The ruined walls on the bluff situated at the junction of the McElmo and Yellow Jacket Canyons are archeologically instructive. As the mesa between the two canyons narrows in a promontory, about 100 feet in altitude, its configuration reminds one of the East Mesa of the Hopi. It is inaccessible on three sides, but on the fourth, where the width of the mesa is contracted, there are remains of a low zigzag wall, extending from one side to the other. At the western base of this promontory, on the ledge higher than the river, there are artificial walls built on bowlders in the sides of which shallow caves are eroded and near by them circular depressions. There are likewise remains of a small pueblo with walls much broken down and across the river the ruins of a community house, one of the largest in the district. The exceptional character of the ruins on top of this promontory has been mentioned or described by several visitors, as Holmes, Jackson, and Morley and Kidder, and various conjectures have been made as to their character and relation to the other ruins in this neighborhood.

The ruins on this mesa are of two kinds: small inclosures made of slabs of stone set on edge and semicircular structures (fig. 18), also constructed of upright stone slabs or megaliths. Three of the latter have concentric surrounding walls with a "vestibule" entrance (?) at the south somewhat like rooms at the bases of towers. One of these is said by Morley and Kidder to have three concentric walls. The small box-like structures are numerous, and are rudely constructed, united in an imperfect ring about the circular rooms.

FIG. 18.—Megalithic stone inclosure, McElmo Bluff.

In verification of the various theories that have been suggested to account for these rectangular structures—their interpretation as storage bins, burial places, and cremation rooms—we have no proof. Similar rooms of megaliths exist on Sandstone Canyon and at other places to the north and in Montezuma Canyon to the west. The rude, massive character of the masonry leads me to refer them to the slab-house culture of Kidder and the imperfect masonry suggests they were habitations in a period antedating that of the pure pueblo culture. Such fragments of pottery as were found were, like the architecture, rude and archaic, adding weight to the interpretation that they belonged to a very old epoch.

The author regards the structures made of stones set on edge as very old, possibly examples of the most primitive buildings in the McElmo region, antedating the pueblos with horizontal masonry farther east. West of the mouth of the Yellow Jacket, especially on the Montezuma Mesa, these megalithic walls are more pretentious, as if this was the center of the earlier phase of house buildings. In the eastern ruins these slabs of stone set on edge sometimes appear as at Far View House with horizontal masonry, but more as a survival.

Since their discovery and description by Jackson and Holmes 40 years ago, little has been added to our knowledge of these inclosures, although similar remains have been reported at various points from Dolores far into Utah. They are called cemeteries and crematories by the farmers and stockmen, but skeletons or burnt bones do not occur in them; the charcoal shows wood fiber, and is not bone ash. More knowledge must be obtained through excavations before their significance can be determined. Their association with circular rooms appears in Jackson's account [1] of the stone structures on the promontory at the mouth of the Yellow Jacket. He says:

---

¹Tenth Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Surv. (Hayden Survey) for 1876, p. 414, 1879.

---

"The perpendicular scarp of the mesa ran round very regularly, 50 to 100 feet in height, the talus sloping down at a steep angle. On cave like benches at the foot of the scarp is a row of rock shelters, much ruined, in one of which was found a very perfect polished-stone implement. Gaining the top of the mesa with some difficulty, we found a perfectly flat surface, 100 yards in width by about 200 in length, separated from the main plateau by a narrow neck, across which a wall had been thrown, but which is now nearly leveled. Almost the entire space fenced in by this wall was covered by an extended series of small squares, formed by thin slabs of sand-rock set on end. All were uniform in size, measuring about 3 by 5 feet, and arranged in rows, two and three deep, adjusted to various points of the compass. There were also a few circles disposed irregularly about the inclosed area, each about 20 feet in diameter, their circumferences being formed of similar rectangular spaces, leaving a circular space of 10 feet diameter in the center. These rectangles occur mainly in groups, and are found indiscriminately scattered through the whole region that has come under our observation upon the mesa tops and in the valleys. They all have the same general shape and size, and are seldom accompanied by even the faintest indication of a mound-like character. We have always supposed them to be graves, but have not as yet found any evidence that would prove them such. Some that we excavated to the depth of 5 and 6 feet in a solid earth that had never been disturbed did not reward our search with the faintest vestige of human remains. In nearly every case, however, a thin scattered layer of bits of charcoal was found from 6 to 18 inches beneath the surface. In one instance, near the Mesa Verde, the upright slabs of rock which inclosed one of these rectangles were sunk 2 feet into the earth and projected 6 inches above it."

Holmes (op. cit., pp. 385-386) describes similar structures:

"The greater portion of what are supposed to be burial places occur on the summits of hills or on high, barren promontories that overlook the valleys and canons. In these places considerable areas, amounting in some cases to half an acre or more, are thickly set with rows of stone slabs, which are set in the ground and arranged in circles or parallelograms of greatly varying dimensions. At first sight the idea of a cemetery is suggested, although on examination it is found that the soil upon the solid rock surfaces is but a few inches deep, or if deeper, so compact that with the best implements it is very difficult to penetrate it.

"On the west bank of the Dolores, near the second bend, I came upon a cluster of these standing stones on the summit of a low, rounded hill, and in the midst of a dense growth of full-grown pinon pines."

The rows of stones at this place, according to the same author, were composed of undressed slabs, many of which had fallen, the parallelograms averaging 3 by 8 feet in dimensions. Thin layers of bits of charcoal and pottery occur in the neighborhood. The date these slabs were placed upright was very early, for trees growing in the inclosures were estimated to be three or four hundred years old. These stones were sometimes "embedded in the sides and roots of the trees." Holmes had the "impression that these places, if not actually burying grounds, were at least places used for the performance of funeral rites . . . the remains of the dead being burned or left to decay in the open air."

The interiors of the inclosures were found on excavation to be filled to a depth of about a foot with soil mixed with ashes. There were many fragments of pottery, and some other objects near them, but nothing to indicate, as suggested by previous observations, that they were burial cists or even crematories for burying the dead. No charred human remains occur, but charcoal is abundant. It may have been that these places were used as ovens for roasting corn or for some culinary purposes, the neighboring circular rooms being possibly used for the same purposes as towers by the people who formerly inhabited this region. They are not large enough for dwellings and the soil in them is too shallow for burial purposes. They belong to a type which is widely distributed over the district visited by the author. Especially fine examples occur north of Sandstone Canyon district.

At the base of the great cliff, on the top of which the remains in question are found, under the shelter of an overhanging bowlder, may be seen one of the finest collections of pictographs of animals and human beings. Not far from the last-mentioned bowlder the walls of a large pueblo can readily be traced along the banks of the McElmo Canyon. In his studies of the antiquities of this region the author did not penetrate west of the mouth of Yellow Jacket Canyon, but he was told by stockmen and sheep herders of the existence of many other ruins contiguous to the road all the way from this point to Bluff City. The most important of these have already been described in a general way.