44 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull, to 



or oval. 1 In most cases this wall was the straight side of a D-shaped 

 tower. Doctor Prudden, who first recognized the importance of a 

 union of towers with other types of architecture in the McElmo 

 district, says: 2 "Towers of various forms and heights occasion- 

 ally form a part of composite rums of various types." He says 

 also: "Several of the houses are modified by the introduction of a 

 round tower." And again: "At the head of a short canyon north of 

 the Alkali, which I have called Jackson Canyon . . . each building 

 consists of an irregular mass of rooms about 200 feet long, with low 

 towers among them." 



As our studies are morphological, dealing with forms rather than 

 sites of towers, little attention need be paid to their situation on 

 bowlders, in cliffs, or at the bottoms of canyons. The majority of 

 the castellated ruins considered in the following pages are in the 

 proposed Hovcnweep National Monument, but there are others in 

 the main Yellow Jacket and its other tributaries. 



HOVENWEEP DISTRICT 



The name Hovenweep ("Deserted Valley") is an old one in the 

 nomenclature of the canyons of southwestern Colorado and formerly 

 (1877) was applied to the canyon now called the Yellow Jacket, but 

 at present is limited to one of the tributaries. The name is here 

 used to designate an area situated just over the Colorado State line, 

 in Utah, part of which it is hoped will later be reserved from the 

 public domain and made a monument to be called Hovenweep 

 National Monument. 



The ruined castles and towers in this district are marvelously well 

 preserved, considering their age and imperfect masonry. We can de- 

 termine their original appearance with no difficulty and use them in 

 reconstructing the possible forms of more dilapidated ruins, now piles 

 of debris. The best castles and towers known to the author are local- 

 ized in three canyons: (1) Square Tower Canyon, (2) Holly Canyon, 

 (3) Hackbcrry Canyon. There are, of course, other castles and towers 

 in the Yellow Jacket-McElmo region, but there is no locality where 

 so many different forms appear in equal numbers in a small area. 



Ruin Canyon 



The Old Bluff Road from Dolores diverges southward from that to 

 Monticello at Sandstone post office and passes a pile of rocks visible 

 from the road on the Ruin Canyon long before it reaches Square 

 Tower Canyon (fig. 6). This large ruin is situated on the east rim and 

 under it in the side of the cliff are f airly well-preserved cliff -houses. 



1 The tower figured by Prudden ( Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. v, no. 2, pi. xviii, fig. 2) as a "round tower" 

 is really semicircular, as shown in the ground plan (fig. 14) here published. 



2 Ibid., pp. 241, 263, 273. 



