1922] BARRETT, A TRIP TO CAVE HILL 181 



which will finally solve the question as to their use and determine the 

 status of their former inhabitants.^^ 



However, this work should be done with the greatest of care and 

 should not be undertaken until properly trained persons are present to 

 supervise the work and record the data. Too often amateur collecting 

 is undertaken and results in an irrevocable loss to science. 



A visit to the nearby cliff ruins at Walnut Canyon, gives a very 

 notable and sorry proof of this. When first discovered, these ruins, 

 which are quite extensive, were in a very fine state of preservation. 

 The people of Flagstaff" and vicinity prided themselves on having such 

 a fine aboriginal monument near at hand and took all ordinary means 

 to preserve these cliff dwellings, for then they were intact and deserved 

 the name of cliff dwellings. 



A vandal, however, slipped into this canyon and spent the winter 

 there and when he emerged in the spring with a wagon load or more of 

 fine pottery and other aboriginal implements, these were in truth "cliff 

 ruins," with emphasis on the ruin. Not only had he gone into one 

 after another of these fine dwellings and excavated the floors and com- 

 pletely rifled every room of its contents, but he had even pushed most 

 of the stone walls over and wrecked dwelling after dwelling in a wanton 

 debauch of vandalism, thus completing the destruction of this great 

 site. He destroyed more in the few weeks of his stay there, than nature 

 and her weathering elements could have done in a thousand years. 



When the citizens of Flagstaff learned of the work of this vandal, 

 it is said that they dispossessed him of his loot and sent him on his way 

 with none too gentle reminders of the welcome he would receive, 

 should he ever return. 



The disaster in this particular case is a two-fold one. First of all, 

 the work of this pot hunter had destroyed nine-tenths of the scientific 

 value of this old site, for he had, of course, taken no notes and kept no 



=«The Handbook of American Indians, Bulletin XXX, Bureau of American 

 Ethnology, states, under the head of Havasupai, that this tribe "roamed from 

 the Sierra Mogollon to the San Francisco mountains and along- the valley of 

 the Colorado Chiquito. The tribe is a peculiarly interesting one, since of all 

 the Yuman tribes it is the only one which has developed or borrowed a culture 

 similar to, thoug-h less advanced, than that of the Pueblo peoples: indeed, ac- 

 cording to tradition, the Havasupai (or more probably a Pueblo clan or tribe 

 that became incorporated with them) formerly built and occupied villages of 

 permanent character on the Colorado Chiquito east of the San Francisco moun- 

 tains, where ruins were pointed out to Powell by a Havasupai chief as the 

 former homes of his people. As a result of war with tribes farther east, they 

 abandoned these villages and took refuge in the San Francisco mountains, sub- 

 sequently leaving these for their present abode. In this connection it is of in- 

 terest to note that the Cosnino caves on the upper Rio Verde, near the north 

 edge of Tonto Basin, central Arizona, were named from this tribe, because of 

 their supposed early occupancy by them. Their present village, composed of 

 temporary cabins or shelters of wattled canes and branches and earth in sum- 

 mer, and of the natural caves and crevices in winter, is situated one hundred 

 and fifteen miles north of Prescott and seven miles south of the Grand Canyon." 



