74 KANSAS Academy of Science. 



turkey's foot, the one to the left pointing to the town of Lagunas; the center, to the 

 pueblo of Acoma, in plain sight upon its high rock, thirty miles distant; the third, 

 towards the Zuni pueblo. These paths are for the Deity of the mountain to walk in 

 when he comes out to visit his people. 



Down the northern slope of the mountain, through a forest of white-pine timber, 

 runs a living stream of pure water, which supplies the primitive Mexican town of 

 San Mateo, at the mountain's foot, and furnishes water to irrigate six or seven hun- 

 dred acres of the valley, which the Mexicans cultivate as rudely as did the unknown 

 people who builded a city and cultivated the same land centuries ago. 



It was for the purpose of exploring these ruins that I visited this very interesting 

 locality, especially interesting as it was but recently discovered by the owner of the 

 land, Mr. Amado Chaves, with whose consent and assistance I employed some Mexi- 

 cans and undertook to excavate the main central building, which, at a casual glance, 

 appeared to be a natural mound of considerable size, composed of stone and earth, 

 and covered with a scant growth of grass and weeds, but which proved to be a large 

 communal building buried beneath the material of the fallen upper stories. Our ex- 

 cavation commenced at the northeast corner. Following the north wall 125 feet, 

 which was standing to the top of the first story, 16 feet high, at the northeast corner 

 we found a door 4 by 5^ feet, entering from the surface a room 14 feet wide, 14 feet 

 high, and 122 feet long, inside measure. This room was entirely filled and covered 

 with the material of the three or four stories fallen from above it. The door had 

 been roughly stoned up from the outside, after the destruction of the building (as I 

 afterward found), by people who had builded upon the ruins of the original building, 

 and in their turn had been destroyed. The walls of the building were made of hard, 

 smooth stone, skillfully laid in adobe mortar. The outside walls were 18 inches in 

 thickness, both faces smooth and true, the angles apparently true right angles. 



Near the door we uncovered a skeleton, which crumbled to pieces on exposure to 

 the air. Nothing was found with it but the hair, which had faded to a brown color. 

 Reports at the time stated it to be a white woman with red hair, and a string of 

 costly beads about her neck. The loose material filling this room consisted of the 

 fallen walls, adobe and cement floors, mingled with ashes, charred beams and plank, 

 and broken pottery. Of at least three stories above in the original construction of 

 the building, there was an accumulation of two feet of waste material — broken 

 stone, mortar, pottery, <fec. Instead of removing this, the builders had smoothed 

 and pounded it down, plastered it with adobe mortar, and then covered it with a 

 cement made of burnt gypsum, ashes, and pounded pumice stone, making a smooth, 

 hard, white floor. The walls of the building rested upon the original surface of the 

 soil. About fifteen feet from the entrance we exhumed a necklace of beads made 

 from shells, jet, silver, and a large and beautiful turquoise. In course of our exca- 

 vations we found numerous pottery vessels of various styles and patterns, broken 

 metals, the bones of deer and turkeys, and charred corn-cobs of a very small variety. 

 The building extended 150 feet south of this room, and was com})osed of innumer- 

 able small rooms, the labor of exploring which was far too great for me to under- 

 take. The eastern wall was very peculiar — consisting of projections, angles, and 

 curves, a sketch of which is shown on the opposite page. 



This ruin was situated on the north side of the rich valley at the foot of the 

 mountain, and traces of the ditch which brought the mountain stream by a circuitous 

 route around and above the cultivated land, through their town, could still be seen. 

 On all sides of this central building were the scattered remains of former habitations. 

 The earth seemed full of broken pottery, ashes, charcoal, flint-chips, arrow-points, 

 and other debris, to a depth of several feet. . At the foot of a low, standstoiie ridge 

 merely, a heavy rain exposed the top walls of a continuous series of connected rooms 



