The masonry of the ruins and the constructive expedients employed by the builders are an insurmountable obstacle in the way of the hypothesis that the cliff ruins represent a primitive or intermediate stage in the growth of pueblo architecture. The builders were well acquainted with the principles and methods of construction employed in the best work found in other regions; the inferiority of their work is due to special conditions and to the locality. The presence of a number of extraneous features, both in methods and principles employed, is further evidence in the same line. These features are certainly foreign to this region, some of them suggest even Spanish or Mexican origin, which implies comparatively recent occupancy.
The openings—doorways and windows—found in the ruins are of the regular pueblo types. They are arranged as convenience dictated, without any reference to the defensive motive, which, if it existed at all, exercised less influence here than it did in the modern pueblos. There is no evidence of the use of very modern features, such as the paneled wooden doors found in the pueblos; nor, on the other hand, are there any very primitive expedients or methods—none which can not be found today in the modern villages.
The roof, floors, and timber work are also essentially the same as the examples found in the modern pueblos. The notable scarcity of roofing timbers in the ruins can probably be explained by the hypothesis of successive occupancies and subsequent or repeated use of material difficult to obtain. So far as regards the use of timber as an element of masonry construction the results obtained in De Chelly are rude and primitive as compared with the work found in other regions.
The immense number of storage cists found in De Chelly are a natural outgrowth of the conditions there and support the hypothesis that the cliff outlooks were merely farming shelters. The small size of many of the settlements made the construction of storage cists a necessity. The storage of water was very seldom attempted. A large proportion of the cists found in De Chelly were burial places and of Navaho origin. As a rule they are far more difficult of access than the ruins.
There is no evidence of the influence of the defensive motive. Defensive works on the approaches to sites are never found, nor can such influence be detected in the arrangement of openings, in the character of masonry, or in the ground plan. If the cliff ruins were defensive structures, an influence strong enough to bring about the occupancy of such inconvenient and unsuitable sites would certainly be strong enough also to bring about some slight modifications in the architecture, such as would render more suitable sites available. If we assume that the cliff ruins were farming outlooks, occupied only during the farming season, and then only for a few days or weeks at a time, the character of the sites occupied by them, seems natural enough, for the same sites are used by the Navaho today in connection with farming operations.
The distribution of kivas in the ruins of De Chelly affords another indication that the occupancy of that region was quiet and little disturbed,
and that the ruins were in no sense defensive structures. Kivas are found only in permanent settlements, and the presence of two or three of them in a small settlement comprising a total of five or six rooms implies, first, that the little village was the home of two or more families, and, second, that there was comparative if not entire immunity from hostile incursions. If the conditions were otherwise, these small settlements would have combined into larger ones, as was done in other regions. Probably these small settlements with several kivas mark a late period in the use of outlying sites. The position of the kivas in some of the settlements on defensive sites, and their arrangement across the front of the cove, suggest that such sites were first used for outlooks, and that their occupancy by regular villages came at a later period.
All of the now available traditions of the Navaho and of the Hopi Indians support the conclusions reached from a study of the intrinsic evidence of the ruins, that they represent a comparatively late period in the history of pueblo architecture. It appears that some at least of the ruins are of Hopi origin. It is certain that the ruins were not occupied at one time, nor by one tribe or band.
As criteria in development or in time the cliff ruins are valueless, except in a certain restricted way. They represent simply a phase of pueblo life, due more to the geological character of the region occupied than to extraordinary conditions, and they pertain partly to the old villages, partly to the more modern. Apparently they reached their greatest (not their highest) development in the period immediately preceding the last well-defined stage in the growth of pueblo architecture, a stage in which most of the pueblos were at the time of their discovery by the Spaniards, and in which some of them are now. Reliance for defense was had on the site occupied, and outlying settlements for horticultural purposes were very numerous, as they must necessarily be also in the last stage—the aggregation of many related villages into one great cluster.
The cliff outlooks in Canyon de Chelly and in other regions, the cavate lodges of New Mexico and Arizona, the "watch towers" of the San Juan and of the Zuñi country, the summer villages attached to many of the pueblos, the single-room remains found everywhere, even the brush shelters or "kisis" of Tusayan, are all functionally analogous, and all are the outgrowth of certain industrial requirements, which were essentially the same throughout the pueblo country, but whose product was modified by geological and topographical conditions. In the cliff ruins of De Chelly we have an interesting and most instructive example of the influence of a peculiar and sometimes adverse environment on a primitive people, who entered the region with preconceived and, as it were, fully developed ideas of house construction, and who left it before those ideas were brought fully in accord with the environment, but not before they were influenced by it.