File:Annual report of the Bureau of ethnology to the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (1896) (14591888679).jpg

Identifier: annualreportofbu0v13powe (find matches)
Title: Annual report of the Bureau of ethnology to the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution ..
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Powell, John Wesley, 1834-1902
Subjects:
Publisher: Washington, D.C., G.P.O.
Contributing Library: Brigham Young University Hawaii, Joseph F. Smith Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Consortium of Church Libraries and Archives

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ur and dept by tlie quality of the rock. The work ofexcavation has not been an extremely .rreat one, even with the imperfect imple-ments that must have been used, as the shale is for the most part soft and friable. A hard stratum served as a floor, and projecting in many places made a narrowplatform by which the inhabitants were enabled to pass along from one house toanother. Small fragments of mortar still adln red to the firmer parts of the walls, fromwhich it is inferred that they were at ore time plastered. It is also extremely prob-able that they were walled up in fron and furnished with doors and windows, yetno fragment of wall has been preserve . Indeed, so great has been the erosion thatmany of the caves have been almost obliterated, and are now not deep enough togive shelter to a bird or bat. Walled fronts, the author states, were observed frequently on theRio Mancos, where there are many well-preserved specimens. He ■Tenth Ann. Rep. U. S. Geol. Survey, 1876, pp. 288-391. i
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mindelekf) POWELL ON CAVATE LODGES. 223 described a large group situated on that stream, about 10 miles aboveits mouth, as follows: The walls were in many places quite well preserved and new looking, while allabout, high and low, were others in all stages of decay. In one place in particular,a picturesque outstanding promontory has been full of dwellings, literally honey-combed by this earth-burrowing race, and as one from below views the ragged,window-pierced crags (see plate xxx) he is unconsciously led to wonder if they arenot the ruins of some ancient castle, behind whose moldering walls are hidden thedread secrets of a long-forgotten people; but a nearer approach quickly dispels suchfancies, for the windows prove to be only the doorways to shallow and irregularapartments, hardly sufficiently commodious for a race of pigmies. Neither the outeropenings nor the apertures that communicate between the caves are large enoughto allow a person of largo stature to pass, and one is led to

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