Marriages among them were by individual preference, and are said not to have respected the limits of consanguinity; but this is doubtful, as we are also told that the mother-in-law was treated with peculiar ceremony. Their rites for the dead indicate a belief in the survival of the individual. The body was buried and after a certain time the bones were cleaned, painted red, and preserved in ossuaries.
The population was sparse, probably not more than ten thousand on the whole peninsula. At the extreme south were the Pericus, who extended to N. Lat. 24°; beyond these lived the Guaicurus to about Lat. 26°; and in the northern portion of the peninsula to latitude 33° the Cochimis.[127] The early writers state that in appearance these bands did not differ from the Mexicans on the other side of the Gulf. Their skulls, however, which have been collected principally from the district of the Pericus, present a peculiar degree of elongation and height (dolichocephalic and hypsistenocephalic).
YUMA LINGUISTIC STOCK.
- Ceris, on Tiburon Island and the adjacent coast.
- Cochimis, northern portion of Californian peninsula.
- Cocopas, at mouth of Colorado river.
- Coco-Maricopas, on middle Gila river.
- Comeyas, between lower Colorado and the Pacific.
- Coninos, on Cataract creek, branch of the Colorado.
- Cuchanes, see Yumas.
- Diegueños, near San Diego on the Pacific.
- Gohunes, on Rio Salado and Rio Verde.
- Guaicurus, middle portion of Californian peninsula.
- Hualapais, from lower Colorado to Black Mountains.
- Maricopas, see Coco-Maricopas.
- Mohaves, on both banks of lower Colorado.
- Pericus, southern extremity of Californian peninsula.
- Tontos, in Tonto basin and in the Pinal mountains.
- Tequistlatecas, of Oaxaca and Guerrero.
- Yavipais, west of Prescott, Arizona.
- Yumas, near mouth of Colorado river.[128]
3. THE PUEBLO TRIBES.
The word pueblo in Spanish means simply “town;” but in American ethnography it has obtained a special signification from the aboriginal structures so-called, whose remains are found in profusion in Arizona and the neighboring localities over an area about 350 miles from east to west and 300 miles from north to south.[129] These are buildings several stories in height, either of stone or of adobes, communal in character, that is, intended to accommodate a whole gens or clan, and usually with certain peculiarities of finish and plan. The adobes are generally large, some four feet long by two feet wide, and were often made upon the wall itself, the clay or gravel being carried in a moist state in baskets of this size and deposited upon the wall till the mass dried. When stones are employed, they are held together by a mud mortar. The most celebrated of these adobe edifices are perhaps the Casas Grandes in the valley of the San Miguel river, in northern Chihuahua. They have frequently been described and do not differ except in size from hundreds of other ruins in the Gila basin.
In connection with the pueblos stand the “cliff-houses,” structures of stones usually carefully squared and laid in mortar, found in great numbers and over an area of wide extent in the deep gorges or cañons of the Colorado, the Gila and the upper Rio Grande, and their numberless affluents. They are perched upon the ledges of the precipices, which often descend almost perpendicularly for thousands of feet, and access to many of them could have been only by ladders or ropes. Prominent points are frequently surmounted by round or square stone towers, evidently for purposes of observation. The disposition of the cliff houses renders it certain that their plans and positions were selected with a view to make them safe retreats from marauding enemies.
As descriptions of these interesting ruins have often been introduced to support vague and extraordinary theories concerning ancient America, I would emphatically say there is nothing in any of the remains of the pueblos, or the cliff houses, or any other antiquities in that portion of our continent, which compels us to seek other constructors for them than the ancestors of the various tribes which were found on the spot by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, and by the armies of the United States in the middle of the nineteenth. This opinion is in accordance with history, with the traditions of the tribes themselves, and with the condition of culture in which they were found. When, in 1735, Pedro de Ainza made an expedition from Santa Fé against the Navajos, he discovered tribes dwelling in stone houses “built within the rocks,” and guarded by watchtowers of stone.[130] The Apaches still remember driving these cliff-dwellers from their homes, and one of the Apache gentes is yet named from them “stone-house people.”[131] As for the pueblos, seven or eight of them are occupied to-day by the same people who built them, and whose homes they have been for many centuries.
It is a significant fact that these people do not all belong to the same stock. On the contrary, the “Pueblo Indians” are members of a number of wholly disconnected stems. This proves that the Pueblo civilization is not due to any one unusually gifted lineage, but was a local product, developed in independent tribes by the natural facilities offered by the locality. It is a spontaneous production of the soil, climate, and conditions, which were unusually favorable to agricultural and sedentary occupations, and prompted various tribes to adopt them.