1875.] ^< ^ [Cope. 



as that of the still inhabited Moquis villages of Arizona, so interestingly 

 described by Lieutenant Ives in his report on his s^^rvey of the Rio Colo- 

 rado of the "West, and of the route from its cailon to Sante Fe. They 

 were doubtless jjerched on these high eminences for purposes of defense, 

 and they were conveniently located near a perennial stream, which per- 

 mitted them to carry on a system of agriculture, no doubt similar to that 

 now practiced by the Moquis. The inhabitants of Cristone felt, how- 

 ever, one disadvantage not known to the Moquis ; they were, so far as 

 present indications go, without water on their elevated rocks, but were 

 dependent for their supply oa the Gallinas Creek. I found no indications 

 of cisterns which should furnish such supply in time of siege, although 

 they doubtless could depend for a considerable length of time on rain- 

 water which they caught and preserved in the many vessels of pottery 

 whose fragments are now so numerous about the ruins. 



At this point the bluffs of the Eocene bad-lands are from nine to ten 

 miles from the Gallinas Creek. Here also the slopes are in places covered 

 with broken pottery, and on the summit of some of the less elevated 

 buttes, circular walls indicate the former existence of buildings similar 

 to those crowning the conical hills along the creek. The latter contains 

 the nearest water to these ruins. In other localities ruined stone build- 

 ings occupy the flat summits of mesa hills of the bad-lands, often in very 

 elevated and well-defended positions. It was a common case that the ero- 

 sion of the faces of these bluffs had undermined the fouodation of the 

 houses, so that their wall stones, with the posts were mingled with the pot- 

 tery on the talus below. At one point, foundation walls stand on an isth- 

 mus connecting a butte with the mesa, of which a width of twenty feet 

 remains, but which is furrowed with water channels. Here Eocene fossils 

 and crockery, including a narrow-necked jug, were confusedly mixed 

 together. At another point the narrow summit of a butte of nearly two 

 hundred feet elevation is covered with remnants of stone buildings 

 which extend for a length of two hundred yards. The greater part of 

 them had been undermined, and the stones were lying in quantities on 

 talus at the time of my visit. At one end of the line, the bases of two 

 rectangular walls, perhaps of towers, appeared to have been placed as 

 supports to the terrace. Very dry cedar posts occur among the ruins, 

 and. three such, standing upright on the summit of the butte, mark a spot 

 as yet unaffected by the disintegration of the cliff. In another portion of 

 the ruins, a row of large earthenware pots was found buried in the earth; 

 the slow moving change of level of the marl had already fractured 

 them. At another locality I took from a confused mass of ruins, the tem- 

 poral bone of an adult person, the ilium of a child, ribs and other bones. 

 At a remote portion of the ruins on a remaining ledge, I found a square 

 enclosure formed of stones set on edge, three stones forming each half of 

 the enclosure. I excavated this for the depth of a foot, without finding any 

 indication of its use. In some of these localities, I found chips, arrow- 

 heads, and thin knives of chalcedony, with similar implements of obsi- 



