ROCKY MOUNTAIN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 39 
Journeying along the Pacific Railroad to California, 
a hundred miles or more to the south of us in Colo- 
rado, and in Southern Utah, there are indications of a 
once large population, with groups of old ruins of con- 
siderable towns, which give evidence that their builders 
enjoyed, centuries ago, a high degree of civilization 
and intelligence, perhaps higher than is possessed by 
any existing Indian tribe in the United States. Evi- 
dence supporting this view is found abundantly in ail 
the valleys intersected by the Gila River in Arizona. 
J. R. Bartlett, in his Personal Narrative of Explorations 
describes the immense quantity of broken pottery, rude 
and painted, raw and baked, which is scattered over 
almost the whole face of the country, and is occasion- 
ally washed out from beneath the surface by the fresh- 
ets. This fact has been noticed in Vol. 7 of the Report 
of the Pacific Railroad Survey, and indeed by all ex- 
plorers.^ Surprising as are the ruins of these cities in 
one near the confines of Smith and Wilson Counties, and another in 
White County, Tennessee, on the south side of the Cumberland River; 
also one in Giles County, below Carthage, on the same river; and still 
another above Carthage, also on the Cumberland ; and refers to many 
others. In 1815 a human body, in part clad in coarse linen wrap- 
pings, somewhat after the order of an Egyptian mummy, was discov- 
ered in a cave in the vicinity of the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. 
A cave near Lexington, Ky., is said to have contained a number of 
human bones when the first settlers visited the place. In Warren 
County, Kentucky, Mr. Charles Wilkins in 1817 found human remains 
in a niter-cave draped in coarse cloths. This list of burial-caves in 
our country might be considerably extended if desired. 
^ W. H. Holmes, in a paper on the Ruins of Southwestern Colo- 
rado (Dr. F. V. Hayden's report, 1875), says there is scarcely a 
square mile in the six thousand examined that would not furnish evi- 
dence of occupation by a race totally distinct from the nomadic savages 
who hold it now, and in every way superior to them. 
