NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
‘IN THE AGE OF THE CAVE MEN. 
_ With this letter I will conelude 
the cliff dweilers discriptions, and 
then to other places, and some of the 
places, people and things to come I 
think you will find equally inter- 
esting. . 
_ About in the center of this long 
cliff is a stone stairway, with a kiva 
at the foot. And I must tell you of 
the kiva before we go up. 
The best discription of it would 
be one of our cess pools—a_ well 
perhaps ten feet across and twenty 
feet deep. The roof has long since 
washed away and the hole partially 
filled up, but the Smithsonian peo- 
ple have excavated it and placed 
_ therein a ladder. We descended and 
_ there found the only fire place, or 
_ rather the ruins of one that is to be 
Biound in the whole cliff city. The 
floor is cement and in front of the 
fire place are two rows of holes in 
the floor, six on a side, and the walls 
are full of nitches, each seeming to 
- conform with similar places on the 
opposite side. 
This kiva is supposed to have been 
t the secret room where the religious 
# 
and ceremonial rites of these 
strange people were performed, and 
a room where but few of the cliff 
dwellers’ feet ever trod. 
But most wonderful of all is the 
; stairway that leads to the top of the 
cliffs. Here one gets some idea of 
_ the ages these people lived here and 
“of the multitude which used this 
path, for human feet have worn the 
solid rock to a depth of twelve inch- 
es, and when you consider that this 
- outside rock is not of the soft com- 
position of the caves, then you have 
some conception of the age and the 
density of population. In one place 
- aeross this path a stone has fallen 
and rather than to remove it these 
_ little men of the cliffs walked over 
a and on its sufrace the trail was 
but half as deep. I took a limb and 
_ Yaised one side of it and underneath 
as the old foot-worn path. 
d on each‘side of the path at 
the steep and difficult places are 
hand holes, where these people 
helped to pull themselves up, little 
nitehes worn smooth by the human 
hand, as the solid rock was eut deep 
by bare or moceasined feet. 
It is estimated by the Smithson- 
ian people that 10,000 people lived 
on the face of this one cliff and that 
Second Letter of the Puye Cliff Dwellers and their Forgotten 
; Past.---A Great, Human Beehive. 
(By M. J. Brown, Eprror Lirriz Vauiey, N. Y., Hus) 
the population of the adjoining cliffs 
and on the messas was fully 100,000 
people. 
We climbed the cliff, putting our 
patent leathers in the deep worn 
foot-path and our gloved hands in 
the handholds, and gained the top. 
And what a sight ! 
There in the bright sunshine lay 
the ruins of a great communal 
dwelling, one building that once 
sheltered 1200 people, a human bee- 
hive of the days before history. Ages 
ago this house fell into ruins, but it 
has been carefully excavated and 
cleared away, and the first story and 
its walls now stand as they did when 
built. 
The great building reminds one of 
our modern stock yards—an enclos- 
ure cut up into small pens or rooms 
—each room about 5 x 10 feet, and 
each communicating with the other 
by a door about three feet high by 
eighteen inches wide—just one great 
beehive with no outside entrances, 
And over one of these doors a piece 
of cedar wood was placed at the 
time of the building, as a frame to 
support the ‘dobie blocks and that 
support still stands through all these 
sages, crumbling with dry rot, but 
surely wood yet. I broke off a piece 
of this door frame that some little 
man placed there long before Colum- 
bus found this country, and I trea- 
sure it with my other souvenirs. 
From the quantity of the ruins it 
is pretty thoroughly established that 
this building was at least three stor- 
ies high, one great enclosure around 
a court, and with one main entrance, 
or street, which is clearly defined. 
In the center, or court, are many 
handsome’ stone relics, grinding 
stones, pieces of pottery, and many 
whose use one can only guess at,, 
but mainly fashioned for some pur- 
pose. 
And just behind this ruin is a 
burial ground, where during the 
past summer, the Smithsonian peo- 
ple excavated 250 skeletons, and all 
kinds of trinklets and pottery buried 
with them.» The graveyard is but 
partially excavated and hundreds 
of other skeletons yet sleep there. 
The excavators did not do a very 
thorough job. Some of the skeletons 
they dug up are not complete—nor 
ever will be. I have a part of a rib 
and some finger and hand bones, 
$1 
The custodian was not looking, and 
I was, 
From one of the caves in the eliff 
Mr. Hoag showed me some leg bones 
he had hidden, the bones both above 
and below the knee, and by compari- 
son they were fully a third shorter 
than my 1910 bones. There are 
many proofs that these dwellers of 
the cliff were much shorter in sta- 
ture than the American of today. 
Further along the messa is the 
ruins of what seems to have been a 
great reservoir, but it might have 
been a fort. Its circular walls are 
plainly to be seen, with an opening 
leading to it from the rising ground 
above. This opening might have 
been a ditch to bring in water in 
time of floods, or a roadway to bring 
in the people in time of danger. If 
a reservoir, it is what I would eall 
a work of loose engineering, for 
should it break or overflow there 
would be a Niagara over the cliff 
homes below, and free shower baths 
for the dwellers. 
There must have been great eli- 
matic changes in this thirsty land 
since these thousands of people liv- 
ed here. Today thereis not an 
ounce of water to be found any- 
where—just a great burned up, 
dried up waste. Such a great popu- 
lation must have had water and such 
a population could not have subsist- 
ed entirely on game, for certainly 
rainfall could not have supplied 
them with sufficient water, nor these 
mountains with enough game. 
And there is nothing to indicate 
any great calamity or extermination. 
All is in order and whatever the pro- 
cess of extermination was, it must 
have been slow. In the ruins of 
southern Colorado, I am told that a 
calamity befell the people and that 
the skeletons lie unburied and the 
general confusion everywhere de- 
noted a sudden end, but on the Puye 
ruins there is absolutely no indica- 
tion of where these thousands of 
people went, or how they went. 
It is my guess that far back in the 
past ages a great river flowed at the 
bottom of these cliffs that rainfall 
was plenty, that the inhabitants 
were farmers and that what appears 
to have been a fort or reservoir on 
top of the cliffs was a storehouse for 
the community’s grain. 
Where did these strange people 
go, and why did they go? You 
guess, for your guess is as good as 
any history or theory I ean find. 
Lummis says they did not disap- 
pear but that their descendants are 
the Pueblo Indians. 
Hewett says this cannot be so, for 
