22 - SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 68 



Indians as they are similar to those on the Dolores, and the pottery scattered 

 about is identical with that before found in so many places. It is very old 

 but of excellent quality made of red clay coated with white and handsomely 

 figured. Here the houses are built in sides of the cliffs. A mile or two below 

 we saw others crowning the inaccessible summits, inaccessible except by 

 ladders, of picturesque detached buttes of red sandstone, which rise to the 

 height of 150 feet above the bottom of the canyon. Similar buildings were 

 found lower down and broken pottery was picked up upon the summits of the 

 cliffs overhanging Grand River. Evidence that these dreadful canyons were 

 once the homes of families belonging to that great people who formerly spread 

 over all this region now so utterly sterile, solitary and desolate. 



Prof. Montgomery, 1 in an article on the ruins in Nine Mile Canyon, 

 gives a description of similar prehistoric remains which he had found 

 in that region. From this description the author of the present 

 paper supposes that these ruins belong to the same type or one very 

 similar to those found in Hill Canyon. The antiquities Montgomery 

 mentions are well preserved, for he speaks of one of the towers in 

 this region as about 50 feet high, standing in an almost inaccessible 

 spot commanding a magnificent view of several canyons and moun- 

 tains. He says : 



On the top of a mesa in an extremely dizzy situation, were the remains of 

 three small stone circular structures, two of which were provided with roofs 

 of heavy cedar logs and heavy, flat stones. The logs and poles of these two 

 structures would make about a cord of wood, and they possessed distinct marks 

 of the rude stone axes with which they had been cut into suitable lengths. * * * 

 On the south side of the canyon, and about a mile from Brock's Postofifice, I 

 explored a strong and well-built stone structure, which stood upon a high and 

 precipitous cliff. It formed about the two-thirds of a circle, being 14 feet long, 

 12 feet wide, and 5^ feet high, and was completed by a cliff in its rear. * * * 

 In a short time we came to the rock column, which, although hard and solid was 

 much disintegrated and had been vertically cleft and separated, leaving a 

 dangerous gap between its two inclined and overhanging portions. By the 

 aid of cedar poles we succeeded in clambering to its summit, and there, in a 

 situation that commanded a magnificent view of many canyons and hills, we 

 found the ruin of four circular stone structures which, in my opinion had once 

 been a look-out, and signal military station. They were arranged upon the flat 

 top of the rock in such a manner that three smaller ones, each capable of hold- 

 ing but one man, occupied the front and most exposed places, one of them being 

 in advance -of the other two, which were nearer the sides of the rock. The 

 fourth and largest stone structure held a place several yards in the rear of 

 the three small ones, but from it a clear view of a wide and extended tract of 

 country could also be obtained. They were all destitute of openings except at 

 the top, and their walls sloped inward from below, so that the opening in each 

 of the three small structures was small and only sufficient to allow the entrance 

 or exit of one person. 



Prehistoric Man in Utah. The Archaeologist, Nov., 1894, PP- 335-342. 



