FEWKES] PICTOGRAPHS 545 
comparatively late period of pueblo architecture. The character of 
the cliff houses of the Red-rocks shows no very great antiquity of 
occupancy. While it is not possible to give any approximate date 
when they were inhabited, their general appearance indicates that 
they are not more than two centuries old. There is, however, no refer- 
ence to them in the early Spanish history of the Southwest. 
Few pictographs were found in the immediate neighborhood of the 
eavate dwellings; indeed the rock in th-ir vicinity is too soft to pre- 
serve for any considerable time any great number of these rock etch- 
ings. Hxamples of ancient paleography were, however, discovered a 
short distance higher up the river on malpais rock, which is harder and 
less rapidly eroded. A half-buried bowlder (plate xc1mr) near Wood’s 
ranch was found to be covered with the well-known spirals with zigzag 
attachments, horned auimals resembling autelopes, growing corn, rain 
clouds, and similar figures. These pictographs occur on a black, super- 
ficial layer of lava rock, or upon lighter stone with a malpais layer, 
which had been pecked through, showing a lighter color beneath. 
There is little doubt that many examples of aboriginal pictography 
exist in this neighborhood, which would reward exploration with inter- 
esting data. The Verde pictographs can not be distinguished, so far as 
designs are concerned, from many found elsewhere in Colorado, Utah, 
New Mexico, and Arizona 
An instructive pictograph, different from any which I have elsewhere 
seen, was discovered on the upturned side of a bowlder not far from 
Hauce’s ranch, near the road from Camp Verde to the cavate dwellings. 
The bowlder upon which they occur lies on top of a low hill, to the left 
of the road, near the river. It consists of a rectangular network of 
lines, with attached key extensions, crooks, and triangles, all pecked 
in the surface. This diedalus of lines arises from grooves, which 
originate in two small, rounded depressions in the rock, near which 
is depicted the figure of a mountain lion. The whole pictograph is 35 
feet square, and legible in all its parts. 
The intent of the ancient scribe is not wholly clear, but it has been 
suggested that he sought to represent the nexus of irrigating ditches 
in the plain below. It might have been intended as a chart of the 
neighboring fields of corn, and it is highly suggestive, if we adopt 
either of these explanations or interpretations, that a figure of the 
mountain lion is found near the depressions, which may provisionally 
be regarded as representing ancient reservoirs. Among the Tusayan 
Indians the mountain lion is looked on as a guardian of cultivated 
fields, which he is said to protect, and his stone image is sometimes 
placed there for the same purpose. 
In the vicinity of the pictograph last described other bowlders, of 
which there are many, were found to be covered with smaller rock 
etchings in no respect characteristic, and there is a remnant of an 
ancient shrine a few yards away from the bowlder upon which they 
occur, 
17 ETH, PT 2——6 
