The Tonto Cliff Dwellings

The Tonto

TONTO means “fools” or “foolish” in Spanish. But the Tonto Apache, after whom the region was named, are not in the least unintelligent. Tonto was a loosely applied term in the 19th century for practically all the Yavapai and Apache Indians between the White Mountains and the Colorado River. One authority says the Apache derisively named one of their groups who spoke a divergent dialect, “tonto” for they were hard to understand. All human beings are pretty smug in regard to their opinion of “furriners” or backwoodsmen.

Except for the name, the story of Tonto National Monument has little to do with Apache Indians. Rather it is concerned with the chronicle of much earlier aborigines, the Salado group of the Pueblo peoples, who in the 14th century selected advantageous and commanding sites high in the cliffs of Cholla Canyon for their dwellings. There wasn't anything “tonto” about the Salado people, either.

The ruins of these dwellings, two of the largest and best preserved in the southern part of the Southwest, constitute the main interest of Tonto National Monument.

Even the approach to Tonto is picturesque for its access highway, the Apache Trail, State Highway 88, is one of the great scenic roads of Arizona. The drive leads through great forests of saguaro cactus, past large artificial lakes, to one of the world's largest masonry dams, and to the national monument. Transcontinental travelers using Highway U. S. 70 who turn off the highway at either Globe or Apache Junction add only a couple of hours to their traveling time and see some of the most magnificent views Arizona has to offer.

When Theodore Roosevelt came to view his namesake, the Roosevelt Dam, which he dedicated in 1911, he was driven to the dam from Apache Junction, 30 miles east of Phoenix.

President Roosevelt gave the following description of the Apache Trail: “The Apache Trail combines the grandeur of the Alps, the glory of the Rockies, and the magnificence of the Grand Canyon, and then adds an indefinable something that none of the others has. To me it is the most awe-inspiring and most sublimely beautiful panorama nature has ever created.”

Cliff Drwellings

The Tonto Cliff Dwellings are concerned with the chronicle of the Salado group of the Pueblo peoples, who in the 14th century selected advantageous and commanding sites high in the cliffs of Cholla Canyon for their dwellings.

Much could be written on the scenic and recreational possibilities of the area traversed by the Apache Trail. There is fishing, swimming and boating in the lakes and fine hunting in autumn. Many camping and picnic spots may be found and the camera enthusiast can expose much film.

Tonto National Monument was set aside by presidential proclamation in December, 1907. The outstanding features characteristic of this wonderfully historic and scenic part of the state are blended together in this 1,120-acre area, six miles east of Roosevelt Dam.

The numerous and well-preserved prehistoric ruins of the Southwest are a priceless heritage to the people of the United States. The ruins, and the objects of prehistoric craft found in them are records of men who lived in the mountains and deserts before the advent of the Spanish explorers.

Pottery vessels, baskets, and mummies, sealed in cases in large museums, offer, at best, a poor image of the people themselves. Labels cannot completely tell the story of the obstacles which prehistoric farmers had to surmount. Neither can photographs portray summer heat, the long distances to water and fields nor the feeling of actually being able to stand within the rooms in which long-dead Indians lived and worked.

For a first-hand view of an abandoned village of prehistoric Indians, turn off the Trail at Tonto National Monument. It is just a mile to the monument headquarters, where the car must be left. A small exhibit room is built on the hillside just below the parking area, and a trail leads up the hill to the Lower Ruin.

The trail is a half mile in length and has an easy grade; it mounts the hill with a series of switchbacks. There is a heavy growth of intermingled desert and mountain plants on the trail to the ruin.

Largest and most prominent is the saguaro. Several of these cacti have attained a height of 40 feet or more. Nine other species of cactus grow on the monument. In addition is a mixture of mesquite and palo verde desert trees with juniper and mountain laurel-mountain trees. In the canyon bottom is a fine stand of cottonwood, hackberry, sycamore, walnut and elder.

From the Upper Ruin, the visitor to Tonto Cliff Dwellings looks out into the Roosevelt Lake Basin.

The hills are covered with many beautiful flowering shrubs: the ocotillo, jo-jo-ba, wild buckwheat, and species of yucca, sotol, and century plant.

It is a botanist's and nature-lover's paradise. It is well known an abundance of plants will support a large number of birds and animals. This place is no exception. Even the most casual visitor sees the gambel quail, white-winged dove, towhee, rock and cactus wren, American raven, red-tailed hawk, Arizona cardinal and Gila woodpecker. Sometimes are seen the gray fox, white-tailed deer, and ring-tailed cat.

From these trees and shrubs the Indians obtained food, weapons, tools and building material for their homes. Although the cliff dwellers were farmers a great deal of their food, perhaps as much as half, was obtained from uncultivated plants. Principal foods which could be collected on the hillside below the ruin were cactus fruits, mesquite beans, elderberries, walnuts, jo-jo-ba nuts and grass seeds.

Of particular importance was the mesquite. This tree furnishes an abundance of beans which are nourishing and tasty. In addition the Indians used the hard wood of the mesquite for tools, and, no doubt, for fuel.

The Lower Ruin, a fortified village site, was built on the east face of a ridge which runs north toward Roosevelt Reservoir.

The high adobe walls are nestled in a natural cave in the cliff's side. The cave is about 85 feet long and 40 feet deep. It is an excellent location for a house. The great overhang protects it from onslaught of the weather or human enemy from above. The precipitous slope below is covered with cholla cactus and loose slide rocks. An enemy would have a hard time storming such a strategic location.

One can see for miles up the Salt River Valley from the ruin. Roosevelt Lake, three miles distant and a thousand feet below, forms the middleground of the picture. The Sierra Ancha Mountains stand as the background. This homesite was chosen very shrewdly and not for scenic beauty alone, for it was almost impregnable. An enemy could approach with difficulty without being seen.

Originally the front of the cave was closed by a solid two-story wall about 16 feet high. This wall, and the others in the interior of the house are built of adobe and rock. There is a quantity of quartzite here which may be used for building stone, and pockets of adobe occur all over the hillside. The biggest problem, probably, was in carrying enough water for puddling the adobe.

The closest source of permanent water today is a half mile away and 330 feet below in Cholla Canyon. Whether there were springs in closer proximity then, is not known; there are several small springs which flow during wet years near the cliff dwelling.

Old photographs of the dwelling show most of the front wall in place and also show the house to be two stories in height with the only possible entrance up through the crevices at the south end. This entrance was easily spotted from a lookout hole in the south wall.

There are 15 ground-floor rooms in the cliff dwelling. Most of these seem to have had second-story rooms added to them. One of the "rooms" was a corridor, and two or three were so small that they could hardly have been more than storage rooms.

It is safe to say that there were probably around 20 rooms in the village large enough for living quarters. But it is also quite likely that several of these were also used for storage, particularly the first-story rooms at the back of the dwelling-which must have been dismal, ill-smelling holes.

In two rooms ceilings are yet in place; one of the two rooms is intact. The rafter beams here are long, slender, evenly tapered, juniper poles, evidently selected for uniformity. Laid over the rafters at right angles is a tight matting of saguaro ribs which have been bound together with yucca fibers. This forms the sheathing or subflooring for the room above. An even five-inch layer of wet mud was tamped on top of this so as to furnish a pavement or floor for the room above. In one corner of the room a hatchway was left. This served as an outlet for smoke, and an exit by which occupants could gain access to the second story. A long heavy crossbeam running the entire length of the room at right angles to the rafters supports the ceiling from below. This in turn is supported by a large upright post at the center which has been very cleverly mortised into place. This ceiling is almost as sound as when it was built, nearly 600 years ago.

Archeologists tell us that these timbers were cut during the middle of the 14th century. This has been determined by dendrochronology, or the science of dating ancient timbers by tree rings as developed by Dr. Douglass and colleagues at the University of Arizona.

Many of the rooms have small bowl-shaped, clay-lined pits in the floors. These are fire pits. When the National Park Service first cleaned out the trash that covered the floors in these rooms, some of the pits were still filled with ashes, and one pit had a broken cooking pot resting in the ashes.

In many places along the walls are finger and hand prints in the adobe, clearly visible. These marks were left by the Indians, who shaped the adobe plaster by hand.

The last room at the north end of the cave is located flush against the back of the cave. The prehistoric trash littering the floor is one to three feet deep. The room was evidently used for a trash dump after being abandoned by the occupants of the remainder of the house.

While they threw corn cobs, discarded sandals, bean pods, worn-out clothing, broken implements, and many other things into this trash, they had one custom which is almost unheard of today among the modern Indians. That was their method of disposing of their dead. It is in rooms of this type that many of the mummies and skeletons of these people are found. Two burials were found in a single room in the Upper Ruin. Since it is usually dry in these caves, many articles considered normally perishable will last indefinitely. It is from these trash layers that the archeologist makes his most valuable finds. It helps greatly in interpreting the every day life of the long gone citizens.

From the trash we can conjecture their every day diet. Corn cobs are abundant, with beans, squash, mesquite beans, black walnuts, jo-jo-ba nuts, agave or century plant fiber, and cactus fruits filling in the bulk of the remainder. Of course, it is believed that they ate many other wild plants of which there would be no identifiable remains.

Obviously, considerable land must have been farmed in order to raise the cultivated food. The only possible place to farm would be at the present location of Roosevelt Lake. It is said that before the dam was built which caused water to fill this immense basin and form Roosevelt Lake, that parts of a prehistoric irrigation system could still be seen along the river.

Even today many of the rooms are equipped with the metates or grinding mills where the corn and other foods were ground.

Today, if we want a loaf of bread we go to the store for it. If their bread supply ran short, the corn had to be shelled and ground by hand. The water had to be carried with which to mix the dough. Then wood was carried and a fire was started by the friction method before the bread could be baked.

We have to give the former inhabitants of this valley much credit. In an area now considered as a desert, economically useless except as grazing land and watershed and for its superb scenery, hundreds of Pueblo Indians lived in well-built permanent houses and made their living.

The Upper Ruin, the larger of the two cliff dwellings on the monument, is a half mile farther and about 250 feet higher than the Lower Ruin.

There is no trail to the Upper Ruin and access to it is relatively difficult. It presents the same features as the Lower Ruin but is nearly twice the size. It is probable that both were occupied contemporaneously.

The Tonto cliff dwellers were pueblo Indians, related to the people who built the great pueblos and cliff dwellings of northern Arizona and New Mexico. Their ancestors lived, originally, in the Valley of the Little Colorado River, from the vicinity of Winslow and Holbrook almost to the Mogollon Rim.

Gradually these people drifted south into the valley of the Salt River. As they moved south they began to develop a distinctive pottery ware; just a black on white ware, which later became a polychrome ware of red, black and white. Upon their arrival in the Salt River these people also seem to have borrowed traits from the Hohokam of the desert so that a distinctive subcultural area came into being in the mountains of central Arizona.

The name Salado has been applied to these people in order to distinguish them from their northern relatives many of whom were still living along the Little Colorado.

It was probably around A. D. 1200 that the Salado first appeared in the Roosevelt and Tonto Basins. For about 100 years they lived in small pueblos near the rivers, near the fields and water.

About A. D. 1300 something occurred which made the Salado move to more defensible sites, on hilltops and in rock shelters in the cliffs. The cause for the movement is not definitely known, but at that time there was a great shifting of populations all over the Southwest. It is possible that nomadic enemies, either Apache or Yavapai arrived in the vicinity at the time and started raiding the Salado. Another explanation is that due to the effect of the great drought of A. D. 1273-1296, more Pueblo moved into the mountain valleys from the plateau and fought for land and water with those already there.

Whatever the reason, the 14th century was one of strife in central Arizona. All the villages of that time were built with an eye for defense. There is no other reason for a group of people to move from a fine location on a river bank to the mountains than fear. Supporting evidence is to be seen in the number of portholes which were constructed in the outer walls of their homes. By 1400 most, if not all, of the Salado villages along the Salt River were abandoned. Again, the cause is unknown, but it may be assumed that enemy pressure became so severe that the Pueblo farmers found it impossible to continue to make their living in the region. From the evidence available it seems that all the numerous small villages and cliff dwellings were abandoned during a short period of a few years.

Salado type pottery has been found in early Zuni ruins in New Mexico and in sites in Chihuahua, Mexico. There were, then, two probable migration routes from central Arizona, one leading northeast to the plateau-the other southeast to the desert valleys of northern Mexico.

Much remains to be discovered about this interesting group of prehistoric farmers. As yet our knowledge of them is derived principally from sites which were occupied in the first half of the 14th century, soon after they were forced into defensive positions.

In the small exhibit room below the parking area numerous artifacts recovered from the cliff dwellings are on display. Pottery, cotton cloth, sandals, stone and bone tools are there to show with what implements the prehistoric Indians carried out their tasks.

The artifacts show that the Salado were industrious, artistic and ingenious. They made excellent pottery, some of the finest cotton textiles of the prehistoric period in the southwest, and devised workable tools of stone, bone and wood.

That the Salado went afield for materials not found near their homes is shown by the presence, in the ruins, of ornaments made of shell and turquoise. The shells are Gulf of California varieties and probably were obtained by trade from the desert dwelling Hohokam who, apparently, carried on a lively exchange in carved shells. The turquoise could have been mined from any of the small deposits which occur in the mountains of central Arizona. In addition, some of the pottery bowls found in the ruins are of types which were made in the Little Colorado River Valley.

While summing up what is known of the Salado (or of any other primitive group) one cannot escape the thought that one group of men acts just about in the same manner as any other group. Tools must be had and they are usually made of the best available material. Containers for storing food and for cooking and eating are also necessary and after the first few crude attempts while learning to fashion a container out of wood, or pottery, or stone, man proceeds to decorate his utensils.