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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS 



vol. 59 



the School of American Archaeology, paper impressions and photo- 

 graphs of the inscriptions on the rock were made. El Morro is an 

 enormous sandstone rock rising about 200 feet from the plain, and 

 eroded in such fantastic forms as to give it the appearance of a great 

 castle, hence its Spanish name, El Morro. A small spring formerly 

 existing at the rock made it a convenient camping place for the 

 Spanish explorers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and 

 the smooth face of " the castle " well adapted it to receive the inscrip- 

 tions of the conquerors of that early period. The earliest inscription, 

 and historically the most important, is that of Juan de Oriate, colonizer 

 of New Mexico and the founder of the city of Santa Fe in 1606. It 



Fig. 33. — Indian taking down specimens from the top of the 1,800-foot mesa. 

 Photograph by Hodge. 



was in this year that Oriate, on his return from a trip to the head of the 

 Gulf of California, visited El Morro and carved this inscription: 

 " Passed by here the officer Don Juan de Oriate from the discovery of 

 the South Sea, April 16, year 1606." 



There are nineteen other Spanish inscriptions of almost equal 

 importance, among them that of Don Diego de Vargas, who in 1692 

 conquered the Pueblo Indians after their rebellion against Spanish 

 authority in 1680. The paper impressions, or " squeezes," have been 

 transferred to the National Museum, where plaster casts have been 

 made of them for permanent preservation. 



Although El Morro has been made a National Monument by proc- 

 lamation of the President, there is no local custodian, and conse- 



