132 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



I felt like a pincushion long before our search came to an end. If I 

 chanced to slip on a pebble or on the dry grass that carpets the sev- 

 eral terraces, a cactus was waiting wherever I landed. Never before 

 in all my southwestern experience had I personally encountered such 

 an infinite variety of cacti. There were little spiny buttons, almost 

 invisible among the stones. There were long cacti and short cacti ; 

 round cacti and flat cacti. Great leathery pads strung end to end lay 

 spoke-like in the grass and out upon weathered rock surfaces. Chollas 

 spread their loose-jointed arms to bar each narrow way. As every 

 stranger to Arizona deserts can testify, passing these diabolical plants 

 with impunity is well-nigh impossible. 



Despite cacti on narrow ledges ; despite a September sun that turned 

 bare cliffs into veritable griddles; despite tangled oaks and catclaw, 

 we finally solved the riddle of the baskets. They were not of Basket 

 Maker origin, as I had dared to hope. They were not even Pueblo. 

 Apache women wove them and there is every reason to believe they 

 were hidden away during those uncertain years from 1871 to 1886 

 when the Apaches were making a last desperate effort to retain their 

 mountains and their freedom. 



In the conglomerate formation east and west from Arsenic Spring 

 are numerous small caves. Some few of these were temporarily in- 

 habited by Pueblo families at a time when pressure from nomadic 

 enemies was especially keen. We know this from the defensive mea- 

 sures taken — concealment of storerooms and dwellings ; rock barri- 

 cades fronting caves ; loopholes in the walls, etc. 



The largest settlement we observed consisted of four detached 

 bouses toward the front of a roomy cave (fig. 121). Here, as else- 

 where, the masonry was rude and so placed as to take advantage of 

 protruding rock masses. Except at Arsenic Spring and in the other 

 large cave a mile to the west, no perceptible accumulation of ashes was 

 apparent ; no indication of prolonged residence. Potsherds, rare at 

 best, correlate with the Showlow-Pinedale area, 50 miles or so to the 

 north, which Haury ' has dated in the late fourteenth century. We 

 observed no evidence of earlier occupancy. To the extent, therefore, 

 that we failed to find what I dreamed might be found this brief ad- 

 venture along the southwest face of the Nantacs may be regarded as a 

 wild goose chase. 



1 Haury, E. W., and Hargrave, L. L., Recently dated Pueblo ruins in Arizona. 

 Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 82, no. 11, 1931. 



