80 THE CLIFF RUINS OF CANYON DE CHELLY [ETH. ANN. 16 
Simpson’s description, although very brief, formed the basis of all 
the succeeding accounts for the next thirty years. The Pacific rail- 
road surveys, which added so much to our knowledge of the Southwest, 
did not touch this field. In 1860 the Abbé Domenech published his 
“Deserts of North America,” which contains a reference to Casa Blanca 
ruin, but his knowledge was apparently derived wholly from Simpson: 
None of the assistants of the Hayden Survey actually penetrated 
the canyon, but one of them, W. H. Jackson, examined and described 
some ruins on the Rio de Chelly, in the lower Chin Lee valley. But in 
an article in Scribner’s Magazine for December, 1878, Emma C. Hard- 
acre published a number of descriptions and illustrations derived from 
the Hayden corps, among others figures one entitled “ Ruins in Canon 
de Chelly,” from a drawing by Thomas Moran. The ruin can not be 
identified from the drawing. 
This article is worth more than a passing notice, as it not only illus- 
trates the extent of knowledge of the ruins at that time (1878), but 
probably had much to do with disseminating and making current erro- 
neous inferences which survive to this day. In an introductory para- 
graph the author says: 
Of late, blown over the plains, come stories of strange newly discovered cities of 
the far south-west; picturesque piles of masonry, of an age unknown to tradition. 
These ruins mark an era among antiquarians. The mysterious mound-builders fade 
into comparative insignificance before the grander and more ancient cliff-dwellers, 
whose castles lift their towers amid the sands of Arizona and crown the terraced 
slopes of the Rio Mancos and the Hovenweap. 
Of the Chaco ruins it is said: 
In size and grandeur of conception, they equal any of the present buildings of the 
United States, if we except the Capitol at Washington, and may without discredit 
be compared to the Pantheon and the Colosseum of the Old World. 
In the same year Mr J. H. Beadle gave an account! of a visit he made 
to the canyon. He entered it over the But trail, near the junction of 
Monument canyon, and saw several ruins in the upper part. His 
descriptions are hardly more than a mention. Much archeologic data 
were secured by the assistants of the Wheeler Survey, but it does 
not appear that any of them, except the photographer, visited Canyon 
de Chelly. In the final reports of the Survey there is an illustration 
of the ruin visited by Lieutenant Simpson about thirty years before” 
The illustration is a beautiful heliotype from a fine photograph made 
by T. H. O’Sullivan, but one serious defect renders it useless; through 
some blunder of the photographer or the engraver, the picture is re- 
versed, the right and left sides being interchanged, so that to see it 
properly it must be looked at in a mirror. The illustration is accom- 
panied by a short text, apparently prepared by Prof. F. W. Putnam, 
who edited the volume. The account by Simpson is quoted and some 

1Western Wilds, and the Men who Redeem Them; Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Chicago, Memphis, 1878. 
2U.S. Geog. Surveys West of the 100th Meridian, Lieutenant George M. Wheeler in charge; reports, 
vol. vu, Archeology; Washington, 1879, pp. 372-373, pl. xx. 
