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NATURE 



[Oct. 



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such a manner as to indicate exactly where found, together with 

 all such other facts in connection with it as will be of use to 

 the student. 



The Expedition has for its object the study of the ancient 

 civilization of the south-west, and if the results of the first year's 

 work can be taken as an index of what it will accomplish, we 

 may confidently look for a solution of this perplexing question. 

 Already a large and valuable collection illustrative of the culture 

 of these prehistoric people has been secured, and it is a matter of 

 congratulation that it has been so collected that the scientific 

 student can get all out of -it that it can be made to tell. 



Mr. Cushing's ethnological training has been in such a direction 

 as to give him a peculiar fitness for the position which he 

 occupies, having spent six years or more in studying the social 

 institutions, customs, habits, religion, and language of the 

 modern Pueblo Indians, and this thorough knowledge of these 

 \i indispensable to the proper interpretation of the facts gathered 

 by the Expedition. The anthropological work is in charge of Dr. 

 Herman Ten Kate, a native of Holland, son of the distinguished 

 artist of that name. Dr. J. L. Wortman, the Anatomist of the 

 Army Medical Museum of Washington, is his assistant. Mr. 

 Adolph Bandelier, whose knowledge of the early Spanish and 

 Mexican records is well known, is connected with the Expedition 

 as historian. Mr. Chas. A. Garlick is the civil engineer and 

 topographer. Mr. Fred. Hodge is the draughtsman and secretary, 

 while Mr. Yates is the photographer. Mrs. dishing and her 

 sister, Miss Margaret Magill, are also members of the party, and 

 have rendered important aid in the classification and care of the 

 specimens. Miss Magill's artistic talents have been of special 

 service to the Expedition by reason of her clever sketches and 

 drawings of the specimens in side. 



The locality in which explorations have so far been conducted 

 comprises the Gila and Salt River Valleys, situated for the most 

 part in South-Western Arizona. They are fertile tracts of large 

 extent, and there can be little doubt that they were once occupied 

 by a thrifty and prosperous people, whose history remains un- 

 written. The Rio Salado (Salt River) is the principal tributary 

 of the Gila, and affords abundant water to irrigate its valley, a 

 tract including a half a million acres, or more. The land for 

 the most part is covered with cactus, sage brush, grease wood, 

 and mesquite trees, but when cleared and brought under irriga- 

 tion is made to produce abundantly almost any and all the crops 

 of civilized husbandry. Fruits and cereals grow in profusion, 

 and the land is said to be well adapted to the growth of cotton 

 and tobacco. The land rises from the river at a gentle slope, a 

 fact which is of great importance to a system of irrigation. At 

 the upper or north-western end of the valley, however, the river 

 is bordered upon the south by a mesa which slopes away to the 

 Gila, no mountains intervening between the streams at this 

 point. Water brought from the Salt River upon this mesa can 

 be made to flow a distance of twenty miles to the south, or into 

 the Gila, and will irrigate a tract many miles in extent. This 

 these ancient people did, and, scattered over this plain from the 

 Salt to the Gila are to be found the ruins of their villages, towns, 

 and cities, long since crumbled into dust, and now overgrown 

 with a thick mesquite forest. 



Their houses were for the most part built along the main 

 irrigating canals, and are now indicated by irregular truncated 

 mounds, of various dimensions, thickly strewn with fragments of 

 broken pottery. Excavating these mounds, the foundations or 

 ground plans of the buildings were discovered. Some of them 

 were large, often several hundred feet square, and, according to 

 Mr. Cushing, three or four stories in height. They were con- 

 structed usually of adobe bricks, but in some instances they 

 inclosed the adobe betwfeen rows of upright posts wattled with 

 cane or willow. Each house would contain from two to five 

 hundred rooms, and is thought by Mr. Cushing to have been the 

 house of a clan. A considerable grouping of the communal 

 houses constitutes what Mr, Cushing has called the cities of Los 

 Muertos, Los Hornos, Los Guanacas, Los Pueblitas, Los 

 Acequias, &c. They are not built with the regularity of our 

 modern cities. Los Muertos (the city of the dead) can be traced 

 for three or four miles, and includes some forty or fifty of these 

 great communal structures that have been so far unearthed, but 

 if systematic search be continued double or quadruple this 

 number will probably be found. 



A characteristic feature of each of these cities, and one which 

 probably led Mr. Cushing to designate them as such, is a ruin 

 of much greater dimensions than any of the rest, which is 

 invariably surrounded by a strong outside wall, inclosing a 



considerable space or yard. This inclosed space around the 

 large building or temple is supposed to have been for the purpose 

 of protection in times of war, when pressed by an enemy, and 

 the large building itself served not only as a store-house for 

 a reserve supply of provisions, but also, if we are to judge from 

 the remains and implements, was the abode of the ruler or chief 

 priest of the people of the town. 



While no accurate computations have been attempted, it is 

 supposed, taking into consideration the number of to*ns or 

 cities known to have existed in the Gila and Salt River 

 Valleys that the population could not have been less than two 

 hundred thousand. There is every reason to believe that these 

 places were not successively, but simultaneously occupied, 

 especially when we remember that they constructed large 

 irrigating canals for a distance of fifteen or twenty miles, which 

 with their rude implements mu.t have been a gigantic under- 

 taking. Their irrigating system was extensive and complete, 

 and covered almost, if not quite, all the cultivable parts of the 

 two valleys. The present inhabitants of the soil have taken 

 advantage of these ancient waterways, constructed at such 

 expenditure of prehistoric labour, and they now run many of 

 their irrigating canals in these ditches. These ancient canals 

 were constructed with care. A cross-section exhibits a series of 

 terraces widening towards the top, so that a large or small 

 quantity of water could be accommodated and a good depth 

 secured. After the canals were dug they were puddled and then 

 burnt, probably by filling them with brush and then setting it on 

 fire, so that they almost equalled terra- cotta in durability. Mr. 

 Cushing is of opinion that they were not used for irrigation 

 alone, but for navigation as well. There are indications that 

 they used rafts made of reeds (balsas) for navigating these canals. 

 and this appears more probable from the heavy materials that 

 have been brought from a distance. It seems certain that they 

 floated the pine timber used in their building operations down 

 the Salt and Gila Rivers from the distant mountains : it is too 

 much to suppose that they carried this material upon their backs 

 for a distance of a hundred miles. 



The burial customs of these people were peculiar, and con- 

 sisted of two methods, viz. cremation and interment. In the 

 case of the priestly class the body was wrapped in cotton cloths 

 and deposited beneath the floor of the house. Generally the 

 bodies were laid along the east wall of the building, with head 

 to the east, although this custom was not invariable. When a 

 person of this clan died, a grave was dug in the floor, a foot and 

 a half or two feet deep, and the body placed therein ; it was then 

 covered with adobe mud and packed firmly around the corpse. 

 When this covering dried, and the soft parts and wrappings dis- 

 appeared, the skeleton would be found inclosed in a rude sort 

 of sarcophagus. In nu oierous instances, two, and more rarely 

 three, skeletons were found in one grave. In all such cases of 

 double or triple burial the skeletons indicate that it was male and 

 female, or one male and two females. Buried with each cadaver 

 was a food vessel and a water jar, and sometimes several of 

 each, often highly decorated. That they were wrapped in 

 cloths, presumably of cotton, is evident from the impressions of 

 the cloth made upon the soft adobe covering. Fragments of 

 this material were found and preserved, notwithstanding its 

 decomposed condition. 



Connected with each communal structure is what Mr. Cushing 

 aptly terms a pyral mound, since the bodies of the common class 

 were burned and their possessions destroyed upon this spat. 

 The ashes and fragments of the charred bones were collected and 

 placed in a burial urn, which had been previously " killed," and 

 the whole buried in close proximity to the spot. The accumula- 

 tions of this charred and fragmentary material now make mounds 

 of sizable dimensions, which in itself would indicate a long period 

 of occupancy. In the case of the pyral burials everything was 

 broken and destroyed, while in the priestly b.irials the accom- 

 paniments were always whole. In one case of the priestly 

 burials not only were the usual accompaniments pre.-ent, but a 

 quantity of arrow-points, spear-heads, and a large stone knife, 

 together with numerous turquoise ornaments and materials for 

 inlaying, were found deposited in the grave. This individual 

 Mr. Cushing identified from his paraphernalia as belonging in 

 all probability to the priesthood of some war order, and this 

 seems more probable when we come to examine the skeleton, 

 for he had sustained a fracture of the arm, and one knee was 

 stiff from anchylosis, no doubt the scars of hard-fought battles. 



Of the priestly burials something like four or five hundred 

 were unearthed in the various towns, while many more of the 



