Show A visit to cliff dwellings in wayne wonderland f 1 bentkover went rit kover er to wayne county recently athe ae guest of a good friend who sa said i I 1 might find things of interest in my hobby bobby that of prowling around the habitation of the ancient indian and peering into his abode A kind of curious occupation to be sure but teeming with interest tha way to wayne county from delta is up over the divide which separates the great basin horn aiom the i drainage slopes of the pacific delta is in the area drained by the great basin in n a region of flat floor like valleys hills growing gronning lower and valleys filling up but the drainage on the eastern part of utah forms a topography just the opposite immense mountains deep gorges and gorge and cleft growing deeper a all 11 the time a rugged seamed much water worn area the lull hill was a hard climb the road passes just south of the fish lake road which is proverbial for steepness and a full measure of it the mi motor ow r v was ras boiling just at the very crest the diliver stopped the car and I 1 took the water bag to the radiator to do the needful when the thought by frank beckwith delta trigger finger itch thad and 1 I lightning pull are terms of I 1 the P past r relegated to limbo their a application long forgot except in movies movies A cliff dwelling we proceeded down clown the fremont Fremon fc river to tor toney aey and I 1 had the pleasure of walking right into a formerly occupied real cliff dwelling the home of an ancient indian who lived there no one knows how many centuries ago the walls of the ruin were about ing formed of sinews and best of all A prayer stick what pray you readers will ask is a prayer stick when the indian wanted rain for his corn he took a corn cob stuck a stick into it see this so done next to the bunch of feathers and draped it with a tuft of feathers lie he then took that plumed stick to a shrine prayed and stuck the prayer stick into the rocks the feathers pointing upwards from the tips of which his prayer continued to stream upward to the gods supplicating them to send the blessing of a shower A light downy feather because it is wafted wafred upward by a mere breath symbolizes symbolize s eaves of the great great overhanging rock I 1 saw his work workbench ench of old here was vas a sanu sandstone Aone rock about nine feet long by five wide and just about the height of an all ordinary workbench on its it top were the evidences of hours upon hours hour of toil as he shaped the implements he used to con conform forin to his need to sharpen the end of some implement he be had rubbed it back and forth on the top of his workbench until t the he act had gouged out more than a dozen grooves in the solid rock we can imagine the man of the ancient time standing there rubbing his celt back and foith in tho the rock watching the progress of his work as it slowly wore down to sharpness in three other places of his bench it has the appearance that he be wanted wante to shape a stone hammer or tomahawk grasping the rough bit of stone firmly in hand band he had deftly oscillated it back and forth as he rubbed its surface su on the slow cutting sandstone until he had worn three deep shallows into the top in the colorful words of slang we use the word drill facetiously to 0 AIL 14 VI 4 F alij OP al n al 1 afi the curios found in a cliff dwellers home in wayne county corn on the cob a piece of squash rind surrounded by a roup group of beans a pumpkin stem a hollow pipe stem reed a bunch of feathers tied with ancient sinew cord a sewing awl sharpened at one end made of bone four kinds of pottery arar fragment ment 0 of f buckskin in lower left corner occurred to me why here I 1 am standing on the very crest of the divide turning to my host I 1 said jim if I 1 pour this water to the west it goes into the great basin and to delta if to the east it goes into the colorado and finds its way to ito the pacific pacific which is true theoretically the few drops I 1 poured in each direction found their way one down the great hill hilj we had just climbed to the sevier river and after doing its share toward irrigating near richfield flowed on to delta to do a second service of like kind and then to be lost in the seepage area of sevier lake the other few drops found a descent to the fremont river each holding up its heavy freightage of mud en route until it merged in the rio colorado and mingling in that mighty stream it was churned and lashed swirled in whirlpools tossed in cataracts lashed into a foam in the rapids and fought the sides of the gorge of the mighty grand canyon of the colorado until its force spent it emerged in the lower readies reaches a quiet and well behaved drop to add to the oceans mighty volume then drawn by the sun in invisible aqueous vapor it was wafted wafred inland and condensed in rain on the mountains to again become water in a desert water bag and go through the same routine endlessly captain john C fremont seven miles beyond we came to a tiny river jim my lost said under yonder clump of cotton woods and he pointed out four stately trees captain john C fremont stopped on his return from california going east and rested four days some of his party cut their initials in the bark of the cottonwoods cotton woods which still carry the ancient scars after a lapse of nearly eighty years the river is named after him the fremont river when major john IV powell the one armed man of determination floated down the gand canyon of the colorado the unheralded feat of that time ho he entered at green river wyoming and proceeded down the stream to its conflux ce with the grand to make the colorado at a point just below the junction of these two streams acy stopped to camp near where a little stream emptied into the colorado powell and an assistant assi stane explored it a little and powell saidy said 1 looking boking at the ruddy stream heavy with its load of mud in suspension what river is that 1 I dont know replied the other but its sure a dirty devil and dirty devil was the rivers name from that time on if you will look at a large map of utah you will see that after the fremont river passes hanksville Hanks ville it becomes the dirty devil river As a side trip we were driven by bv auto up p the sides of thousand lake rabun mountain i n until we obtained a view 0 of f the painted desert from the other side here roamed in the innumerable ravines and bullies fit place for hiding more or less of a number r of bf bad men inen bandits bandit horse hor se rustlers cattle thieves bad bank holdups hold ups blue john silvertip silver tip owen moore bloore butch cassidy and others ale reported to have made a rendezvous there and hid up until a time for a sorted was agreed on oil when they would sally forth tu turn in the trick and again slink from sight roaming from robbers root roost i in n the grand canyon up as far as jock sons hole near the ye yellow ilow stone the prayer which ascends from the I 1 ardent heart upward to god and further those eagle feathers have another As the eagle is the highest of fliers the king of birds 1 he can mount upward to the realm of those above and in spirit the prayer entrusted to his feathers is is lik likewise eArise winged aloft mans eions thereby placed on the knees of the makers of the paths of men blen they who shape our lot iol after placing this prayer stick the indian went on about his work know hip high on the outside but dust and accumulation had filled up the inside to a depth of a little more than a foot dr james E talmadge of the L D S church had been a visitor there long before me and he had bad gotten much two skeletons pottery basket work and artifacts galore but the had left me wealth greater than a kings ransom for I 1 found on sifting the loose dirt a hollow reed once a part of a pipe stem some corn husks a piece of squash rind the object enclosed within the ring of beans iw inthe the upper left of the photo from the back of which the former man had gnawed off the succulent bit and thrown the fragment to the floor his wife an untidy housekeeper had left it there some beans nine of them came out of the same room still bright and shiny corn on the cob think of that after at least six hundred and fifty years corn still on the cob some buckskin the folded object in the lower left corner of the photo still pliable in which was wrapped the bundle of feathers at the upper right tied with a twisted cord of his own making that the efficacy of the symbol surged his prayers heavenward that evening he came back to the shrine and renewed its potency likewise next morning eventually god heard beard I 1 his supplications ions and sent rai rain I 1 I 1 found two of those p prayer rayer sticks of course the feathers which once draped them are gone but I 1 a bundle of feathers to drape them with myself and cant I 1 plume them all the wealth of sevier county pry me loose from the of those worthless orth less scrubby dried old corn cobs each with a perfectly worthless little piece of stick punched up into it dont chide mrs housekeeper with untidiness for had the indian woman of the house of that day tidied up her room or swept her floor with a besom of buccari spines I 1 would never have been attracted to her home nor would your readers be enjoying a recital of the finds she left lying loose it is just that untidiness which makes her home valuable the great natural bridge my host jim knew kne v the country pretty well so he said next well inspect the ancient artisans workbench he took me to the ruin of three old dwellings where I 1 rummaged in the loo loose se dirt and found warped arrows minus the obsidian tips for another had been there before me and stripped the arrow points oft off I 1 sifted up the debris and found charred wood corn husks corn cobs cob G fragments of of pottery t and in the mud lie he had use used to to plaster up the chinks between the rocks I 1 saw the imprints of the hand of the ancient w workman in the daubs of mud he had bad pressed in his actual finger prints in the red clay awl and outside the door under the say of a workman that he drills all day ridout sugar in his tay and its drill terrier drill but this indian of old drilled differently ferent ly he was fashioning a rude simple stone drill of obsidian to be rotated back and forth between thumb and fingor finder his task was to shape the cutting end to do the duty of a bit to drill with and on the top of this workbench you can see his steps toward that end he rubbed and shaped and shaped and rubbed ohp then to test out whether the end was suitable for cutting he tested it by trying the drill first in the shallow hole his practiced eye quickly told him the point right as it shows he drilled for only a brief moment merely to catch its defects then he rubbed the point back and forth some more shaping it better and better and tried again this time in a series of hotea hote s a trifle deeper studying critically the work done still not perfect so he rubbed the point yet vet other times back and forth and then ilien made another series of test holes so good that he fully tested out his work by drillen drilling four holes to a depth of over five five eig eights its of an inch perfect neat holes exactly round proof that he was thoroughly capable as an artisan and satisfied with the work of hi his s drill the tale of his workbench so fervent was this man in his religion that he had cut three ancient indian hieroglyphs prayers to his god to look with favor on his work and to prosper its outcome talk about interest in things of the old why a gazer is held enthralled with fascination studying out these ancient disclosures I 1 never had anything in my life arl grip i p me so keenly as do these things A workbench marred and dug and scored and grooved with evidences of his work woric and three prayers on it that those above will sit near guide his hand and prosper its work that these there implements clements ts may fulfill their purpose in in the defense or in the sustenance of the tribe tabe in ancient greece sage ulysses prayed to his patron goddess she of the celestial eyes radiantly armed full sprung daughter of jove that she would sit upon his right hand and prompt his thought thou glit she the patron goddess of the mechanic arts source of inventive genius and here at our hand band we have as deep a reli giosi tv which takes the same vent but his prayer cut permanently in stone it is a case of a N w ork mans tools and hands being dedicated to a sacred work like the old medieval mason builders of strassburg and milan the cliff cupboard tim jim said to me lets go up into the upper story where the auxiliary supply of corn was kept we left the three ruins ruins which w ere era is as you might say on the ground floor for they were on oil the creek bottom and we clambered cred upward around and about winding this way and that until he said pointing upward there you are her cu cupboard p board up on the cliff higher than our position by more than thirty feet and e easily a hundred and fifty feet above the stream nestled a tiny little thing plastered in a V angle of the cliff wall for the life of me it look like any cupboard id ever seen no shelves no bottle no cups cup and saucers no door hold yes there was a door |