30 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 
the School of American Archeology, paper impressions and photo- 
graphs of the inscriptions on the rock were made. EI 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 Onate, colonizer 
of New Mexico and the founder of the city of Santa Fé in 1606. It 
Fic. 33.—Indian taking down specimens from the top of the 1,800-foot mesa. 
Photograph by Hodge. 
was in this year that Onate, 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 Onate 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- 
