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pueblos of to-day, there are underground rooms, mostly circular, used as 

 council-chambers as well as for the performance of the mysterious rites of 

 their religion. Similar chambers occur, according to Lieutenant Simpson, 

 in all the ruined cities of New Mexico, but having single walls of no great 

 height or thickness. It is stated by Squier and Davis* that in Mexico 

 the sacred inclosures were also used for defensive purposes, and it cer- 

 tainly seems probable that these curious structures served the double 

 purpose of temples and fortifications, and that the apartments between 

 the walls were the cells of the priesthood or the receptacles of sacred or 

 valuable property. 



The smaller single-walled towers, which are scattered at intervals 

 along the river-courses and canons, frequently in commanding situations, 

 were probably watch or signal towers. 



The cave-dwellings are made by digging irregular cavities in the faces 

 of bluffs and cliffs formed of friable rock, and then walling up the front, 

 leaving only a small doorway for entrance and an occasional small win- 

 dow at the side or top. 



The cliff-houses conform in shape to the floor of the niche or shelf on 

 which they are built. They are of firm neat masonry, and the manner 

 in which they are attached or cemented to the cliffs is simply marvelous. 

 Their construction has cost a great deal of labor, the rock and mortar 

 of which they are built having been brought for hundreds of feet up 

 the most precipitous places. They have a much more modern look than 

 the valley and cave remains, and are probably in general more recent, 

 belonging rather to the close than to the earlier parts of a long period 

 of occupation. Their position, however, has secured them in a great 

 measure from the hand of the invader as well as from the ordinary 

 effects of age. 



Of works of art other than architectural that might assist in throw- 

 ing light upon the grade of civilization reached by these people, but 

 meager discoveries were made; although I imagine that careful search 

 and well-conducted exhumation might develop many things of great 

 interest. A small number of arrow-heads, stone-implements, oruaments, 

 and articles of fictile manufacture, that may fairly be attributed to the 

 age of the cliff builders, were collected. The greater part of these are 

 figured in plates XIII and XIY. There are no evidences whatever that 

 metals were used. 



Numerous hieroglyphics were observed, both engraved and painted 

 upon the cliffs. Drawings of a large number were made, and some of 

 the more notable examples are given in iilates XI and XII. 



A great number of burial-places were noted, but of the graves 

 examined few yielded farther evidences of occupation than small quan- 

 tities of charcoal and bits of painted pottery. These burial-places, 

 ■which are in a number of cases covered by a heavy growth of full- 

 grown piiion pines and cedars, are usually found on the summits of 

 high ridges and promontories, and are still marked by vslabs of sand- 

 stone set on edge and arranged in circles, and parallelograms of greatly- 

 varying dimensions. But that they did not always bury their dead in 

 high places is proven by the frequent discovery of human remains in 

 the arroyos or deep washes in the valleys. Three skeletons were ob- 

 tained, in the vicinity of ruined villages, from the sides of recent washes. 



The accompanying plates are, with one exception, reproductions of 

 pen-drawings, and are arranged for convenience, rather than from any 

 method of classification. The plans are not drawn to a uniform scale, 

 because of the inconvenience of such an arrangement; but measure. 



*Aucieut Monumeuts of the Mississippi Valley, page 102. / 



/ 



