MEMOIRS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



155 



now becoming rapidly filled with white settlers, and the ancient town sites are being covered with 

 (arms and crossed with irrigating ditches, all antiquarian problems become more difficult of solu 

 tion every day. 



ANTIQUITY. 



In 1539, when Friar Marcos made his journey to Zufii, and when, a year later, Coronado 

 marched with an army to the same point, they passed within about 100 miles of these towns. Had 

 they been inhabited in those days, the travelers would doubtless have heard of them, for the fame 

 of the less significant Seven Cities of Cibola reached them in the heart of Mexico and induced 

 them to travel 200 miles further northeast than the mouth of the Salado. They were ruins, no 

 doubt, three hundred and fifty years ago, or at the beginning of the historic period of Arizona. 

 No vestige of anything belonging to the iron age or of-European origin was brought to light in 

 the excavation. The writer knows of other ruins in New Mexico and Arizona which, from recorded 



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FIG. 15. Skeleton of man supposed to have been killed by earthquake. 



evidence, are known to have fallen to decay and been abandoned long before the historic period; 

 \ct in these textile fabrics and other perishable articles are still found fairly preserved, and par 

 ticularly the hair of the dead has survived the process of decay. In Los Muertos were found no 

 hair, no cerements, nothing that might have escaped destruction in a thousand years. It is 

 thought by Mr.Cushingthatfroinonethousandtotwo thousand years may easily have elapsed since, 

 the priests of Los Muertos worshiped in its standing temples. TheCasa (Irandeof the (iila was a 

 ruin standing in the sixteenth century probably much as it stands today; three and a half centuries 

 have wrought little change in it ; but the similar priest-temples of the neighboring Salt River are 

 mere mounds of earth. The writer has seen two photographs of the Casa Grande of the (Mia taken 

 from the same point of view, one twenty years after the other; yet in the pictures no difference 

 can be discerned in the most minute points and prominences of the ruin, which were subject only 

 to the modifying influences of rain and wind, though the parts within the easy reach of human 

 hands have sull ered notably. 



