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EARLY STUDIES OF THifi CLIFF DWI5LL1HQS CF COLORADO 
Yery few of my friends of today know of my early work 
among the cliff dwellings of Colorado. I was a member of 
the Geological Staff of the Hayden Survey of the Territories 
in 1873, 74 and 75 and reported on the ancient cliff dwellings 
encountered during those years. My official reports are now 
hidden by the varied agencies of oblivion of more than one-half 
a century, arid it is gratifying to me to find in a recently 
published work by Dr. Edgar L. Heweit the following commentary 
reference to my explorations in this field: 
n k brief history of the origin and progress of 
the study of early man in the Southwest may here be in order. 
11 The foundations on which southwestern archaeology 
have been built were laid in the last quarter of the nineteenth 
century. Many valuable reports were written prior to that 
time but nothing that would afford the basis for a substantial 
scientific structure. William H* Holmes was the founder of 
the science. Re prepared the way through his geological studies 
in the Southwest and then proceeded * ;, ith his masterly interpre¬ 
tations of the remains left by man. He wiped cut the mythical 
ideas of * vanished races,* demonstrating that t e ancient cliff- 
dwellers were simply the Pueblo Indians of the centuries pre¬ 
ceding the European occupation. We owe it to him that all 
students of man now concede that the archaeology of the American 
Southwest is the early history of the Pueblo Indians. It is 
