Part 19 (1/2)
Again, Herrera, who presents the current traditions, observes, that ”these peoples painted their original in the manner of a cave, and said they came out of seven caves to people the country of Mexico....
After the six above mentioned races departed from their country, and settled in New Spain, where they were much increased, the seventh race being the Mexican nation, a warlike and polite people, who adoring their G.o.d Vitsilpuztli, he commanded them to leave their own country, promising them they should rule over other races in a plentiful country, and much wealth.” [Footnote: History of America, iii, p. 188, 190.]
It is worthy of remark that the cave dwellings or cliff houses are in the San Juan district, the most of them being on the Mancos River, and on the western portion of the San Juan. These traditions may in fact refer to these cave dwellings as the original homes of their ancestors, and at the same time without precluding the supposition that they also constructed and inhabited some of the pueblo structures now in ruins in other parts of the same area. All the early accounts concur in representing the Aztecs or Mexicans, when they first arrived in Mexico, as subsisting by the cultivation of maize and plants, as constructing houses of stone, and with a religious system which recognized personal G.o.ds. These statements are probably true. They had attained to the statue of Village Indians.
This again renders New Mexico their probable original home as the only area in the north where ruins of structures of tribes so far advanced have been found.
The San Juan district is remarkably situated in its geographical relations. This river, rising in the crests of the high mountains forming the water-shed or divide between the Atlantic and Pacific, flows southward until it enters the table-land formation, through which it flows in a southwesterly and then northwesterly direction, making a long, sweeping curve in New Mexico and Arizona, after which it runs westerly to its confluence with the Colorado. It receives from the north the following tributaries, rising like itself in the high mountains, the Piedra, Pine River (Los Pinos), the Animas, the La Plata, the Mancos, the McElmo, now dry, and the Hovenweep and Montezuma creeks, now nearly dry. Its southern tributaries are the Navajo, Chaco, and De Ch.e.l.ly.
With such evidences of ancient occupation, here and elsewhere in the San Juan country, we are led to the conclusion that the Village Indians increased and multiplied in this area, and that at some early period there was here a remarkable display of this form of Indian life, and of house architecture in the nature of fortresses, which must have made itself felt in distant parts of the continent.
On the hypothesis that the valley of the Columbia was the seed-land of the Ganowanian family, where they depended chiefly upon a fish subsistence, we have in the San Juan country a second center and initial point of migrations founded upon farinaceous subsistence.
That the struggle of the Village Indians to resist the ever continuous streams of migration flowing southward along the mountain chains has been a hard one through many centuries of time, is proved by the many ruins of abandoned or conquered pueblos which still mark their settlements in so many places. At the present moment there is not a Village Indian in the San Juan district. It is entirely deserted of this cla.s.s of inhabitants.
That the original ancestors of the princ.i.p.al historic tribes of Mexico once inhabited the San Juan country is extremely probable.
That the ancestors of the princ.i.p.al tribes of Yucatan and Central America owe their remote origin to the same region is equally probable. And that the Mound Builders came originally from the same country, is, with our present knowledge, at least a reasonable conclusion.
Indian migrations have occurred under the influence, almost exclusively, of physical causes, operating in a uniform manner.
These migrations, involving the entire period of the existence here of the inhabitants of both American continents, will be found to have a common and connected history. A study of all the facts may yet lead to an elucidation and explanation of these migrations with some degree of certainty. The hypothesis that the valley of the Columbia River was the seed-land of the Ganowanian family holds the best chance of solving the great problem of the origin and distribution of the Indian tribes.
[Relocated Footnote: Where maize was indigenous is unknown, except that it was somewhere upon the American continent. It is the only cereal America has given to the world. At the period of European discovery, it was found cultivated and a staple article of food in a large part of North America and in parts of South America. There were also found beans, squashes, and tobacco, with the addition in some areas of peppers, tomatoes, cocoa and cotton. The problem of the place of the origin of maize is probably insoluble, but speculations are legitimate and such are all I have to offer.
The fecundity of plant-life in the Rocky Mountains is remarkable, particularly on the southern slopes, where they subside into the mesa, or table-land formation, north of the San Juan River. The continental divide is in the eastern margin of the region. The first suggestion I wish to make is that all cereals and cultivated plants must have originated in the great continental mountains of the two hemispheres, and have propagated themselves along the water courses of the mountain valleys down to the plains traversed by the great rivers formed by these mountain tributaries. All the cereals belong to the family of the Gra.s.ses (Gramineae), and each of them, doubtless, is the last of a series of antecedent forms.
I saw rye, barley and oats growing wild by self-propagation in the mountain valleys of Colorado the present season; and also the wild pea, whose stunted seeds had the taste of the cultivated pea. Turnips, onions, tomatoes, and hops are found growing wild in the Pine River Valley, and the pie-plant or rhubarb is said to grow luxuriantly in the Elk Mountain valleys. I also saw wild flax and the gourd growing by self-propagation in the valley of the Animas. Currants, gooseberries, raspberries, and strawberries are found in the mountain valleys in numerous places, together with flowering plants of many species and varieties. Tiny forms of flowering plants are to be seen above patches of snow in places where the snow had recently melted. This fecundity of plant-life from ten to twelve thousand feet above sea level, and the relation of these mountain tributaries to the San Juan, which runs from east to west, not remotely from the base of these mountains, in such a manner as to invite and receive into its lap, so to express it, the vegetable wealth developed in these mountain chains, are facts that force themselves upon the attention of the observer.
The alt.i.tude of the San Juan Valley ranges from seven thousand feet at Pagosa Springs to five thousand nine hundred and seventy feet at the mouth of the Animas, and diminis.h.i.+ng to four thousand four hundred and forty-six feet near the point where it empties into the Colorado (Hayden's Atlas of Colorado, Sheet 111). The alt.i.tude at Conejos is seven thousand eight hundred and eighty feet (ib.,) which is about as great an elevation as admits of the successful cultivation of maize. I noticed in a field of maize growing at Conejos that the stalk grew only about three feet high, and that the ear grew out of it but six inches from the ground. Specimens of the ear we obtained showed that it was about five inches long, with the kernel small and flinty. The ear is in four colors, white, red, yellow, and black, each being one or the other of these colors. In a few cases two colors were intermixed in the same ear. It seemed probable that this the primitive maize of the American aborigines, from which all other varieties have been developed. A few cobs which we found at a cliff house on the Mancos River corresponded with the Conejos ear in size, and were probably the same variety. Afterwards at Taos I found the same ear in white, red, yellow, and black; the staple maize now cultivated at this pueblo, but much larger. I brought away several fine ears saved for seed. One black ear measured twelve inches in length, with twelve rows of kernels, while the white variety, both at Conejos and Taos, had each fourteen rows.
Finally, a dry country, neither excessively hot nor moist, like the San Juan region, would seem to be most favorable for the development and self-propagation of maize as well as plants until man appeared for their domestication. These are but speculations, but if they should prompt further investigations concerning the place of nativity of this wonderful cereal, which has been such an important factor in the advancement of the Indian family, and which is also destined to prove such a support to our own, these suggestions will have not been made in vain.]
CHAPTER IX.
HOUSES OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS.
The general view of the house-life and houses of the Indian tribes thus far presented will tend to strengthen the hypothesis about to be stated concerning the earth-works of the Mound-Builders. Apart from the explanation that the long-houses of the Northern Tribes and the joint-tenement house of the Sedentary Indians are capable of affording, they are wholly inexplicable. The Mound-Builders worked native copper, cultivated maize and plants, manufactured pottery and stone implements of higher grade than the tribes of the Lower Status of barbarism; and they raised earth-works of great magnitude, superior to any works of the former tribes. They fairly belong to the cla.s.s of Sedentary Village Indians, though not in all respects of an equal grade of culture and development. Their embankments, which inclosed a rectangular s.p.a.ce, were in all probability, the foundations upon which they erected their houses. It is proposed to consider these embankments under this hypothesis.
Under the name of Mound-Builders certain unknown tribes of the American aborigines are recognized, who formerly inhabited as their chief area the valley of the Ohio and its tributary streams. Traces of their occupation have been found in other places, from the Gulf of Mexico to Lakes Erie and Superior, and from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, and in some localities west of this river.
Without entering upon a discussion of these works, this chapter will be confined to four princ.i.p.al questions:
I. The house-life of the American aborigines, in the usages of which the Mound-Builders were necessarily involved.
II. The probable center from which the Mound-Builders emigrated into these areas.
III. The uses for which their princ.i.p.al earth-works were designed, with a conjectural restoration of one of their pueblos; and,
IV. The probable numbers of the people.
The Mound-Builders have disappeared, or, at least, have fallen out of human knowledge, leaving these works and their fabrics as the only evidence of their existence. Consequently the proposed questions, excepting the first, are incapable of specific answers; but they are not beyond the reach of approximate solutions. The mystery in which these tribes are enshrouded, and the unique character of their earth-works, will lead to deceptive inferences, unless facts and principles are carefully considered and rigorously applied, and such deductions only are made as they will fairly warrant. It is easy to magnify the significance of these remains and to form extravagant conclusions concerning them; but neither will advance the truth.
They represent a status of human advancement forming a connecting link in the progressive development of man. If, then, the nature of their arts, and more especially the character of their inst.i.tutions, can be determined with reasonable certainty, the true position of the Mound-Builders can be a.s.signed to them in the scale of human progress, and what was possible and what impossible on their part can be known.
THE HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES, IN THE USAGES OF WHICH THE MOUND-BUILDERS WERE NECESSARILY INVOLVED.