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Show 180 30 feet high. This portion of the building is about 200 feet long and regularly supported on the exterior by buttresses ; from either end two wings connect and run out, making the interior angles about 100°; these wings extend about 150 feet, then their extremities seem to have been connected by a circular wall, now entirely in ruins but showing the remains of a gate- way. Above the buttresses on the exterior wall of the main portion the wall is quite perfect, and shows some very pretty architectural design. The masonry is not only built with courses of different thicknesses of stone, but, also, of different colors. There is seen a projecting cornice, plain, composed of three or four courses of very thin reddish sandstones, and again a course of nearly white stone, perhaps a foot thick, both very even, and then other courses of different shades and thicknesses alternate. In this building there are remains of three circular rooms, one at each of the angles above referred to, and one in the center of the court. A great deal of broken crockery was about, but confined to certain portions of the building, principally the extremities of the wings. Want of time prevented me from making measurements and obtaining much accurate data that I desired. Many years must have elapsed since these buildings were in ruins, but soine of the walls, where supported, are well preserved. Very heavy sage- brush was growing iu many places upon the mounds of the ruins. The remaius of a circular building were found midway between the two main buildings, and it has been supposed that these circular rooms were places of worship. But little analogy could be observed between these and the Indian pueblo at Taos that I afterward visited; but stone ruins seen at Nacimiento and near other ( now occupied) Mexican towns were very similar, except as to plan, to those described, the ruins about the towns being entirely different from any of the present habitations. , In many places along the San Juan River, pieces of old crockery were observed and remains of several small stone houses. In one of these I found a very fine specimen of a stone hammer, oval and of natural shape, with the ordinary groove cut about it for attaching the handle. A number of important ruins were also observed along the Canon de Chaco. None of those so minutely described by Lieut. Simpson in 1849 were visited by us, as we did follow his route only perhaps a very short distance. The Navajo Indians ascribed some of the figures and* signs seen in the lower room of the ruins to Apaches and Comanches; but their explanations were very vague, principally from the difficulty of understanding them. Respectfully submitted. ROGERS BIRNIE, JR., First Lieutenant Thirteenth Infantry. Lieut. GEO. M. WHEELER, Corps of Engineers. J 4. REPORT OX THE PUEBLO LANGUAGES OF NEW MEXICO, AND OF THE MOQl'IS IN ARIZONA ; THEIR AFFINITY TO EACH OTHER AND TO THE LANGUAGES OF THE OTHER INDIAN TRIBES: BY ALB. S. GATSCHET, PHILOLOGIST. NEW YORK CITY, April 24,1875. Although the vocabularies of the Pueblo languages collected by Lieutenant Wheeler's parties are more complete, and contain more material than any others so far submitted for investigation, still the data obtained are not such as to admit of a complete report upon the grammatical structure of these interesting idioms; they are, however, at least copious enough to give us an idea of their utterance, phouetic character, and a glimpse at their affinities. But, being as yet debarred from sufficient materials to derive grammatical rules and paradigms, we cannot be too careful in drawing conclusions on the pedigree of the half- civilized tribes who use these dialects as their means of intercommunication. The most decisive criterion for the affinity of one language to another is the similarity of their inflectional terminations and the equality of their terms for degrees of consanguinity, as father, mother, son, sister, & c.; for numerals and personal pronouns; for denominations of the diverse parts of the human frame ; the most common animals and plants; the colors; a man; woman; sun; moou; star; tire; water; and the seasons. When a majority of these terms agree, there is a strong probability that both languages compared are but dialectic variations of the same stem, and that in former times a mother- language has existed for both. A close comparison of the above terms in all the Pueblo idioms spoken in New Mexico and Arizona has prompted me to classify them in four distinct families, as follows : Firstfamily, with four aubdialects: Isleta, ( with Zandiain New Mexico and Isleta in Texas near El Paso;) Jemez, ( with Pecos;) Taos, ( with Picuris;) Tehua, spoken iu San Juan, Santa Clara, Pojoaque, Nambc*, Tesuque, Sau Ildcfonso, and on one of the Moqni mesas. |
