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Canyons of the Colorado by J. W. Powell
page 20 of 264 (07%)
easily worked but partially consolidated ashes, and after penetrating
from the surface three or four feet they enlarged the chambers so as to
make them ten or twelve feet in diameter. In such a chamber they made a
little fireplace, its chimney running up on one side of the wellhole by
which the chamber was entered. Often they excavated smaller chambers
connected with the larger, so that sometimes two, three, four, or even
five smaller connecting chambers are grouped about a large central room.
The arts of these people resembled those of the people who dwelt in
Walnut Canyon. One thing more is worthy of special notice. On the very
top of the cone they cleared oif a space for a courtyard, or assembly
square, and about it they erected booths, and within the square a space
of ground was prepared with a smooth floor, on which they performed the
ceremonies of their religion and danced to the gods in prayer and
praise.

Some twelve or fifteen miles farther east, in another volcanic cone, a
rough crater is found, surrounded by piles of cinders and angular
fragments of lava. In the walls of this crater many caves are found, and
here again a village was established, the caves in the scoria being
utilized as habitations of men. These little caves were fashioned into
rooms of more symmetry and convenience than originally found, and the
openings to the caves were walled. Nor did these people neglect the
gods, for in this crater town, as in the cinder-cone town, a place of
worship was prepared.

Many other caves opening into the canyon and craters of this plateau
were utilized in like manner as homes for tribal people, and in one cave
far to the south a fine collection of several hundred pieces of pottery
has been made.

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