It is not meant that the crops when gathered were placed in these cists and kept there until used. The harvest was, as a rule, permanently stored in the home villages, and the cists were used only for temporary storage. Doubtless the old practice resembled somewhat that followed by the Navaho today. The harvest is gathered at the proper time and what is not eaten at once is hidden away in cists of old or modern construction. If it is well hidden, the grain may remain in the cists for a long time if not withdrawn for consumption; but as a rule it is taken away a few months later. The annual emigration of the Navaho commences soon after the harvest, and at intervals during the winter and spring, and in summer, if the supply is not then exhausted, visits are paid to the cists and portions of the grain are carried away.
A large proportion of the cists are of modern Navaho work, but that some of them were used by the pueblo people who preceded them seems probable from the similarity in horticultural methods, and from the small size of many of the villages. A village inhabited by half a dozen people was not uncommon; one which could accommodate more than fifty was rare. Moreover, some of the storage cists that occur in conjunction with dwellings differ from the latter only in size and in their separation from the other rooms. The masonry is quite as good as that of the houses, and much superior to the Navaho work.
Plate LXI shows an example which occurs in the lower part of the canyon, at the point marked [1] on the map. It is placed on a little ledge or block of rock, 12 feet above the stream and about 8 feet above the bottom land below it. This is the first considerable area of bottom land in the canyon. The cist is 2 feet square inside and occupies the
whole width of the rock. An exceptionally large amount of mud plaster was used on the walls, which are better finished outside than inside. Access was had by hand-holes in the rock, now almost obliterated. Originally the structure consisted of two or more rooms.
Plate LXI. Storage Cist in Canyon De Chelly
A little below this site there are some well-executed pictographs, and on some rocks immediately to the right some crude work of the Navaho of the same sort. To the left of the cist a round hole 6 or 8 inches in diameter has been pecked into the almost vertical face of the rock. The purpose of this is not clear.
The storage of water was so seldom attempted, or perhaps so seldom necessary, that only one example of a reservoir was found. This has already been described ([page 126]). If the cliff ruins were defensive structures, a supply of water must have been kept in them, and where this requirement was common, as it would be under the hypothesis, certainly some receptacle other than jars of pottery would be provided. Few, if any, of the cliff outlooks are so situated that a supply of water could be procured without descending to the stream bed, and without a supply of water the most impregnable site in the canyon would have little value.
The number of burial cists in the canyon is remarkable; there are hundreds of them. Practically every ruin whose walls are still standing contains one or more, some have eight or ten. They are all of Navaho origin and in many of them the remains of Navaho dead may still be seen. Possibly the Navaho taboo of their own dead has brought about the partial taboo of the cliff dwellers' remains which prevails, and which is an element that must be taken into account in any discussion of the antiquity of the ruins.