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Updated: May 3, 2025
Immense numbers of these storage cists are found in the canyon, some of them with masonry so roughly executed that it is difficult to discriminate between the old pueblo and the modern Navaho work.
The western end of the ruin has been partially restored by the Navaho and used for burial cists, and other cists have been built on the site independent of the old walls, as shown on the plan. It is situated at the back of a considerable bay, directly opposite a large rock at the mouth of Del Muerto, and overlooked the whole of the bottom land in the bay.
The largest are 25 and even 30 feet in diameter, and from this size range down to 5 or 6 feet and thence down to little cubby-holes or storage cists.
Plate LVI shows a characteristic site in the lower part of the canyon. It occurs at the point marked 8 on the map, and is now quite difficult of approach, owing to the wearing away or weathering of a long line of foot-holes in the sloping rock, but formerly access was easy enough. It is now marked by a cluster of Navaho burial cists.
It is now so much broken down that but little can be inferred as to its former condition, except that there was probably no interior bench, as no remains of such a structure can now be distinguished. The size of this kiva is exceptional, and it is very probable that it was never roofed. The structures within the kiva, shown on the ground plan, are Navaho burial cists.
On the other side of the island there were still in 1860 remains of eight circles, five of sandstone and three of granite, quite close to one another. The diameter of the largest was 63 feet, and the highest stone reached 18 feet. One of them was a double ring. In four of them were found cists containing pottery, flint arrow-heads, a piece of a bronze pin, and some fragments of bone.
Moreover, not a few tombs belonged to the category of cists; that is to say, excavations in rock, with a single-slabbed or many-slabbed cover; or receptacles formed with stone clubs, cobbles, or boulders. *The stone sarcophagus was of considerable size and various shapes, forming an oblong box with a lid of a boatlike form.
A large proportion of the cists are of modern Navaho work, but that some of them were used by the pueblo people who preceded them seems probable from the similarity in horticultural methods, and from the small size of many of the villages. A village inhabited by half a dozen people was not uncommon; one which could accommodate more than fifty was rare.
The burial cists are built usually in a corner or against a wall of a cliff dweller's house, but sometimes they are built against a cliff wall, and occasionally stand out alone. The masonry is always rough, much inferior to the old walls against which it generally rests, and usually very flimsy.
These two uses, although quite distinct, do not conflict with each other. Doubtless many excellent sites, now marked only by the remains of storage cists, were occupied also during the summer as outlooks without the erection of any house structures. Some of the modern pueblos now use temporary shelters of brush for outlooks.
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