A PETRIFIED FOREST.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9796, 16 July 1903, Page 3

A PETRIFIED FOREST.

SOME REMARKABLE DISCOVERIES. The petrified forest of Arizona would alone be enough te- absorb the entire attention of any visitor. Writing m Harper's Magazine, Ma- W. Hough says that it happened, as the result of journeys througn the forest and around its borders, m the interest of. the United States National Museum, last summer, that to th© marvels which expand the fifth sense of wonder we may now add the needed touch of human interest. For there lived and loved, builded, fought, starved, and perhaps at times dined on one another, tribes of the ancient pueblodwellers. From the relics that remain it is found that four different stocks of Indians have lived here. No other section of the south-west can show so many, and this m a locality without, permanent springs. One' of these tribes may unhesitatingly be identified as Hopi — perhaps a clan on its northward migration to Tusayan; another, with less sureness, may be related to Zuni. The remainder are at present enigmas, and belong to people m a low state of advancement as compared with the former. The tribes that held the region of the petrified forest built no large pueblos, but were content to live m small villages, forming the homes of larger families of blood relatives called clans, moving about m common when they migrated, and building not; far from one another. These clusters of pueblos are familiar to one who knows the south-west; usually, when a ruin is located, others may be found near it. The Seven Cities of Cibola illustrate this. . When the first men crept into this gorgeous but inhospitable land they found black lava-capped mountains, fantastic hills carved from the tinted marls, lofty stone-girdled mesas, wide plains, and treacherous sand rivers, which became at times raging torrents of tawny water. Game there was—^of antelope, deer and other smaller animals — more than now, and desert plants were available for food. But greater than these precious means of subsistence were the seeds they cherished, and greatest was "the seed of seeds"— corn. The secret of the peopling of the semi-arid south-west is oorn. Here and there without the villages remain shrines, consisting of either heaps of stones, odd m color or shape, gathered from far and near, like some of i the srines at Zuni, or a section of petrified wood set upright over against spheres or red granite and weathered volcanic rock. Fascinating as were these superficial examinations of the ancient towns, the shovels of the Mexican laborers soon revealed matters of surpassing interest beneath the ground. The location of the cemetery was a comparatively easy matter, as these tribes had placed their dead <to the north-east of the pueblos. When the trenches, had reached about four- feet, large, smooth slabs of sandstone were encountered. Beneath the slabs, which were set slanting, to keep the weight of the earth from the body, careful digging uncovered the skeleton, and about the head would be found a bowl or two, a vase, a cooking pot, and a dipper. In the bowls frequently remained squash seed, corn or traces of other food, provisioned for the journey to the underworld. Awls, hammers of fossil wood, knives, and arrowheads were frequently encountered. Fragments of coiled baskets, matting, and fabric having a war 2) of twisted cord sometimes survived m the dry soil. Beads of stone and sea-shell and ornaments of lignite and white stone were plentiful, showing that these pueblos by modern Indian standards would be accounted rich m the things valued by Indians and the chief incentive for their primitive commerce. It is remarkable that these people should have located where there is no water. Evidently when the water, collected m natural basins from rainfall, failed, they carried it a* long distance from holes dug m the bed of the wash m the petrified forest .