Part 18 (1/2)
The region also abounds with archaeological curiosities and remarkable hieroglyphics. Many of these are found in close proximity to the Grand Canon of the Colorado, and on the cliffs in which the far-famed cliff dwellers of old took up their abode. Hieroglyphics, marked upon rocks or other lasting substances, have been used by nearly all ancient races to perpetuate the history of certain events among them. Especially true is this of the ancient people who lived in Arizona. The remarkable picture rocks and boulders, with strange symbols upon them, left by the prehistoric races of Arizona, have been the cause of much discussion among those who have seen them, as to who these ancient hieroglyphic makers were. These rock records may be divided into three different kinds, which it is thought were made by two different races. The first, or very ancient race, left records on rocks, in some instances of symbols only, and in other instances of pictures and symbols combined.
The later race, which came after the first race had vanished, made only crude representations of animals, birds or reptiles, not using symbols or combinations of lines.
The age of the most ancient pictographs and hieroglyphics can only be conjectured, but all give certain indications that they are many centuries old, and the difference between the work of the ancient and the later race leads the observer to believe that the older hieroglyphics were made by a people far superior to those who came after them, and who left no record in symbols, as we have said, with the exception of crude representations of animals and reptiles.
In many instances it is quite evident that the same rock or cliff has been used by the two different races to put their markings upon, the later, or inferior, race often making their pictographs over or across the hieroglyphic writings of the first race. Of the superiority of the first people who left their writings on the rocks and boulders found in the ancient mounds, ruins and graves, there can be no doubt, for their writings show order and a well defined design in symbols, which were evidently intended to convey their history to others; and it is quite probable that those who made the great mounds, houses and ca.n.a.ls were the authors of these writings. It may be truthfully a.s.serted that the cliff dwellers of the rock houses in the deep canons of the mountains were of the same race as the mound builders of the valleys, for exactly the same cla.s.s of hieroglyphics found on boulders from the ancient ruins of the valleys, are found on the rocks near the houses of the cliff dwellers.
If this superior race were so distinctive from all other ancient races of Arizona--in their work being so far advanced as to solve what would be called, even at the present day, difficult engineering problems; to dig great ca.n.a.ls many miles in length, the remains of which can be seen at the present time, and to bring them to such perfection for irrigating purposes; to build such great houses and to live in cities--may it not have been, as many who have studied this subject now contend, that this superior race were white people instead of a copper colored race, as has generally been supposed?
The hieroglyphics of the more ancient race are often found on sheltered rocks on the slopes of the mountains leading up from the valleys.
Generally protected from the elements by overhanging cliffs, the dry climate has kept the writings from wearing away, and being in most instances picked into rocks which have a black, glistening surface, but of a lighter color underneath, the contrast is very noticeable, and when in prominent places these hieroglyphics can be seen several hundred feet away.
As no metal tools have ever been found in the mounds, ruins or cliff dwellings, the hieroglyphics were probably picked into the rock with a sharp-pointed stone much harder than the rock upon which the work was done. It is a singular fact that, although iron, copper, gold and silver abound in the mountains in Arizona, no tools, utensils or ornaments of these metals are found in the mounds or ruins. Yet furnace-like structures of ancient origin have been found, which appear to have been used for reducing ores, and in and around which can be found great quant.i.ties of an unknown kind of slag.
In many instances the hieroglyphic boulders have been found in great heaps, of several hundred in number, as if many different persons had contributed a piece of this strange writing to the collection. These etched boulders have been found buried in the ground with ollas containing the charred bones of human beings, and could the writings on the boulders be deciphered, we would undoubtedly learn of the virtues of the prehistoric deceased, just as we do of a person who dies in the present day, when we read the epitaph on a tombstone of the one who is buried beneath.
In opening some of the mounds, the investigator finds they are made of the fallen walls of great adobe buildings, and as he digs deeper he finds rooms of various dimensions, and which, in many instances, have cemented walls and floors. In one instance there were found the impressions of a baby's feet and hands, made, presumably, as the child had crawled over the newly laid soft cement. In another mound the cemented walls of a room were found covered with hieroglyphics and rude drawings, which were thought to represent stellar constellations.
To a certain extent, some of the pictured rocks tell us of part of the daily life of this ancient race, for in a number of instances the pictures picked into the rocks, although rudely formed, are self-explanatory, and the ancient artist tells plainly by his work what is meant. On the edge of a little valley in the Superst.i.tion Mountains, there was found a great rock on which had been etched many small animals, apparently representing sheep, and at one side was the figure of a man, as if watching them. It may be the ancient herder himself, sitting in the shadow of the great rock, while his sheep were grazing in the valley below, has pa.s.sed away the time in making this rock picture.
The hardy wild sheep still found in the mountains of Arizona may be the remnants of great bands formerly domesticated by these people.
The skeleton of the prehistoric man dug from beneath the stalagmites in the cave of Mentone, France, and which set all the scientific men of the world talking and thinking, gives proof of no greater age than many of the skeletons, relics or bones of some of these ancient mound and ca.n.a.l builders.
An incident ill.u.s.trating the great antiquity of prehistoric man in Arizona, is the following: In digging a well on the desert north of Phoenix, at the depth of 115 feet from the surface a stone mortar, such as the ancients used, was found standing upright, and in it was found a stone pestle, showing the mortar had not been carried there by any underground current of water, and that it had not been disturbed from the position in which its ancient owner had left it with the pestle in it. There is only one way to account for this mortar and pestle. They had originally been left on what was at that time the surface of the ground, and the slow wash from the mountains had gradually, during unknown ages, raised the surface for miles on every side to the extent of 115 feet.
The question is often asked, Will this hieroglyphic writing ever be deciphered? The authors of the most ancient hieroglyphic writings or markings seem to have had well-defined forms or marks, which were in common use for this cla.s.s of writing. Is it not most reasonable that a race so far advanced in other ways would have perfected a method of transmitting by marks of some kind their records to those who might come after them? Again, where so much system is shown in the use of symbols, it may be presumed that the same mark, wherever used in the same position, carries with it a fixed meaning, alike at all times. Having such a settled system of marks, there must be a key to the thoughts concealed in writing, and quite likely the key for deciphering these hieroglyphics will sometime be found on one of the yet undiscovered hieroglyphic rocks in the high mountains or in the mounds not yet examined. On the other hand, there can be no key to the inferior cla.s.s of pictographs made by the people who came after the mound, ca.n.a.l and city builders had disappeared, for the crudely marked forms of reptiles, animals or similar things had a meaning, if any, varying with each individual maker.
Who were these people who formed a great nation here in the obscurity of the remote past? Were they the ancient Phoenicians, who were not only a maritime but a colonizing nation, and who, in their well-manned s.h.i.+ps, might have found their way to the southern coast of America ages since, and from thence journeyed north? Or were they some of the followers of Votan or Zamna, who had wandered north and founded a colony of the Aztecs? Whoever these people were, and whichever way they came from, the evidences of the great works they left behind them give ample proof that they were superior and different from other races around them, and these particular people may have been the ”bearded white men,” whom the Indians had traditions of when Coronado's followers first came through the Gila and Salt River valleys in 1526.
CHAPTER XIX.
OUR GREAT WATERWAYS
Importance of Rivers to Commerce a Generation Ago--The Ideal River Man--The Great Mississippi River and Its Importance to Our Native Land--The Treacherous Missouri--A First Mate Who Found a Cook's Disguise Very Convenient--How a Second Mate Got Over the Inconvenience of Temporary Financial Embarra.s.sment.
During the last quarter of the century in which we write the figures ”1”
and ”8” in every date line, the steam railroad has, to a very large extent, put out of joint the nose of the steamboat, just as, at the present time, we are threatened with so complete a revolution in travel and motive power as to warrant a prediction that, long before another quarter of a century has pa.s.sed, electricity will take the place of steam almost entirely. But even if this is so, old acquaintance should not be forgot, and every citizen of the United States should feel that the prosperity of the country is due, in very large measure, to the country's magnificent waterways, and to the enterprise of the men who equipped river fleets and operated them, with varying degrees of profit.
The true river man is not so conspicuous as he was in the days when St.
Louis, Cincinnati, Memphis and other important railroad centers of to-day were exclusively river towns. The river man was a king in those days. The captain walked the streets with as much dignity as he walked his own deck, and he was pointed to by landsmen as a person of dignity and repute. The mate was a great man in the estimation of all who knew him, and of a good many who did not know him. Ruling his crew with a rod of iron, and accustomed to be obeyed with considerable and commendable promptness, he adopted a tone of voice in general conversation considerably louder than the average, and every one acquired a habit of making way for him.
The levee in a river town, before the railroads came snorting and puffing across country and interfering with the monopoly so long enjoyed by the steamboat, was a scene of continuous turmoil and activity.
Sometimes, now, one sees on a levee a great deal of hurrying and noise.
But the busiest scenes of to-day sink into insignificance compared with those which are rapidly becoming little more than an indistinct memory.
The immense cargoes of freight of every description would be ranged along the river front, and little flags could be seen in every direction.
These flags were not, perhaps, exactly evidence of the activity of the schoolmaster, or of the prevalence of superior education. They were, rather, reminders of the fact that a great majority of the rank and file of river workers could read little, and write less. To tell a colored roustabout twenty or thirty years ago to fetch a certain cargo, labeled with the name of a particular boat or consignee, would have been to draw from the individual addressed a genuine old-time plantation grin, with some caustic observation about lack of school facilities in the days when the roustabout ought to have been studying the ”three Rs,” but was not. It was, however, comparatively easy to locate a cargo by means of a flag, and identification seldom failed, as the flags could be varied in color, shape and size, so as to provide distinction as well as difference.