68 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 70 



the roof supports had been brought there from some distance; trees 

 of the magnitude they imply do not now grow in the neighborhood 

 of some of the ruins where these beams occur. 



HISTORIC REMAINS 



The various objects found in the ruins or on the surface of the 

 ground as a rule are characteristic of a people in the stone-age cul- 

 ture, ignorant of metals, and therefore prehistoric, but here and there 

 on the surface have been picked up iron weapons which belonged 

 to the historic period. The old "Spanish Trail" mentioned in pre- 

 ceding pages was the early highway from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the 

 Great Salt Lake, and followed approximately an old Indian trail that 

 was probably used by the prehistoric inhabitants or the builders of 

 the towers. Not far from the head of Yellow Jacket Canyon a 

 ranchman discovered on his farm a few years ago the blades of two 

 Spanish iron lance heads or knives, still well preserved, the hilts, 

 however, being destroyed. These objects, now in Mr. Williamson's 

 collection at Dolores, may have belonged to a party of Spanish sol- 

 diers who explored this region, but their form, in addition to the mate- 

 rial, is so characteristic that no one would assign them to aboriginal 

 manufacture. Fragments of a stirrup of metal, parts of the harness 

 or saddle, also belonging to the Spanish epoch, have also been found. 

 The indications are that these objects are historic, but their owners 

 may have been Indians who obtained them from Europeans. They 

 probably do not antedate the middle of the eighteenth century, 

 when two Catholic fathers, with an escort of soldiers, made their 

 trip of discovery from Santa Fe into what is now Utah. They shed 

 no light on the epoch of the aborigines who constructed the castles 

 and towers considered in this paper. 



CONCLUSIONS 



In the preceding pages the author has considered several different 

 types of buildings, which, notwithstanding their variety in forms, 

 have much in common and can be interpreted as indicating an iden- 

 tical phase of pueblo development. A comparative study of then 

 distribution shows us that they occur in a well-defined geographical 

 area. In comparison with stone buildings in other parts of the 

 Southwestern States, this phase shows superior masonry. It is 

 considered as chronologically antedating the historic epoch and post- 

 dating an earlier, and as yet not clearly denned, phase out of which 

 it sprung in the natural evolution from simple to complex forms. 



These buildings express the communal thought of the builders, 

 since they were constructed by groups of people rather than by indi- 

 viduals. Architecture representing the thoughts of many minds is 



