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The reader will notice that I accept without question the belief that the so-called cliff dwellers were not a distinct people, but that the cliff houses were results of special adaptation to environment of a race who sometimes excavated cavate dwellings or built houses in open plains. I am sure that all these three types were built and inhabited at the same time by the same people. Moreover, the reasoning is cogent, as long ago suggested by others, that the existing pueblos are inhabited today by descendants of the cliff peoples, which have been no doubt somewhat modified in consanguinity by intermarriage with nomadic stocks, but have preserved the cliff-dweller cultus stage down to our own day in a partially but not greatly modified form. But while recognizing the kinship of the cliff dwellers with the modern Pueblo Indians, I can not restrict this relationship to any one modern pueblo to the exclusion of others. The evidences which are adduced that the cliff dwellers are ancestors of Zuñis can be paralleled by similar likenesses among the Mokis; indeed, the resemblances are even closer, since the Tusayan Indians are today less modified by foreign influences than any other pueblo peoples. The cultus stage of the so-called cliff dwellers is conserved to our times, with modifications, by the existing pueblos; and those members of the latter which are least modified stand nearest the ancestral conditions, and therefore nearest the cliff peoples.

Perhaps the most remarkable type of aboriginal dwellings in the Rio Verde Valley are the so-called cavate rooms which are found at various places where the rock is soft enough to permit their construction. These caves have been hewn out of the solid rock, and in places the cliffs are honeycombed with these habitations of aboriginal troglodytes. The largest cluster examined was about 8 miles south of Old Camp Verde, opposite Squaw Mountain, where their number is not far from a hundred. Each subterranean chamber or suite of rooms bore evidence of past habitation, and many objects of archæological interest were collected from their floors and the débris immediately at their entrances.

The accompanying illustration shows the external appearance of a row of cave dwellings south of Camp Verde; a huge buttress of soft stone of a character almost light enough to float, standing out from the lofty hills which flank the left bank of the river, and riddled on each side by caves, passages, and subterranean recesses. We clambered up the broken talus, shown in the view, and entered the caves through passages hardly high enough to admit a man of ordinary stature. Once inside the cave, the excavation enlarges, and we find ourselves in a roomy chamber, high enough to permit the visitor to stand upright, with lateral platforms, side rooms, closets, and recesses. These were living rooms, for there are fireplaces, well-plastered walls, and even the holes for former pegs for clothing. An enumeration of the number of rooms or cave habitations which exist at various points in the hills and mesas overlooking the Verde conveys little idea of the population SM 95-36

which once found shelter in them. There are evidences that the number was large, and warrant the conclusion that the caves were once alive with these troglodytes. The makers of these caverns chose for their work a soft tufa rock, which was easily excavated, rarely, if ever, attempting to excavate the hard lava or red sandstone. The aborig inal people riddled the hills in places with their burrowings, sometimes choosing caverns which they walled up, and when driven by exigencies, such as the hardness of the rock, plastered their communal dwellings like wasp nests to the face of the cliff which overhung them like great protecting roofs. The plan of the cavate rooms may be indicated by the selection of a typical form, shown in the accompanying cut. Some of these dwellings are simpler; others more complicated, but a marked feature of all are lateral platforms raised a few inches above the floor of a central chamber. It is instructive to note that this feature is paralleled in the construction of the floor of a modern kiva or sacred room, in which a raised dais or spectator's platform is a constant feature.

From the character of the archæological objects which were gathered from the rooms of these troglodytes, it is probable that they were of the same cultus stage as the cliff people of not distant mesas, or of extensive villages, the ruins of which now dot the Verde Valley or crown the hills at various points in this region. We do not have to go far for evidences that this is so, for even the promontories in which the cavate chambers are carved are surmounted with the remains of welllaid walls of dwellings, identical with those of the river valley.

The new ruins which I have discovered in the Red Rock country belong to the type called cliff houses, and are the largest of this kind already reported from the valley of the Rio Verde or its tributaries. So far as I know, these ruins have never been described, and one of the largest had never been visited by white men.

For convenience in my descriptions, I have given to the more important of these ruins the names Palatki and Honanki, Red House, and Bear House. The former would, at a low estimate, accommodate, when restored, 50 people; the latter, about 300.

Historical sources shed no light on their age, but I think there is hardly a doubt that they are older than the invasion of Arizona by the Spaniards early in the sixteenth century, while their general appearance speaks of a much greater antiquity.

The ruins of the Red Houses consist of two communal dwellings, situated a few hundred feet apart, about 6 miles west of Court House Rock, a prominent pinnacle overlooking the left bank of Oak Creek. These ruins lie in a box canyon on the south side of the Red Rocks, and are perched on the top of a talus of fallen débris from a perpendic ular cliff to which they are plastered like chimney-swallow nests. The cliff rises precipitately behind the houses, and arching far above affords protection from falling rain which, so far.as appearance goes, has never flooded their floors.

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