MiNDELEKF) POWELL ON CAVATE LODGES. 223 



described a large group situated ou that stream, about 10 miles above 

 its moutb, as follows: 



The walls were in many places quite \vell preserved and new looking, while all 

 about, high and low, were others in all stages of decay. In one place in particular, 

 a picturesijue outstanding promontory has been full of dwellings, literally honey- 

 combed by this earth-burrowing race, and as one from below views the ragged, 

 window-pierced crags [see plate xxx] he is unconsciously led to wonder if they are 

 not the ruins of some ancient castle, behind whose moldcriug walls arc hidden the 

 dread secrets of a loug-forgotteu people ; but a nearer approach quickly dispels such 

 fancies, for the windows jirove to be only the doorways to shallow and irregular 

 aiiartnients, hardly sufficiently commodious for a race of pigmies. Neither the outer 

 openings nor the apertures that communicate between the caves are large enough 

 to allow a person of large stature to pass, and one is led to suspect that these nests 

 were not the dwellings proper of these people, but occasional resorts for women and 

 children, and that the somewhat extensive ruins in the valley below were their 

 ordinary dwelling ])laces. 



It will be noticed that iu both these cases there are associated ruins 

 on the mesa top above, and in both instances these associated ruins 

 are subordinate to the cavate lodges, in this respect resembling the 

 lodges on tlie Verde already described. This condition, however, is 

 not the usual one; in the great majority of cases the cavate lodges are 

 subordinate to the associated ruins, standing to them in the relation 

 of outlying agricultural shelters. Unless this fact is constantly borne 

 in mind it is easy to exaggerate the importance of the cavate lodges as 

 compared with the village ruins with wliich they are connected. 



The cavate lodges near San Francisco mountain in Arizona were vis- 

 ited in 1883 by Col. James Stevenson, of the Bureau of Ethnology, and 

 in 1885 by Maj. J. W. Powell. Major Powell' describes a number of 

 groups in the vicinity of Flagstaft". Of one group, situated on a cinder 

 cone about 12 miles east of San Francisco peak, he says: 



Here the cinders are soft and friable, and the cone is a prettily shaped dome. On 

 the sonthern slope there are excavations into the indurated and coherent cinder 

 mass, constituting chambers, often 10 or 12 feet in diameter and 6 to 10 feet in height. 

 The chambers are of irregular shape, and occasionally a larger central chamber forms 

 a kind of vestibule to several smaller ones gathered about it. The smaller chambers 

 are sometimes at the same altitude as the central or principal one, and sometimes at 

 a lower altitude. About one hundred and fifty of these chambers have been exca- 

 vated. Most of them are now partly filled by the caving in of the walls and ceilings, 

 but some of them are yet in a good state of jueservatiou. In these chaml)er8, and 

 about them on the summit .and sides of the cinder cone, many stone implements were 

 found, especially metates. Some bone implements also were discovered. At the 

 very summit of the little cone there is a plaza, inclosed by a rude wall mjide of 

 volcanic cinders, the floor of which was carefully leveled. The plaza is about 45 

 by 75 feet in area. Here the people lived in underground houses — chambers hewn 

 from the friable volcanic cinders. Hefore them, to the south, west, and north, 

 stretched beautiful valleys, beyond which volcanic cones are seen rising amid pine 

 forests. The peojile probably cultivated patches of ground in the low valleys. 



About 18 miles still farther to the east of .San Francisco mountain another ruined 

 village wiis discovered, built about the crater of a volcanic cone. This volcanic 

 peak is of much greater magnitude. The crater opens to the eastward. On the 



'Seventh Aun. Rh]i. Bur. Ktb.. 1891. p. xix. 



