yd SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 66 



sculptures, tell an eloquent story of the civilization and power of 

 the ancient people. 



Especial attention was given to the collection of d^ta and drawings 

 to be utilized in preparing panoramic views of the several cities 

 visited, and every effort was made to obtain information regarding 

 the technical methods employed by the ancient sculptors and builders. 

 The quarries from which the stone was obtained were too deeply 

 buried in tropical vegetation to yield vip their story without extensive 

 excavation and the methods employed in dressing and carving- the 

 stone remain in large part undetermined. Certain chipped and ground 

 stone implements that could have served in dressing the stones used 

 in Imilding wei'tp found in numbers, but the story of the carving, 

 especially of the very deep carving of the monuments of Copan, 

 remains unrevealed. Although it is thought that stone tools may 

 have been equal to the task, it is believed by some that without 

 bronze the work could not have been done. There are, however, 

 no traces of the use of bronze by the Central Americans. 



PREHISTORIC REMAINS IN NEW MEXICO, COLORADO, AND 



UTAH 



Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 

 spent a little less than five months in the field studying the remains 

 of some of the prehistoric buildings scattered over western New 

 Mexico and Colorado, and eastern Utah. The first month of that 

 time he endeavored to increase our knowledge of the prehistoric 

 migration trail of the Hopi fire people. The months of July, August, 

 and Septeml)er, were devoted to excavations and intensive studies of 

 a ruined pueblo at Mummy Lake in the Mesa Verde National Park, 

 Colorado. In October Dr. Fewkes investigated certain ancient 

 towers above Hill Canyon, Utah, one of the most northerly localities 

 in which these structures have yet been found. 



The inhabitants of the Hopi villages in northeastern Arizona are 

 recognized by ethnologists as a composite people, made up of several 

 clans whose ancestors in some instances spoke different tongues, 

 having drifted into this isolated region of waterless mesas from all 

 directions. The descendants of these clans, some now already 

 absorbed and their language assimilated, others, retaining their 

 original speech and now a people of homogeneous culture, inhabit 

 villages perched on high plateaus. The first colony, or the original 



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