l6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 63 



people. They are generally pecked on the sides of boulders or on 

 the face of the cliffs in the neighborhood of prehistoric sites of dwell- 

 ings. Although there is only a remote likeness between these picto- 

 graphs and figures on pottery, several animal forms are common to 

 the two. 



The most important group of pictographs (fig. 3) seen by the 

 author are situated about nine miles from Deming in the western 

 foot-hills of Cook's Peak.' Some of the pictographs recall decora- 

 tions on bowls from Pajarito Park. 



Another large collection of Mimbres pictographs, visited by the 

 author, is found at Rock Canyon, three or four miles above Oldtown, 

 at a point where the cliffs approach the western bank of the river. On 

 the river terrace not far above this collection of pictures, also on the 

 right bank of the river, lies the extensive ruin of a prehistoric settle- 

 ment, the walls of which project slightly above the surface. This ruin 

 has been dug into at several points revealing several fine pieces of 

 pottery, fragments of metates, and other implements, which are said 

 to have been found in the rooms. A mile down the valley overlooking 

 the river there is another cluster of pictures at a ruin called " Indian 

 graveyard," probably because human skeletons have been dug out of 

 the floors of rooms. 



MORTARS IN ROCK IN PLACE 



One of the characteristic features of the Mimbres ruins, but not 

 peculiar to them, are mortars or circular depressions worn in the 

 horizontal surface of rock in place. They are commonly supposed 

 to have been used as mortars for pounding corn, and vary in size from 

 two inches to a foot in diameter, being generally a foot deep. We 

 find them occurring alone or in clusters. Good examples of such 

 depressions are found near the Byron ruin, in the neighborhood of 

 the ruins along Whiskey Creek, at Oldtown, and elsewhere. There is 

 a fine cluster of these mortars nine miles from Deming, near the 

 pictographs in the Cook's Range. Similar mortars have been 

 repeatedly described and often figured. Mr. Webster has given the 

 most complete account of this type of mortars in a description of the 

 ancient ruins near Cook's Peak." On the surface of the southwestern 



^ The author visited these rocks in company with Dr. Swope, who has known 

 of them for many years. 



"Archaeological and Ethnological. Researches in Southwestern New Mexico, 

 Part 4. (The Archaeological Bulletin, vol. 5, No. 2, p. 21.) 



