34 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 68 



building be preferable to many, especially as it would be more easily 

 constructed. It might be urged that they were granaries ; but if so, 

 why were they placed in such a conspicuous situation ? 



In searching for an explanation for the construction of these 

 buildings, an examination was made of aboriginal towers in the valley 

 of the San Juan and its tributaries, especially the Yellow Jacket 

 Canyon and those tributaries entering it on the northern side. In the 

 Mesa Verde National Park the author has also discovered several 

 towers which are in a comparatively good state of preservation. 

 Some of these are situated on high cliffs, others stand in valleys 

 hidden by dense forests of cedar. 



Towers are, roughly speaking, scattered sporadically in numbers 

 over a wide extent of country, bounded on the east by Dolores River 

 and on the south by the Mancos River and the San Juan. They extend 

 as far west as Montezuma Creek, following it up north as far as 

 exploration has gone and occurring as far south as Zuni. Rarely, if 

 ever, however, do we find towers in the dry, sandy, wastes south of 

 the San Juan, and they are unrepresented in the great ruins of the 

 Chaco Canyon. Although there seemed to be certain minor differences 

 in the construction of towers found at different places in this area 

 of distribution, all are identical in essential features. 



The towers of Hill Canyon bear a close likeness to those in the 

 region mentioned, except that their masonry is poorer and their walls 

 are more dilapidated. This can be ascribed in part to the material 

 out of which they are built, for whereas the stone in the southern part 

 of the area is soft and easily worked, that in the Hill Canyon region 

 is hard but can readily be split into slabs which did not require much 

 manipulation to bring them into desired shapes for use. The tall 

 and better built towers of the San Juan (pi. 14, a) and its tributaries 

 are sometimes single rooms without connections with other buildings, 

 but are more often surrounded at their bases by rooms not unlike 

 those of pueblo ruins. Thus at Cannon Ball ruin the towers rise 

 from the midst of secular rooms and the same is true of the tower in 

 Cliff Palace and elsewhere. This leads to the supposition that these 

 buildings were constructed for some purpose other than as lookouts : 

 they bear all the outward appearance of sacred rooms called kivas 

 of pueblos and cliff dwellers. If we accept this explanation * that 

 the McElmo towers are round kivas, as suggested by Holmes, Mor- 



1 A complete discussion of these prehistoric towers would lead to a morpho- 

 logical comparison with the Chulpas of Peru, the Nauregs of Sardinia, Irish 

 and other similar religious structures. 



