[TRADITIONS]
It has often been stated concerning some given ruin or region that the traditions of the present inhabitants of the country do not reach them. In the case of Canyon de Chelly the same statement might be
made, for more than 99 Navaho in 100, when asked what became of the people who built the old houses in De Chelly, will state that a great wind arose and swept them all away, which is equivalent to saying that they do not know. There is a tradition in the Navaho tribe, however, now very difficult to get, as it is confined to a few of the old priests. It recites the occupancy of the canyon before the Navaho obtained possession of it, but, curiously enough, this period is placed after the Spanish invasion. It is even asserted that there were monks in De Chelly, and Mummy Cave, Casa Blanca, and one other ruin have been pointed out as the places where they were stationed. No version of this tradition definite and complete enough for publication could be obtained by the writer, but Dr. Washington Matthews, U.S.A., whose knowledge of Navaho myths and traditions is so great that it can almost be termed exhaustive, has obtained one and doubtless will publish it.
The Hopi or Moki Indians, whose villages are some three days' journey to the west, have also very definite traditions bearing on the occupancy of De Chelly.[28] This tribe, like others, is composed of a number of related clans who reached their present location from various directions and at various times; but, with a few exceptions, each of these clans claims to have lived at one time or another in Canyon de Chelly. How much truth there is in these claims can be determined only when the entire region has been examined and thoroughly studied. In the meantime it will probably be safe to assume that some, at least, of the ruins in De Chelly are of Hopi origin.
[CONCLUSIONS]
To understand the ruins so profusely scattered over the ancient pueblo country we must have some knowledge of the conditions under which their inhabitants lived. Were nothing at all known, however, we would be justified in inferring, from the results that have been produced, a similarity of conditions with those prevailing among the pueblo tribes, both formerly and now; and all the evidence so far obtained would support that inference. There is no warrant whatever for the old assumption that the "cliff dwellers" were a separate race, and the cliff dwellings must be regarded as only a phase of pueblo architecture.
More or less speculation regarding the origin of pueblo culture is the usual and perhaps proper accompaniment of nearly all treatises bearing on that subject. Early writers on the Aztec culture, aided by a vague tradition of that tribe that they came from the north, pushed the point of emigration farther and farther and still farther north, until finally the pueblo country was reached. Pueblo ruins are even now known locally as "Aztec ruins." Logically the inhabited villages should be classed as "Aztec colonies," and such classification was not unusual when the country came into the possession of the United States some fifty years ago.
As our knowledge of the pueblo culture increased, a gradual separation between the old and the new took place, and we have as an intermediate hypothesis many "Aztec ruins," but no "Aztec colonies." Finally, as a result of still further knowledge, the ruins and the inhabited pueblos are again brought together; several lines of investigation have combined to show the continuity of the old and the present culture, and the connection may be considered well established. But there is still a disposition to regard the cliff ruins as a thing apart. The old idea of a separate race of cliff dwellers now finds little credence, but the cliff ruins are almost universally explained as the results of extraordinary, primitive, or unusual causes.
The intimate relation between the savage and his physical environment has already been alluded to. Nature, or that part of nature which we term physical environment, enters into and becomes part of the life of the savage in a way and to an extent that we can hardly conceive. A change of physical environment does not produce an immediate change in the man or in his arts, but in time such must inevitably result. Twenty-five years ago the savage of the plains and the savage of the pueblo country were regarded as distinct races, "as different from each other as light is from darkness;" yet the differences which appeared so striking at first have become fewer and fewer as our knowledge of the Indian tribes increased, and those which remain today can almost all be attributed to a difference in physical environment.