Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/824

804 to its elucidation." And in the same work this distinguished author adds that the same common principle runs through all this Indian architecture, "from the 'long house' of the Iroquois to the 'pueblo houses' of New Mexico, and to the so-called 'palace' at Palenque and the 'house of the nuns' at Uxmal. It is the principle of adaptation to communism in living, restricted in the first instance to household groups, and extended finally to all the inhabitants of a village or encampment by the law of hospitality. Hunger and destitution were not known at one end of an Indian village while abundance prevailed at the other. Joint-tenement houses, each occupied by one large household, as among the Iroquois, or by several household groups, as in Yucatan, were the natural and inevitable result of their usages and customs. Communism in living, and the law of hospitality, it seems probable, accompanied all the phases of Indian life in savagery and barbarism."

Several years ago the present writer visited the pueblo of Zuñi in New Mexico, and I have seen some of the others, as well as the ruins of a number of the ancient ones. Both New Mexico and Arizona to-day offer a rich field for the investigations of the thoughtful, scientific anthropologist, for in many localities in each Territory he will not only find, in all stages of preservation, the old ruins of the almost extinct "cliff-dwellers," the remains of former pueblos; but he will likewise have the opportunity of comparing the previous states of those communal villages with several of them still in existence. There are about twenty pueblos in New Mexico that are still inhabited, and in Arizona we find seven more that constitute the Moqui group. Many of these have been studied by members of several of the Government exploring parties, and by other individuals, but there still remains a vast store of knowledge in regard to them that no one has as yet drawn upon. This to be done at all must now be done quickly, for our own civilization presses closer upon them each year that goes by, and will very soon work its invariable changes.

Some of these pueblos are built out upon the level, open plain, several miles from any high or mountainous land, and are usually near some river-course, as in the case of Zuñi or Santo Domingo; or they may cap the extremity of some bold mesa, five or six hundred feet above the surrounding prairie, as is the case with the Moquian pueblo, Wolpai (Fig. 3).

Substantially their plan of structure is the same, though it may differ considerably in detail, and this likewise applies to the