 Several years after he and Richard Wetherill discoved the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, Charles was interviewed by the Denver Post, and gave this account of their find; "In December, Richard and I started out to explore. We followed the Indian trail down Chapin Mesa, between Cliff and Navaho Canyons, and camped at the head of a small branch of the Cliff Palace fork of Cliff Canyon. We rode out to the point of the mesa from the rim of the canyon we had our first view of Cliff Palace, just across the canyon from us. To me this is the grandest view of all among the ancient ruins of the Southwest. We rode around the head of the canyon and found a way down over the cliffs to the level of the building. We spent several hours going from room to room, and picked up several articles of interest, among them a stone ax with the handle still on it. There were also parts of several human skeletons scattered about. The final tragedy of the cliff dwellers probably occurred at Cliff Palace. There is scarcely room to doubt that the place withstood an extended siege. In the entire building only two timbers were found by us. All of the joists on which floors and roofs were laid had been wrenched out. These timbers had been built into the walls and are difficult to remove, even the little willows on which the mud roof and upper floors were laid were carefully taken out. No plausible reason for this has been advanced except that it was used for fuel. Another strange circumstance is that so many of their valuable possessions were left in the rooms and covered with the clay of which the roofs and upper floors were made. It would seem that the intention was to conceal their valuables so that their enemies might not secure them. There were many human bones scattered about, as though several people had been killed and left unburied. It seems to me there can be no doubt that the cliff dwellers were exterminated by their more savage and warlike neighbors, the men being killed and the women being adopted into the tribe of the conquerors, though in some cases migrations may have become necessary as a result of drought or pressure from outside tribes."
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