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Plate XLV shows another example in Del Muerto, the largest in that canyon. The walls are still standing to a height of three stories in one place, and the masonry is of high class. The back cliff has not entered into the plan here to the same extent that it generally does. It shows about 20 rooms on the ground, exclusive of three or perhaps four kivas.
Hence the name Jornada del Muerto, which is often translated as the journey of death or as the route of the dead man. It is also interesting to note that in the late 16th century, the Spanish considered their province of New Mexico to include most of North America west of the Mississippi! The origin of the code name Trinity for the test site is also interesting, but the true source is unknown.
The cliff dwellers' skull is short and flattened behind, while the skulls that were found in these old graves were long, narrow and round on the back. Rev. H. M. Baum, who has traveled all over the southwest and visited every large ruin in the country, considers that Canon de Chelly and its branch, del Muerto, is the most interesting prehistoric locality in the United States.
These later additions may have been made by the Navaho, who used the building material on the ground; at any rate the structure is now merely a cluster of storage cists. One of the most extensive ruins of the cliff-outlook type situated in Canyon del Muerto is shown in figure 50. The plan shows at least eight rooms stretched along the cliff at the top of the talus.
On my telling him next, in answer to another question, about the fine-looking fellow with the revolver in his hand, his feelings could no longer be suppressed. "Mi hermano! Oh, my brother!" he exclaimed, bursting into tears. "Muerto! muerto! dead, dead!"
Panama was distant some fifty-five miles; and the road thither was extremely bad, owing to the frequent heavy rains and the consequent flooding of the trackway. At the time of Drake's raid, there were in all some sixty wooden houses in the place, inhabited in the tiempo muerto, or dead time, by about thirty people. "The rest," we read, "doe goe to Panama after the fleet is gone."
The site here is almost covered with large bowlders. All these examples occur in Del Muerto.
She glanced wildly behind, and gasped out "Escapa, Oreeque, escape, para mi, soi muerto ya." Another shot, and the miserable creature convulsively clasped her child, whose small shrill cry I often fancy I hear to this hour blending with its mother's death shriek, and, falling backwards, rolled over the brow of the hill out of sight.
The characteristics of the class are: A site more or less difficult of access generally an elaborate ground plan, although sometimes they consist of only a few rooms and the invariable presence of the kiva or estufa, here always circular in form. The largest ruin of this class occurs in Del Muerto, and is known as Mummy Cave ruin. It is called by the Navajo Tse-i-ya-kin.
Pilots highly worthy of credit have assured me, that they have seen it from the rock of Muerto, to the south west of the isle of Puna, at a distance of 47 leagues. Whenever it has been seen at a greater distance, the observers, uncertain of their longitude, have not been in a situation to furnish precise data.
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