The First Discoverers And Inhabitants Of The Grand Canyon A Barren Waste of Rock. While the Grand Canyon, its vast system of tributaries, and its plateau were being uplifted from the primeval ocean, it consisted of nothing but a wild, barren waste of rock. Not a tree, not a shrub, not a flower, not a blade of grass relieved the monotony of the wilderness of rocks which emerged from the great Eocene sea. Not a lizard, horned toad, centipede, tarantula, chuckwalla, campamouche,* frog, tree-toad, turtle or snake was to be found on the long stretching areas of its lifeless shores. Not a chipmunk, prairie-dog, coyote, rat, mouse, porcupine, fox, bear, mountain-lion, badger, deer, antelope or other four-footed creature ran over its new-born surfaces. The sun shone unhindered; the rain beat with pitiless fury; the winds swept unhampered; the snows piled up undeterred over the whole plateau and canyon country. It was plateau and canyon, canyon and plateau; red rock, gray rock, creamy rock, yellow, pink, blue, chocolate, carmine, crimson rock, soft rock, hard rock; sunshine, shadow, wind and quietude; winter, summer, autumn, spring-and that was all! A lifeless world, as yet unprepared for insect, reptile, beast, man, flower or tree. Perhaps a solitary sea-bird with strong pinion flew over it, and gazed into its lifeless depths with wonder, or a dove flew from some earlier and habitable land over this wonderful mass of rock, and returned to its nest and its mate. But no olive or other leaf was in its bill.
*An insect that looks like a tiny dried wisp of hay, well-known in Arizona.
And so the land was born, and rested; while silence, sunshine and solitude brooded over it.
Creation of Soil and Verdure. But in the course of ages, soil was created by the disintegration of the rocks by the weather and the atmosphere, seeds were blown in from regions where flowers and plants bloomed, or were carried in by birds, and later distributed by the four-footed creatures.
Then verdure sprang into life; the gentle grasses and flowers began to cover the slopes and level places where soil had gathered, and the trees came to sway and swing in the breezes, and sing their songs of coming life to the hitherto barren rocks.
Fossils of Sea Creatures. Yet they had not been altogether lifeless. Many of the rocks had known life, but it was not insect, reptile, bird, beast or man life; neither did they known anything of grass, flower, shrub or tree life. In the far-away ages, when they were being deposited deep under the surface of the Eocene sea, they saw vast monsters floating in the salty deep, and later, fishes of all sizes, and even great beds of waving sea-moss and ferns floated back and forth, as the tides ebbed and flowed.
And fishes and ferns, monsters and moss were occasionally caught in the flowing deposits of lime and sand and silt and clay, and were embedded in their mass. Thus imprisoned, their otherwise forgotten life and history is told to the ages of man that were as yet unborn.
Coming of Man. But now the new life is coming! With verdure and animal life in existence, these hitherto uninhabitable regions became capable of sustaining human life. And the restless spirit of the human race, wherever and howsoever it originated, drove bands of men and women into this region.
Who were they? What were they like? Whence did they come? How long did they stay? Whither did they go? are questions one naturally asks in regard to these first discoverers and inhabitants. If I were to say "I do not know,"I would be saying what every other thinking man is compelled to say. Yet there is pleasure in conjecture.
Traces of Ruins. Before looking at these conjectures, however, it is appropriate that we look first at what facts there are to justify them.
Suppositions without any facts are mere fictions of the imagination, and this we are not indulging in. When in our day men began to explore the Grand Canyon and its numberless tributaries, a great number of indications of man's presence were found on the rim, on the fault lines or breaks in the sheer precipitous walls, on the plateaus and in the Canyon beneath, in the shape of crude house ruins, lookout houses or forts, indifferent trails, cliff-dwellings, hewn-out water cisterns, mescal pits, with countless pieces of broken pottery, arrowheads, stone axes, hammers, mortars, pestles and even cemeteries. or places of cremation.
Evidences of Superior Civilization. Major J. W. Powell, in his journal of explorations, writes that when he and his party reached the mouth of the Uinta River, they went up to the agency of the Indians of the same name.
While visiting the Indians, and noting their fertile, irrigated farms, he found many evidences that "this beautiful valley has been the home of a people of a higher grade of cultivation than the present Utes. On our way here yesterday, we discovered, in many places along the trail, fragments of pottery, and wandering about the little farms to-day I find the foundations of ancient houses and mealing stones that were not used by nomadic people, as they are too heavy to be transported by such tribes, and are deeply worn. The Indians, seeing that I am interested in these matters, take pains to show me several other places where these evidences remain, and tell me. that they know nothing about the people who formerly dwelt here. They further tell me that up in the Canyon the rocks are covered with pictures."Ancient Dwellings. When Powell and his party reached the junction of the San Juan with the Colorado, they might have found a large number of ancient dwellings in the cliffs not far away from where Bluff City now stands.
