The Helena Independent

CLIFF DWELLERS.

A Stereopticon Lecture Illustrated in Mexico by an Exploring Party.

A special from Deming, N. M., says: "Lieut. Schwatka arrived here to-day. His party has been successful beyond all expectations in their explorations, and especially in southern Chihuahua. Here living cliff and cave dwellers were found in great abundance, wild as any of the Mexican tribes from Cortez's conquest. The abodes they live in are exactly similar to the old, abandoned cliff dwellings of Arizona and New Mexico, about which there has been so much speculation and so much money spent in investigation. It was almost impossible to get very near, so wild and timid were they. Upon the approach of white people they fly to their cave or cliffs by notched sticks placed against the face of the cliffs, if too steep, although they can ascend vertical stone faces if there are the slightest crevices for their fingers and toes. These cliff dwellers are sun worshipers, throwing their new born children out in the full rays of the sun the first day of their lives, and showing many other forms of devotion to the great luminary. They are usually tall, lean and well formed, their skin being very blackish-red, much nearer the color of the negro than the copper colored Indian of the United States. "Schwatka claims that nothing has heretofore been known about these people, except by the half-Indian mountain Mexicans, and thinks his investigation will be of immense anthropological and archaeological value. He estimates the cave and cliff dwellers from 3,000 to 12,000 in numbers, armed only with bows, arrows and stone hatchets, and enough work for a year or two for half a dozen expeditions. Schwatka pronounces the scenery of the Central Sierra Madres as stupendous beyond conception. The grand barranca of the Urique equals, if not surpasses, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, while the arroyo of the churches is the most beautiful sculpted rock of fifteen to twenty miles in length probably in existence."