as a room can be excavated in it more easily than a room of a similar size could be built up with loose rock.
The almost absolute dependence of the native builder on nature as he found it is well illustrated by these cavate lodges. At a point in the northern wall of the northernmost canyon, shown in the diagram ([figure 289]) and in [plate XXVI], there is a small fault with a throw of about 2½ feet, and the floors of the lodges west of the fault are just that much lower than the floors east of it. Furthermore, where the purple-gray stratum in which the lodges occur is covered up by the rising ground surface, the cavate lodges abruptly cease. In the northern and southern ends of the group the talus encroaches on and partly covers the purple-gray stratum, and in these places the talus has been removed from the face of the rock to permit the excavation of lodges. In short, the occurrence of the cavate lodges in this locality is determined absolutely by the occurrence of one particular stratum, and when that stratum disappears the lodges disappear. So far as can be ascertained without actually excavating a room there is no apparent difference between the stratum in which the lodges occur and the other purple strata above and below it. That there is some difference is indicated by the confinement of the lodges to that particular level, but that the difference is very slight is shown by the occurrence in two places of lodges just above the principal tier, a kind of second-story lodge, as it were. It is such differences in environment as these, however, often so slight as to be readily overlooked, which determine some of the largest operations carried on by the native builders, even to the building of some of the great many-storied pueblos, and, stranger still, sometimes leading to their complete abandonment.
In the region under discussion cavate lodges usually occur in connection with and subordinate to village ruins, and range in number from two or three rooms to clusters of considerable size. Here, however, the cavate lodge is the feature which has been most developed, and it is noteworthy that the village ruins that occur in connection with them are small and unimportant and occupy a subordinate position.
Plate XXVII. Ruin on Northern Point of Cavate Lodge Canyon.
There are remains of two villages connected with the cavate lodges just described, perched on the points of the promontories which form the mouths of the two canyons before mentioned. The location of these ruins is shown in [plate XXV]. The one on the southern promontory is of greater extent than that on the northern point, and both are now much broken down, no standing wall remaining. A general view of the ruin on the northern promontory is given in plate XXVII, and the same illustration shows the remains of the other village on the flat top of the promontory in the farther part of the foreground.
The cavate lodges are generally rudely circular in shape, sometimes oblong, but never rectangular. The largest are 25 and even 30 feet in diameter, and from this size range down to 5 or 6 feet and thence down to little cubby-holes or storage cists. Owing to their similarity,
particularly in point of size, it is difficult to draw a line between small rooms and large storage cists, but including the latter there are two hundred rooms on the main level, divided into seventy-four distinct and separate sets. These sets comprise from one to fourteen rooms each. On the upper level there are fifty-six rooms, divided into twenty-four sets, making a total of two hundred and fifty-six rooms. As nearly as can be determined by the extent of these ruins the population of the settlement was probably between one hundred and fifty and two hundred persons.
There is great variety in the rooms, both in size and arrangement. As a rule each set or cluster of rooms consists of a large apartment, entered by a narrow passageway from the face of the bluff, and a number of smaller rooms connected with it by narrow doorways or short passages and having no outlet except through the large apartment. As a rule two or more of these smaller back rooms are attached to the main apartment, and sometimes the back rooms have still smaller rooms attached to them. In several cases there are three rooms in a series or row extending back into the rock, and in one instance (at the point marked E on the map, [plate XXV]) there are four such rooms, all of good size.