ancient dwellings in the Rio Verde Valley was given, from his own personal observations, by Dr. Edgar A. Mearns, in The Popular Science Monthly for October, 1890. But his attention was devoted chiefly to the buildings in exposed situations of the Pueblo style of architecture; while he speaks of having seen lines of black holes emerging upon the narrow ledges, which he was told were cave dwellings of an extinct race. He mentions also walled buildings of two kinds those occupying natural hollows or cavities in the face of the cliffs, and those built in exposed situations; the former, whose walls were protected by sheltering cliffs, being sometimes found in almost as perfect a state of preservation as when deserted by the builders, unless the torch has been applied. "Another and very common form of dwellings," Dr. Mearns continues, "is the caves which are excavated in the cliffs by means of stone picks or other instruments. They are found in all suitable localities that are contiguous to water and good agricultural land, but are most numerous in the vicinity of large casas grandes."
The cave dwellings are more prominent in other accounts of the region, and seem to be a very important feature in some of the canons. The majority of those known are in the valleys of the Colorado and the Rio Doloroso, Rio San Juan, and Rio Mancos, its tributaries. A village, if we might call it that, on the San Juan, described by Mr. W. H. Holmes, is surmounted by three estufas or towers, one rectangular and two circular, each over a different group of cave dwellings. A short distance from this ruin are the remains of another tower, built on a grander scale. These structures are supposed by Mr. Holmes to have been the fortresses, council chambers, and places of worship of the cliff and cave dwellers.
The great Echo Cave on the San Juan is described by Mr. W. H. Jackson as situated on a bluff about two hundred feet high, and as being one hundred feet deep. "The houses occupy the eastern half of the cave. The first building was a small structure, sixteen feet long and from three to four feet wide. Next came an open space, eleven feet long and nine feet deep, probably a workshop. Four holes were driven into the smooth rock floor, six feet apart, probably designed to hold the posts for a loom. . . . There were also grooves worn into the rock where the people had polished their stone implements. The main building comes next, forty-eight feet long, twelve feet high, and ten feet wide, divided into three rooms, with lower and upper story, each story being five feet high. There were holes for the beams in the walls, and window-like apertures between the rooms, affording communication to each room of the second story. There was one window, twelve inches square, looking out toward the open country."[1]
- ↑ Dr. Stephen D. Peet, in the American Antiquarian.
