in all these ruins ? *' These castled cliffs they made their dwelling, They lived and loved, they fought and fell, No faint, far voice comes to us telling More than these crumbling walls can tell. They lived their life, their fate fulfilling. Then drew their last faint, faltering breath." ARIZONA, CLIFF RUIKS. 743 12. Cave Town Canon, Kio cle Clielley. — It is evi- dent that this region was once densely populated. Our picture shows us how, without investigation it is very easy to pass the ruins by unnoticed, since their elevated positions and ruinous condition, render them ahi^ost invisible to the passing traveler. The inhabi- tants of these rock houses appear only to have con- sidered tjie capacities of their dwellings for defense, yet the perils of life due to location alone must have been considerable. There is no trace of metal in any of the ruins, and it is evident that the inhabitants were acquainted with the nse of stone implements only, as was the case with the builders of the cities of Central America. Some explorers are of the opinion that these people were a remnant of the Aztec race ; others say that they are undoubtedly of Toltec origin. Certain it is that these cave dwellings were the work of a great people, an intelligent nation, whose civilzation was far superior to that of the tribes in the neighborhood. There they stand, magnificent, though decaying mon- uments of the energy, skill and civilization of a mighty people who flourished but a few hundred years since, yet have now no history, save the crumbling evidences of their works to tell of their rise and fall. H 122 75 589 ^ J LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 017 135 5916^ HHPilHiiliiiitli