le Colorado. These ruins are claimed by
the Hopi as the former residences of their ancestors, and were halting
places in the migration of certain clans from the south. They were
examined by Mr Cosmos Mindeleff, of the Bureau of American Ethnology,
in 1893,[7] but no report on them has yet been published.

While, however, the Homolobi group of ruins is the most southerly to
which I have been able to affix a Hopi name, others still more to the
southward are claimed by certain of their traditions.[8] The Hopi
likewise regard as homes of their ancestors certain habitations, now
in ruins, near San Francisco mountains. In a report on his exploration
of Zuni and Little Colorado rivers in 1852, Captain L. Sitgreaves
called attention to several interesting ruins, one of which was not
far from the "cascades" of the latter river. After ascending the
plateau, which he found covered with volcanic detritus, he discovered
that "all the prominent points" were "occupied by the ruins of stone
houses, which were in some instances three stories in height. They are
evidently," he says, "the remains of a large town, as they occurred at
intervals for an extent of eight or nine miles, and the ground was
thickly strewn with fragments of pottery in all directions."

In 1884 a portion of Colonel James Stevenson's expedition, under F. D.
Bickford, examined the cliff houses in Walnut canyon, and in 1886
Major J. W. Powell and Colonel Stevenson found scattered ruins north
of San Francisco mountains having one, two, or three rooms, each
"built of basaltic cinders and blocks of lava." These explorers
likewise reported ruins of extensive dwellings in the same region
made of sandstone and limestone. At about 25 miles north of the
mountains mentioned they discovered a small volcanic cone of cinders
and basalt, which was formerly the site of a village or pueblo built
around a crater, and estimated that this little pueblo contained 60 or
70 rooms, with a plaza occupying one-third of an acre of surface.[9]

Twelve miles eastward from San Francisco mountains they found another
cinder cone resembling a dome, and on its southern slope, in a
coherent cinder mass, were many chambers, of which one hundred and
fifty are said to have been excavated. They mention the existence on
the summit of this cone of a plaza inclosed by a rude wall of volcanic
cinders, with a carefully leveled floor. The former inhabitants of
these rooms apparently lived in underground chamb