Antiquities Of The Mesa Verde National Park: Cliff Palace - free ebook by Jesse Walter Fewkes

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Antiquities Of The Mesa Verde National Park: Cliff Palace

Jesse Walter Fewkes

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LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL

Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, D. C., May 14, 1910 . Sir : I have the honor to submit the accompanying manuscript, entitled "Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Cliff Palace," by Dr. Jesse Walter Fewkes, with the recommendation that it be published, subject to your approval, as Bulletin 51 of this Bureau. Yours, very respectfully, F. W. Hodge, Ethnologist in Charge . Dr. Charles D. Walcott , Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution , Washington, D. C.

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INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

In the summer of 1909 the writer was detailed by the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, at the request of the Secretary of the Interior, to continue the excavation and repair of ruins in the Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. This work was placed under his sole charge and continued through the months May to August, inclusive. In that time the writer was able to repair completely this great ruin and to leave it in such condition that tourists and students visiting it may learn much more a

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CLIFF PALACE A TYPE OF PREHISTORIC CULTURE

CLIFF PALACE A TYPE OF PREHISTORIC CULTURE

In the following pages the walls and other remains of buildings and the objects found in the rooms have been treated from their cultural point of view. Considering ethnology, or culture history, as the comparative study of mental productions of groups of men in different epochs, and cultural archeology as a study of those objects belonging to a time antedating recorded history, there has been sought in Cliff Palace one type of prehistoric American culture, or rather a type of the mental producti

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RECENT HISTORY

RECENT HISTORY

It is remarkable that this magnificent ruin ( pl. 1 ) so long escaped knowledge of white settlers in the neighboring Montezuma valley. Cliff Palace is not mentioned in early Spanish writings, and, indeed, the first description of it was not published until about 1890. Efforts to learn the name of the white man who discovered Cliff Palace were not rewarded with great success. According to Nordenskiöld it was first seen by Richard Wetherill and Charley Mason on a "December day in 1888," but severa

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SITE OF CLIFF PALACE

SITE OF CLIFF PALACE

Cliff Palace is situated in a cave in Cliff-palace canyon, a branch of Cliff canyon, which is here about 200 feet deep. It occupies practically the whole of the cave, the roof of which overhangs about two-thirds of the ruin, projecting considerably beyond its middle. This cave is much more capacious than that in which Spruce-tree House is situated, as shown by comparing illustrations and descriptions of the latter in the former report. The configuration of Spruce-tree House cave and that of Clif

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PREHISTORIC TRAILS TO CLIFF PALACE

PREHISTORIC TRAILS TO CLIFF PALACE

It is evident that the prehistoric farmers of Cliff Palace repeatedly visited their fields among the cedars on top of the mesa, and well-worn trails led from their habitation to these clearings. Several such trails have long been known, one of which was formerly exclusively used by white visitors and was facetiously called "Fat Man's Misery." To another ancient pathway, near which ladders were placed, the name "Ladder Trail" may be applied. The pathways now used by visitors follow approximately

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Destruction by the Elements

Destruction by the Elements

The constant beating of rain and snow, often accompanied in winter by freezing of water in the crevices of the masonry, has sadly dilapidated a large part of the front walls of Cliff Palace, especially those at the northern and southern ends ( pl. 3 ) where they do not have the protection of the overhanging roof of the cave. While the sections known as the old quarter, the plaza quarter, and much of the tower quarter are protected by the roof of the cave, even here there has been exposure and de

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Vandalism

Vandalism

No ruin in the Mesa Verde Park had suffered more from the ravages of "pot hunters" than Cliff Palace; indeed it had been much more mutilated than the other ruins in the park ( pls. 1 , 4 , 5 ). Parties of workmen had remained at the ruin all winter, and many specimens had been taken from it and sold. There was good evidence that the workmen had wrenched beams from the roofs and floors to use for firewood, so that not a single roof and but few rafters remained in place. However, no doubt many of

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Repair of Walls

Repair of Walls

The masonry work necessary to repair a ruin as large and as much demolished as Cliff Palace was very considerable. The greatest amount was expended on those walls in front of the cave floor hidden under the lower terraces, at the northern and southern extremities. The latter portion was so completely destroyed that it had to be rebuilt in some places, while at the southern end an equal amount of repair work was necessary. ( pls. 3 , 6 , 7 , 9 .) To permanently protect these sections of the ruin

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Major Antiquities

Major Antiquities

Under this term are embraced those immovable objects as walls of houses and their various structural parts—floors, roofs, and fireplaces. These features must of necessity be protected in place and left where they were constructed. Minor antiquities, as implements of various kinds, stone objects, pottery, textiles, and the like, can best be removed and preserved in a museum, where they can be seen to greater advantage and by a much larger number of people. The ideal way would be to preserve both

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Terraces and Retaining Walls

Terraces and Retaining Walls

The terraces in front of the rooms occupying the floor of the cave are characteristic features of Cliff Palace ( pls. 9 , 10 ). The excavations revealed three of these terraces, of which the floor of the cave is the fourth. This fourth terrace, or cave floor, is in the main horizontal, but on account of the accumulated talus the slope from the southern end of the portion in front of kiva G was gradual and continued at about this level to the northern end of the ruin. This slope brought it about

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Tower Quarter

Tower Quarter

For convenience of description Cliff Palace is arbitrarily divided into four quarters, known as tower quarter, plaza quarter, old quarter, and northern quarter. The tower quarter ( pls. 10 - 14 ) occupies the whole southern portion of the ruin and extends to the extreme southern end from a line drawn perpendicular to the cliff through the round tower. It includes 8 kivas, A to G, and J, 6 of which, A, B, C, D, E, and J, are situated on the fourth terrace, the level of the kiva floor being that o

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Plaza Quarter

Plaza Quarter

The plaza quarter, as its name indicates, is a large open space, the floor of which is formed mainly by the contiguous roofs of the several kivas (K to O) that are sunk below it. The main entrance to the village opens into this plaza at its northwestern corner, and on the northern side it is continued into a court which connects with the main street or alley of the cliff village. From its position, relations, and other considerations, it is supposed that this quarter was an important section of

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Old Quarter

Old Quarter

The section of Cliff Palace that has been designated the old quarter ( pls. 14 , 15 ) lies between a line drawn from the main entrance of the ruin to the rear of the cave and the extreme northern end, culminating in a high castle-like cluster of rooms. It may well be called one of the most important sections of Cliff Palace, containing, as it does, the largest number of rooms, the most varied architecture, and the best masonry. Its protected situation under the roof of the cave is such that we m

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Northern Quarter

Northern Quarter

This quarter ( pl. 16 ) of Cliff Palace extends from the high rocks on which the Speaker-chief's House is perched, in a westerly direction, ending with a milling room and adjacent inclosures 92 to 94, situated west of kiva V. It includes three kivas; two, U and V, being situated on the fourth terrace; and one, T, on the first terrace. Kivas U and V are built on top of large rocks, the floor of kiva V being excavated in solid rock. Much of this quarter, especially the western end, is under the sk

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Masonry

Masonry

The walls of Cliff Palace present the finest masonry known to any cliff-dwelling and among the best stonework in prehistoric ruins north of Mexico. A majority of the stones used in the construction were well dressed before laying and smoothed after they were set in the wall. The joints are often broken, but it is rare to find intersecting walls or corners bonded. Stones of approximately the same size are employed, thereby making the courses, as a rule, level. Although commonly the foundations ar

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Adobe Bricks

Adobe Bricks

The walls, as a rule, were made of stone; indeed it is unusual to find adobe walls in cliff-dwellings of the Mesa Verde. In prehistoric buildings in our Southwest, evidences that the ancients made adobe bricks, sun-dried before laying, are very rare. Bricks made of clay are set in the walls of the Speaker-chief's House and were found in the fallen débris at its base. These bricks were made cubical in form before laying, but there is nothing to prove that they were molded in forms or frames, nor

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Plastering

Plastering

The walls of a number of rooms were coated with a layer of plastering of sand or clay. This was found on the outside of some walls, where it is generally worn, but it is best preserved on the interior surfaces. Perhaps the most striking examples of plastering on exterior walls occurs on the Speaker-chief's House, where the smoothness of the finish is noteworthy. From impressions of hands and fingers on this plastering it is evident that it was laid on not with trowels but with the hands, and as

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Paintings and Rock Markings

Paintings and Rock Markings

Figures are painted on the white plastering of the third story of room 11 and on the lower border of the banquette of kiva I, the former being the most elaborate mural paintings known in cliff-dwellings, showing several symbols which are reproduced on pottery. A reversed symbolic rain-cloud figure, painted white, occurs on the exterior of the low ledge house. [27] Mural paintings of unusual form are found on the under side of the projecting rock forming part of the floor of room 3, and there are

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Refuse Heaps

Refuse Heaps

Almost every Mesa Verde cliff-dwelling has an unoccupied space back of the rooms, [28] as in the rear of rooms 28 to 40, which served as a depository for all kinds of rubbish. Here the inhabitants of Cliff Palace also deposited certain of their dead, which became mummified on account of the dryness of the air in the cave. There is also a vacant space between the rear of the Speaker-chief's House and the cave wall, but this space was almost entirely free of refuse. The amount of débris in the ref

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Secular Rooms

Secular Rooms

The majority of the rooms in Cliff Palace were devoted to secular purposes. These are of several types, and differ in form, in position, and in function. Their form is either circular or rectangular, or some modification of these two. As a rule, the secular rooms lie deep under the cliffs, several extending as far back as the rear of the cave. The front of Cliff Palace shows at least two tiers or terraces of secular rooms, the roof of the lower one being level with that of the floor of the tier

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Doors and Windows

Doors and Windows

There is difficulty in distinguishing doorways from windows in cliff-dwellings, on which account they are here treated together. Both are simple openings in the walls, the former as a rule being larger than the latter. As door openings are regularly situated high above the floor, there may have been ladders by which the doorways of the second and third stories were reached. The rooms may have been entered by means of balconies, evidences of which still remain. No instance of a hatchway in the ro

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Floors and Roofs

Floors and Roofs

Not a single entire roof remained in Cliff Palace, and only one or two rooms retained remnants of rafters. It would seem, however, from the position of the holes in the walls into which the rafters once extended that they were constructed like those of Spruce-tree House, a good example of which is shown in plate 9 of the report on that ruin. The floors seem to have been formed of clay hardened by tramping, but there is no evidence of paving with flat stones. The hardened adobe is sometimes laid

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Fireplaces

Fireplaces

Many fireplaces still remain in rooms, but the majority are found in convenient corners of the plazas [34] . The most common situation is in an angle formed by two walls; in which case the fire-pit is generally rimmed with a slightly elevated rounded ridge of adobe. In room 84 there is a fireplace in the middle of the floor. At one side of this depression there extends a supplementary groove in the floor, rimmed with stone, the use of which is not known. Although fireplaces are ordinarily half r

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Living Rooms

Living Rooms

It is difficult to distinguish rooms in which the inhabitants lived from others used by them for storage and other purposes, since most of their work, as cooking, pottery making, and like domestic operations, was conducted either on the house-tops or in the plazas. Under living rooms are included the women's rooms [35] , or those in which centered the family life; and, in a general way, we may suppose the large rooms and those with banquettes were sleeping rooms. The popular misconception that t

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Milling Rooms

Milling Rooms

There are several rooms in Cliff Palace which appear to have been given up solely to the operation of grinding corn. The mills are box-like structures, constructed of slabs of stone set on edge, each containing a slanting stone called a metate, from which the mill is called by the Hopi the metataki , or "metate house." The following description of a metataki in pueblos seen by Castañeda in 1540 applies, in a general way, to the small milling troughs in Cliff Palace: One room is appointed for cul

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Granaries

Granaries

Under the general name of granaries are included storage rooms, some of which are situated below living rooms. [36] Here corn for consumption was stacked, and if we may follow Hopi customs in our interpretation of cliff-dwellers' habits, the people of Cliff Palace no doubt had a supply sufficient to prevent famine by tiding over a failure of crops for two or more years. Many of these chambers were without doorways or windows; they were not limited to storage of corn, but served for the preservat

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Crematories

Crematories

As is well known to students of the Southwest, the tribes of Indians dwelling along the lower Colorado river disposed of their dead by cremation, and evidences of burning the dead are found among all the ruins along the Gila and Salt rivers in southern Arizona. The custom was also practiced in the San Pedro and Salt River valleys, and along other tributaries of the Gila river. Castañeda (1540) says that the inhabitants of Cibola, identified with Zuñi, burned their dead, but no indication of this

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Ledge Rooms

Ledge Rooms

In a shallow crevice in the roof of the cave on a higher level than the roofs of the tallest houses there is a long wall, the front of inclosures that may be called "ledge rooms." [39] Some of these rooms have plastered walls, others are roughly laid; the latter form one side of a court and served to shield those passing from one room to another. On this outer wall, about midway, there is painted in white an inverted terrace figure, which may represent a rain cloud. Attention should be called to

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Secular Rooms

Secular Rooms

The rooms in Cliff Palace, now numbered from 1 to 94, include all those on the ground floor, but do not embrace the second, third, and fourth stories nor the elevated ledge rooms secluded in the crevices of the cave roof at a high level. Their classification by function already having been considered, a brief enumeration by form and other characters will be given. Room 1, situated at the extreme southern end, presents no striking features except that one of its entrances is by stairs through the

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Kivas

Kivas

There are in Cliff Palace 23 ceremonial rooms that may be called kivas. [43] These consist of two types: (1) generally circular or cylindrical subterranean rooms, with pilasters to support the roof, and with fireplace, deflector, and ventilator. (2) Circular or rectangular rooms with rounded corners, without pilasters, fireplace, or deflector. In the first group may be placed provisionally a subtype (kiva M, for example), without pilasters but with a single large banquette. As this subtype is th

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Stone Implements

Stone Implements

The stone implements from Cliff Palace consist of axes, mauls, paint grinders, pecking stones, metates, balls, flakes, spear and arrow points, and various other articles ( pls. 20 - 22 ). There is great uniformity in these implements, the axes, for instance, being generally single edged, although a good specimen of double-edged hatchet is in the collection. A fragment of the peculiar stone implement called tcamahia [66] by the Hopi was found. While as a rule the hatchets are without handles, one

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Pottery

Pottery

No ruin in the Mesa Verde National Park has yielded more specimens of pottery than Cliff Palace, many pieces of which are preserved in various museums in Colorado and elsewhere. The collection gathered by the writer was small compared with some of these, and although only a few whole pieces were found, by restoration from fragments a fair number of specimens, ample perhaps for generalization, were procured. In the following mention of the pottery obtained from the ruin a very comprehensive idea

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Basketry

Basketry

A few instructive specimens of basketry or wicker ware were exhumed at Cliff Palace. One of the most interesting of these is the unfinished plaque shown in the accompanying figure 2 . One specimen of basketry ( pl. 29 ) has the form of a hopper; its whole central part was purposely omitted, but the basket is finished on the inner and outer margins. It recalls a basket used by the Ute and other Shoshonean Indians, but it is different in form from any figured in Nordenskiöld's work, and, so far as

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Sandals

Sandals

The sandals found at Cliff Palace ( pls. 30 - 32 ) are practically the same in form, material, and weave as those recorded from Spruce-tree House. The shape of these, however, is particularly instructive, as it appears to shed light on the meaning of certain flat stones, rare in cliff-dwellings, called "sandal lasts." These stones, one of which is figured in the report on Spruce-tree House, are rectangular, flat, thin, smooth, with rounded corners, and sometimes have a notch in the rim at one en

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Wooden Objects

Wooden Objects

There are several objects made of wood in the collection from Cliff Palace, some of the least problematical of which are long, pointed rods ( fig. 3 ) with which the ancients probably made the holes in which they planted corn, in much the same way as the Hopi plant at the present day. These implements are commonly pointed at the end, but one or two are broadened and flattened. No example of the spatular variety of dibble found by others, and none showing the point of attachment of a flat stone b

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Drills

Drills

A small pointed stone attached with fiber to the end of a stick, similar to those found by Nordenskiöld in ruin 9 and at Long House, was found. The Cliff Palace people kindled fire by means of the fire-drill and fire-stick (hearth), a specimen of which, similar to one collected at Spruce-tree House, is contained in the collection. Both of these fire-making implements were broken when found, apparently thrown away on that account either by the original people or by subsequent visitors....

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Bone Implements

Bone Implements

Many bone implements ( pl. 34 , 35 ) were found during the excavation of Cliff Palace. They are of the bones of birds and small mammals, or, now and then, of those of antelope or bear, the latter furnishing the best material for large scrapers. These implements were evidently sharpened by rubbing on the stones of walls or on the face of the cliff, as grooves, apparently made in this way, are there visible in several places. Scratches made in shaping or sharpening bones, repeatedly found on the m

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Turquoise Ear Pendants and other Objects

Turquoise Ear Pendants and other Objects

The single specimen of turquoise found at Cliff Palace was probably an ear pendant, and a black jet bead was apparently used for the same purpose. With the polished cylinder of hematite found one can still paint the face or body a reddish color, as the Hopi do with a similar object. From the sipapû of kiva D there was taken a small deerskin bag, tied with yucca fiber and containing a material resembling iron pyrites, evidently an offering of some kind to the gods of the underworld. A button made

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Seeds

Seeds

The cobs and seeds of corn, squash and pumpkin seeds, beans, and fragments of gourds give some idea of the vegetable products known to the Cliff Palace people. Corn furnished the most important food of the people, and its dried leaves, stalks, and tassels were abundant in all parts of their refuse heaps. Naturally, in a cave where many small rodents have lived for years, it is rare to find seed corn above ground that has not been appropriated by these animals, and in the dry, alkaline bone-phosp

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Textiles

Textiles

Fig. 4.—Woven forehead band. The Cliff Palace people manufactured fairly good cloth, the component cords or strings being of two or three strands and well twisted. So finely made and durable are some of these cords that they might be mistaken for white men's work; some of them, however, are very coarse, and are tied in hanks. Among varieties of cords, may be mentioned those wound with feathers, from which textiles, ordinarily called "feather cloth," was made. Yucca and cotton were employed in th

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HUMAN BURIALS

HUMAN BURIALS

As has been seen, there were two methods of disposing of the dead—by inhumation and by cremation. The former may have been either house burial or burial in the refuse heaps in the rear of the buildings. With both forms of disposing of the dead mortuary food offerings were found. Evidences of prehistoric burials and cremation were found both on the mesa above Cliff Palace and in the ruin. [77] The practice of cremation among the cliff-dwellers has long been known. Nordenskiöld writes (p. 49): Tha

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CONCLUSIONS

CONCLUSIONS

While the work of excavation and repair of Cliff Palace described in the preceding pages adds nothing distinctly new to existing knowledge of cliff-dweller culture, it renders a more comprehensive idea of the conditions of life in one of the largest of these interesting ancient settlements in our Southwest. Of all the questions that present themselves after a work of this kind, perhaps the most important, from a scientific point of view, is, What relation exists between the culture of Cliff Pala

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