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Updated: June 9, 2025
The almost absolute dependence of the native builder on nature as he found it is well illustrated by these cavate lodges. Furthermore, where the purple-gray stratum in which the lodges occur is covered up by the rising ground surface, the cavate lodges abruptly cease.
The Verde pictographs can not be distinguished, so far as designs are concerned, from many found elsewhere in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. An instructive pictograph, different from any which I have elsewhere seen, was discovered on the upturned side of a bowlder not far from Hance's ranch, near the road from Camp Verde to the cavate dwellings.
One of these large groups, located some 8 miles south of Verde on the eastern side of the river, has been selected for illustration. The bottom lands of the Rio Verde in the vicinity of Verde have been already described, and the cavate lodges in question occur just below the southern end of this large area of tillable land, and some of them overlook it.
Other pueblos, and the rancherias generally, were abandoned in time of war; this seems to have been a potent cause for moving. When pestilence attacked a pueblo the people would sometimes leave in a body and never return. The cliff pueblos and dwellings, the cavate dwellings, and the cinder-cone towns were all built and occupied for defensive purposes when powerful enemies threatened.
The cavate lodges occur on two distinct levels the first, which comprises nearly all the cavate lodges, is at the top of the slopes of talus and about 75 feet above the river; the second is set back from 80 to 150 feet from the first tier horizontally and 30 or 40 feet above it.
The expedient of walling up the front of a shallow cavity, commonly practiced in the San Juan region, while comparatively rare in this vicinity, was known to the dwellers in these cavate lodges. At several points remains of front walls can be seen, and in two instances front walls remain in place. The masonry, however, is in all cases very rough, of the same type as that shown in plate XXVIII.
There are several square ruins on top of the mesa above the cavate dwellings. The walls of these were massive, but they are now very much broken down, and the adobe plastering is so eroded from the masonry that I regard them of considerable antiquity. They do not differ from other similar ruins, so common elsewhere in New Mexico and Arizona, and are identical with others in the Verde region.
From the geological character of the Red-rocks I was led to suspect that cavate dwellings were not to be expected. The stone is hard and not readily excavated by the rude implements with which the aborigines of the region were supplied.
In the excavation of these chambers benches were left at convenient places along the wall and niches and cubby-holes were cut, so that in the best examples of cavate lodges the occupants, it would seem, were more comfortable, so far as regards their habitation, than the ordinary Pueblo Indian of today, and better supplied with the conveniences of that method of living.
Altogether it is very evident that the cliff houses have been used in comparatively modern times; at any rate, since the people owned asses, goats, and sheep. The rock is of such a friable nature that it will not stand atmospheric degradation very long, and there is abundant evidence of this character testifying to the recent occupancy of these cavate dwellings.
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