Into These Pits Dry Wood, Roots,
Pine Cones, Etc., Are Thrown And Set On Fire, Until The Whole Oven Is
Thoroughly Heated.
On the hot rocks are then laid the pulpy stalks of the
agave; over these is placed a layer of wet grass; then more agave or mescal
leaves, more grass, and so on, until the pit is full.
Then the oven and its
contents are banked over with earth, and allowed to steam and cook for
three or four days. The woman in charge is an expert in determining when
her "bread is baked." She thrusts stalks of the agave into the heart of the
pit before it is finally closed up, and when she deems "time up," she pulls
forth one of these stalks. If it is not done to her liking, she allows the
process to continue; otherwise the banked up earth is removed, and the
contents of the pit withdrawn and placed upon adjacent rocks to dry. It now
looks like large cakes of brownish fibres, thoroughly saturated in
molasses. In taste it is sweet and fairly palatable, though the fibres
render it a food that requires a large amount of mastication. It has great
staying qualities, contains much nutrition, and will keep for months, even
years. I have eaten pieces of it that were sweet and good over three years
after it was made.
Unlimited Fragments of Pottery. In my own wanderings of nearly twenty years
in the Grand and Havasu Canyons and their smaller tributary gorges, I have
discovered scores of these cliff-dwellings. Ruins uncounted are to be found
scattered along the rim, within five to ten miles of the Canyon, and
thousands of pieces of pottery of old design have been picked up by the
visitors of the past fifteen years.
On the Shinumo, opposite the Bass Trail, are several cliff-dwellings, and
as late as the summer of 1908 a young couple camped there for a month on
their wedding trip, excavated and discovered a fine stone axe, numbers of
pieces of pottery of three different kinds, several pieces with holes bored
with the primitive drill of flint or obsidian, a fine spearhead of flint,
and a number of arrow points.
Similarity of Cliff Ruins. The whole region of Arizona, New Mexico,
Southern Utah, and Southern Colorado abounds in these cliff ruins. The
likeness of their appearance, and the fact that everything excavated is of
a similar kind, seems to indicate a relationship, both in time of
occupancy and in the peoples who built and tenanted them.
The questions now naturally arise: Who were these people? What was their
life? Whence did they come? Whither have they gone?
The Race of the Cliff Dwellers. In the earlier days of America's serious
researches into her own archaeology, those who led our thought on the
subject, though personally they had not seen the cliff-dwellings, declared
them to be the homes of the Aztecs, one of the Mexican races found by
Cortes below the City of Mexico.
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