MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK, Colo., a reservation of 48,966 acres in Monte zuma County, southwestern Colorado. Within its area, in canyons of the Mancos River, are the most remarkable of the many ruins of pre historic cliff dwellings in the southwestern United States. The Mesa Verde (Sp. table so named from its vegetation) is a high table-land, dividing the Mancos and Monte zuma valleys. This mesa is elevated above the valleys some 2,000 feet, and rises abruptly from their floors, with precipitous sides, like the walls of a canyon. The northern extremity of this great mesa terminates in Point Lookout, which juts out between the two valleys, a land mark for miles in all directions. The highest part of the Mesa Verde National Park, Pei Point, near the northern boundary, is 8,57: feet above sea-level, while Point Lookout has 32 elevation of 8,428 feet above sea-level. T1-d northern edge of the mesa terminates in a pre cipitous bluff, averaging 2,000 feet above floor of the Montezuma Valley. The gener.: slope of the mesa is to the south, so that a ;c um on the northern rim has a view in all dire dons. The surface of this table-land is broke by innumerable canyons, which start from tin very edge of the mesa on the northern and wet ern sides, and, growing deeper and more Togo: as they descend, finally open ont into the Maa cos CanYon. These canyons have many grin caverns in their side walls, with the overhang ing rock for roofs and in CAWS are found the ruins of the cliff dwellingt principal ruins are found in Navajo, Cliff, Soda, Long and Rock Canyons, though there are boa dreds of lesser ruins in all the canyons in tiff park. Spruce Tree House is in Spruce Can** a branch of Navajo; Cliff Palace is in C Canyon; Balcony House is in Soda; House and Inaccessible are in Navajo; House is in Rock Canyon. A ruin in Canyon was entered by one of the rangers 1914 for the first time since it was aband,-7 by its original tenants. Its difficult had protected it from all vandalism, and it found just as it had been left, no one how long ago. One scaled room fine collection of jars and implements. It reached by swinging a ladder over the , anchoring it at the top, and letting it sv, Down this swinging ladder the ranger went then anchored it at the Now make the descent. These ruined houses villages, are found in the rs.cesses of the yon walls and, protected from the weather remarkably well preserved. Some of then small, with only a few rooms, while others large and must have accommodated a population. The ruins found on the mesas, out the protection of the overhanging ck have not withstood the ravages of time and r now but mounds of stone and earth.
While the ruins in the Mancos Canyon wr explored as early as 1874, the most imporr.! escaped discovery until 1888, when R. Welker and C. Mason of Mancos, in search of a sm herd one day in December, penetrated a pinyr wood to the edge of a deep-side canyon. '7 the opposite cliff, sheltered by a huge, massn vault of rock, there lay before their astonish eyes a whole town, with towers and walls.
ing out of a heap of ruins? They named place °Cliff Palace," and the same day erect nearby, in another canyon. another her cliff dwelling to which they gave the namee Spruce Tree House, from a great spruce gros ing among the ruins. The word dwelling E misleading, for most of these buildings wen villages. Spruce Tree House, for instance,' undoubtedly a town of importance. harbor* at least 350 inhabitants.
The arrangement of houses in a cliff ing of the size of Cliff Palace, for example.,1,: characteristic and intimately associated sill the distribution of the social divisions of thi inhabitants. The population was composed!' a number of units, possibly clans, each of wind had its own social organization more or let distinct from others, a condition that appears in the arrangement of rooms. The rooms oc cupied by a clan were not necessarily connected, although generally neighboring rooms were dis tinguished from one another by their uses. Thus, each clan had its men's rooms, which was ceremonially called the "kiva.* Here the men of the clan practically lived, engaged in their occupations. Each clan had also one or more rooms, which may be styled the living rooms, and other enclosures, for granaries or storage of corn. The corn was ground into meal in another room containing the metate set in a bin or stone box, and in some instances in fire places, although these were generally placed in the plazas or on the housetops. All these dif ferent rooms, taken tGgether, constitute the houses that belonged to one clan.
The conviction that each kiva denotes a dis tinct social unit, as a clan or a family, is sup ported by a general similarity in the masonry of the lova walls and that of adjacent houses ascribed to the same clan. From the number of these rooms it would appear that there were at least 23 social units or clans in Cliff Palace. The kivas were the rooms where the men spent most of the time devoted to ceremonies, coun cils and other gatherings. In the social condi tions prevalent at Cliff Palace the religious fra ternity was limited to the men of the clan.
Apparently there is no uniformity in the distribution of the kivas. As it was prescribed that these rooms should be subterranean, the greatest number were placed in front of the rectangular buildings, where it was easiest to excavate them. But when necessary these structures were built far back in the cave and enclosed by a double wall, the intervals between whose sections were filled with earth or rubble to raise it to the level of the kiva roof. In that way they were artificially made subterranean, as the ritual required. Easily reached from Denver and Colorado Springs, Mancos on the Rio Grande Southern Railroad is the preferable starting point by stage or automobile to explore the mesa. Consult United States Department of Interior Bulletini 'The Mesa Verde Na tional Park) (Washington, D. C., 1915) Nor denskjold, B., 'The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde) (Stockholm 1893).