A peculiarly interesting class of ruins is that of the pueblo villages that were occupied at the time of the coming of the Spaniards and abandoned during the next century. Archæological work in such sites should yield valuable results by disclosing the first influences of the exotic civilization upon the indigenous tribes. Noteworthy sites of this character are those near Zuñi and a number of the Rio Grande Valley.
The Southwest is rich in historic sites, but in prehistoric remains its wealth is practically limitless. It is with these that we shall deal principally in this paper.
The distribution of the indigenous tribes of America was determined primarily by drainage; that is to say, the food quest was the chief concern of primitive man. First of all, he sought food and water, and we can readily see that, of these two, water was first in importance. Where water was, there food was likely to be. Game frequented water courses. Plant food depended upon moisture. Now in the southwest, water was scarce, consequently no other portion of the United States was so poor in game. Hunting tribes, therefore, shunned its desert wastes. Their frontiers were the Pecos valley in eastern New Mexico, practically the western limit of the buffalo, and the divide running east and west across southern Colorado and Utah, separating the San Juan, south of which lay the arid region, from the splendid hunting ranges on the north which extended from ocean to ocean except where broken by the Utah and Nevada deserts. There was thus a tract of country bounded on the east by the Pecos river, on the north by the San Juan, extending west to the Colorado and south to the Gila in which aridity was the dominant climatic condition. Being poor in game, it was not until comparatively recent times that it was much frequented by nomadic Indians. Comanches, Utes, Navajos and Apaches had no use for this region until it was occupied by some one whom they could dispossess of wealth. Primitive economic systems are not unlike those of civilized men. In both states of culture, wealth is acquired in two ways, namely, by producing it and by dispossessing others of it. Savages and civilians naturally divide into two great classes, the productive and the predatory. It is a far cry from the murderously straightforward method of the Apache to the highly specialized up-to-date commercial system, or even the comparatively direct methods of modern politics, but the difference is merely in technique. Now in the absence of game and of victims for robbery, the first settlers of that arid region were driven to produce their living by agriculture. This could only be successfully done by irrigation. Accordingly lines of migration followed water ways and springs. Moreover, this condition was conducive to a comparatively sedentary life, and this leads to permanent home building.
Now the region under consideration embraces all of New Mexico and Arizona, southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, and is comprised within four principal drainage areas, viz: the Rio Grande, the San Juan, the Little Colorado, and the Gila, the last three being tributary to the Colorado. Over this area physiographic conditions are quite uniform and the indigenous tribes now inhabiting it likewise; not as to linguistic stock, but in general and specific culture. By indigines I mean the various sedentary tribes generally called Pueblos as distinguished from the intrusive Utes, Navajos and Apaches, which tribes cames in chiefly for predatory reasons after the indigenous tribes had acquired sufficient property to make them desirable prey. This indigenous culture was doubtless composite as to blood and the uniformity developed was the natural result of living for a long period of time under definite uniform environmental conditions. Its primary migration movement was from south to north, but branching in all directions, and the almost countless prehistoric ruins following the water-courses of the southwest are the remains of these early migrations.
The present sedentary Indians of the southwest, called by us Pueblos, are thus the true indigines of that arid region so far as we can judge from existing evidences. All presumption of earlier or different races is purely hypothetical, as yet unsupported by any shadow of evidence. These primitive agriculturists became builders of more or less permanent houses, dependent always upon the permanence of the water supply. The character of their habitations was usually determined by geological environment. The characteristic style of architecture evolved was the multiple-chambered stone structure that we call the pueblo. The earliest of these were comparatively small, single-storied dwellings of an indefinite number of rooms rarely exceeding fifty, scattered about over the arable areas. The ruins of these to be found in the southwest are quite uncountable. Later, as predatory neighbors multiplied and the people crowded together for mutual aid the enormous hives of hundreds of cells came into existence. These were often carried to a height of five or six stories. At the same time and for the same reason another style of habitation came into existence, namely, the cliff-dwelling. Its type was always determined by geological conditions. If ledges difficult of access and protected by overhanging cliffs could be found, dwellings were built upon them, not differing structurally from pueblos. If the cliffs presented only perpendicular faces, and were of comparatively soft material, dwellings were excavated in them, single or multiple-chambered, and thus strongly defensive homes established.
Thus we have in the southwest a most fortunate situation for the archæologist. The ruins are of such a character and so situated as to resist the action of the weather, and the climate singularly adapted to the preservation of not only the buildings, but also the more perishable remains. So completely did the indigenous culture overspread the area in question that there is not a waterway of any consequence from the Pecos to the Colorado and from the San Juan to the Gila that is without numerous ruins. They are distributed along not less than a hundred valleys in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah. In a paper and map prepared recently for the use of the Department of the Interior, I have indicated the distribution of the ruins over the four general drainage-areas, the Rio Grande, the San Juan, the Little Colorado, the Gila, and as a tentative scheme have shown how they may be grouped into twenty archæological districts. (This grouping has no ethnological significance.)
The districts are grouped as follows:
I. The Rio Grande Basin:
1. Pajarito Park district.
2. Pecos Pueblo district.