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Show ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF FIRST INHABITANTS 23 sandstone laid with adobe mortar. In it were one hundred and forty-six apartments, and the building probably accommodated five hundred people. During the administration of Colonel J. M. Washington, commander of the Ninth Military Department, New Mexico, in 1849, a campaign against the Navajés was The course taken by undertaken. PUEBLOS PINTADO AND BONITO the army in this reconnoissance proceeded by way of the Jemez pueblo, thence by the Chaco river into the Navajé country.® The historian of this expedition says: ° ‘“We found the ruins of the Pueblo Pintado to more than answer Forming one structure and built of tabular pieces our expectations. of hard, fine-grained, compact, gray sand-stone (a material entirely unknown in the present architecture of New Mexico), to which the atmosphere has imparted a reddish tinge, the layers or beds being not thicker than three inches, and sometimes as thin as onefourth of an inch, it discovers in the masonry a combination of science and art which can only be referred to a higher stage of civilization and refinement than is discoverable in the works of the Indeed, so beautifully diminutive Mexicans or Pueblos of today. and true are the details of the structure as to cause it, at a little distance, to have all the appearance of a magnificent piece of mosaic work. ‘*In the outer surface of the buildings there are no signs of mortar, the intervals between the beds being chinked with stones of the The filling and backing are done in rubble minutest thinness. masonry, the mortar presenting no indications of lime. The thickness of the main wall at its base is within an inch or two of three feet; higher up it is less, diminishing every story by retreating jogs on the inside, from the bottom to the top. Its elevation at its present highest point is between twenty-five and thirty feet, the series of floor beams indicating that there must have been originally The ground plan, including the court, is at least three stories. On the ground floor, exclusive of the out-buildings, about 403 feet. are fifty-four apartments, some of them as small as five feet square, and the largest about twelve by six feet. These rooms communicate with each other by very small doors, some of them as contracted as 8 Orders for the movement August 14, 1849. Colonel Alexander; one of the troops under Col. Washington were issued The command consisted of four companies of the 3rd Infantry, two companies of the 2nd Artillery, Major Kendrick; — mounted — of company volunteers. Navajé Country, Lieut. Simpson, 1850. ® Simpson, Lieut. J. H., Ibid. — Report of an Expedition into and the |
