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Updated: July 9, 2025
There were several smoke-blackened caves without walls of masonry, but with floors strewn with charred wood, showing Apache occupancy. No cavate dwellings were found in the section of the Red-rocks visited by our party. The two largest of the Red-rock cliff houses to which I shall refer were named Honanki or Bear-house and Palatki or Red-house.
In this connection a comparison with the cavate ledges found in other regions will be of interest. In 1875 Mr. W. H. Holmes, then connected with the Hayden survey, visited a number of cavate lodges on the Rio San Juan and some of its tributaries. Several groups are illustrated in his report.
I have lettered these rooms, as indicated by their entrances, a to l, beginning with the opening on the left. The rock in which these caves have been hewn is very soft, and almost white in color, save for a slightly reddish brown stratum just below the line of entrances to the cavate chambers.
In comparing the remaining cavate dwellings of this series with that described, we find every degree of complication in the arrangement of rooms, from a simple cave, or irregular hole in the side of the cliff, to squared chambers with lateral rooms. The room I, for instance, is rectangular, 6 feet long by 3 feet wide, with an entrance the same width as that of the room itself.
The cavate dwellings are likewise a form of habitation which shows considerable workmanship, and are far from caves like those inhabited by "cave men." These dwellings were laboriously excavated with rude implements; had floors, banquettes, windows, walled recesses, and the like. It is hardly proper to regard them, as less difficult to construct than pueblos or cliff houses.
That these ancient peoples went north there can be no doubt. North of the valley, nearly fifty miles, on the Verde, is a great stone ruin and beyond it are cavate dwellings of remarkable sort. In Tonto Creek Valley, a dozen miles north of the Roosevelt dam, is an immense ruin built of gypsum blocks.
When the Navajo invasion came, by which kindred tribes were displaced from the district farther west, these Tewan Indians left their pueblos on the plateau and their dwellings by the rivers below in the depths of the canyon and constructed cavate homes for themselves; that is, they excavated chambers in the cliffs where these cliffs were composed of soft, friable tufa.
In several localities near Verde, where there are cavate lodges, located originally with especial reference to an adjacent area of tillable land, the terraces have been completely cut away, and the cliffs in which the cavate lodges occur are washed by the river during high water.
None of these small settlements was occupied, however, for more than a few decades, the ground plans of most of them indicating an even shorter period. That cavate lodges and cliff-dwellings are simply varieties of the same phase of life, and that life an agricultural one, is a conclusion, supported by the remains in the lower Verde valley.
This necessitated reexamination of many ruins in Verde valley, which was my aim during the most of June. I followed this valley from the cavate dwellings near Squaw mountain past the great ruin in the neighborhood of Old Camp Verde, the unique Montezuma Well, to the base of the Red-rocks.
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