70 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 66 
sculptures, tell an eloquent story of the civilization and power of 
the ancient people. 
Especial attention was given to the collection of data and drawings 
to be utilized in preparing panoramic views of the several cities 
visited, and every effort was made to obtain information regarding 
the technical methods employed by the ancient sculptors and builders. 
The quarries from which the stone was obtained were too deeply 
buried in tropical vegetation to yield up their story without extensive 
excavation and the methods employed in dressing and carving the 
stone remain in large part undetermined. Certain chipped and ground 
stone implements that could have served in dressing the stones used 
in building were found in numbers, but the story of the carving, 
especially of the very deep carving of the monuments of Copan, 
remains unrevealed. Although it is thought that stone tools may 
have been equal to the task, it 1s believed by some that without 
bronze the work could not have been done. There are, however, 
no traces of the use of bronze by the Central Americans. 
PREHISTORIC REMAINS IN NEW MEXICO, COLORADO, AND 
UTAH 
Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 
spent a little less than five months in the field studying the remains 
of some of the prehistoric buildings scattered over western New 
Mexico and Colorado, and eastern Utah. The first month of that 
time he endeavored to increase our knowledge of the prehistoric 
migration trail of the Hopi fire people. The months of July, August, 
and September, were devoted to excavations and intensive studies of 
a ruined pueblo at Mummy Lake in the Mesa Verde National Park, 
Colorado. In October Dr. Fewkes investigated certain ancient 
towers above Hill Canyon, Utah, one of the most northerly localities 
in which these structures have yet been found. 
The inhabitants of the Hopi villages in northeastern Arizona are 
recognized by ethnologists as a composite people, made up of several 
clans whose ancestors in some instances spoke different tongues, 
having drifted into this isolated region of waterless mesas from all 
directions. The descendants of these clans, some now already 
absorbed and their language assimilated, others, retaining their 
original speech and now a people of homogeneous culture, inhabit 
villages perched on high plateaus. The first colony, or the original 
