Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/698

668 Rio San Juan and its tributaries, seems to have been a center of population. In this country, over a large area, the villages are quite near together, showing that it was comparatively densely peopled. Their remains consist of buildings in various stages of decay and dilapidation—cemeteries, pottery, most of it in a fine state of division, arrowheads, a little wicker-work, stone tools of various sorts, partially carbonized grain, corn-cobs, etc., and a few specimens of human remains.

The ruined buildings are, as was stated briefly above, of two general classes, representing two different periods in this ancient history, that of peaceful occupation, and that of invasion by a foreign power and of final expulsion of this people from their homes. All of these structures are of stone, dressed with more or less care, or chosen with reference to size and shape. There is little or no rough rubble-work. In all, the stones are set in adobe mortar, which has great cohesive power, as is shown in several examples.

The first class of structures is found on the fertile bottom-lands, close to water, and they are not arranged with the least regard to defense or security. They were the homes of an agricultural people, and were doubtless surrounded by fields of waving maize and orchards of peach-trees, while herds of goats pastured on the lower slopes of the mesa. The men labored in the fields, and took care of the herds; the women assumed the household duties, wove blankets, and molded pottery. But these happy days came to an end: the invader descended from the north and sought to drive them from their country. Long and deadly was the fray. They were driven from the fertile bottom-lands, and were forced to build houses, like the swallows, in cracks and crannies of the cliffs, wellnigh inaccessible from above or below; or they built strong fortifications on the mesas. But all was of no avail. One by one their warriors fell; step by step they were driven southward, until at last, totally discouraged and disheartened, and with ranks terribly thinned, they abandoned the homes of their fathers, and wandered southward, some to build on almost inaccessible heights—the Moquis towns of the present day—some to wander to the site of Zuni, others to the Rio Grande, where their descendants are found to-day: but, as is so often the case with a people forcibly transplanted from their native soil, they have deteriorated from their former state of civilization.

The buildings most frequently met with are rectangular or circular. The commonest form for dwelling-houses is the rectangle. In all cases where possible the dwellings are semi-communistic—that is, each of the houses is very large, intended to contain a number of families, but is divided into many rooms. In some cases, these dwellings, especially in agricultural towns, are from one to two hundred feet in length. At Aztec Spring, a few miles north of the San Juan, is a very large town, built in one mass, and covering 480,000 square feet. In the midst of this, one building, standing by itself, seems to be the principal house of the town, judging by its dimensions,