The journeyings and campings of the ancient people becomes intelligible when the make-up of the present pueblos is known. One finds that every pueblo consists of clans which are larger families of blood relations having certain duties and responsibilities together; a name, such as the bear, cloud, or century plant; certain rites and ceremonies to the beings; clan officers and customs amounting to laws, and a history preserved in the minds of the members. So it will be seen that a tribe among the house-builders is composed of a number of smaller tribes, called clans, each complete and able to take care of itself, forming the present villages. Often in the early days a powerful clan migrated long distances and left members in many different places, because clan law forbids marriage within the clan, and the man must live with the people of his wife. In these migrations portions of a clan would break off and cast their lot with other villages, and often several clans traveled in company, building their pueblos near one another, and thus came the groups of ruins so common in the Southwest.
For this reason, all the present villages have received swarms from other hives and have sent out in turn swarms from the home village, during their slow migrations around the compass. The habits of the ancient people thus led to a constant flux and reflux in the currents of life in the Southwest and in spite of their substantial houses and works costly of labor the Pueblo Indians were as migratory as the tent-dwellers of the Plains, though they moved more slowly. Their many-celled villages on mesas or on the banks of streams, in the cliffs of the profound canyons, dug in the soft rocks or built in the lava caves, were but camps of the wanderers, to be abandoned sooner or later, leaving the dead to the ministrations of the drifting sand.
Nor with the coming of the white people did the wandering cease. There were Seven Cities of Cibola in the subsequent stretch of time, these seven towns were fused into the Pueblo of Zuñi and again came a dispersal and from this great pueblo formed the small summer villages of Nutria, Pescado, and Ojo Caliente. A human swarm built Laguna two centuries ago to swarm again other times. Acoma is mistress of Acomita; Isleta has a namesake on an island in the Rio Grande near El Paso, and in Tusayan the farming pueblo of Moenkapi Hotavila and Ushtioki in the plains in front of Walpi, are late additions. Thus, in times of peace, these hamlets spring up, each having the possibilities of becoming large settlements, and in times of danger they come together to better withstand the common enemy, for the union born of need and strengthened by the coming of wily foes was inculcated by former experiences. But these unions were never close, even between the clans when they forsook their small community houses and came together forming tribes. Between tribes of the same language there were but the faintest traces of combinations for mutual welfare.
Perhaps about the time of the landfall of Columbus a group of tribes began to push their way into the region of the house-builders[19]. These tribes were related and had crept down from the north, where now their kinsfolk live under the Arctic Circle. It was many years before the Apache and Navaho were strong enough to try conclusions with the settled peoples, but when they had gathered to themselves the lawless from many tribes, then began terrible chapters of history which only recently have been written to a finis. Wherever these conscienceless savages ranged were carnage and destruction. The habits of the house-builders changed and the ruins on high mesas and the lookouts on every hill tell plainly how they sought defence from the scouting enemy. The large towns in the Salinas of Manzano passed into oblivion under the attacks of the Apache and began a mythical career as the “Gran Quivira” of treasure hunters. Great was the devastation of which the complete story may never be told, yet nearly every tribe preserves legends of bloody contacts with the Navaho and Apache.
[19] The Early Navaho and Apache. F. W. Hodge, Amer. Anthropologist, July, 1895.
Still at an early period the Navaho became changed from a fierce warrior to a comparatively peaceful herdsman, subject to the maddening vagaries of that most whimsical of gentle creatures, the sheep. Early in the Spanish colonial period the Navaho preyed on the flocks of sheep of the Rio Grande pueblos, where they had been brought by the Conquistadores, and by that act his destiny was altered. Later on, instead of hunting the scalps of his fellow creatures, his flint knife became more useful in removing the wool from the backs of his charges; he thus became famous as a blanket weaver, and soon excelled his teachers in that peaceful art.
Other visitors and neighbors of the Pueblo people were almost as undesirable as the Apache and Navaho. The Comanche of the Plains brought ruin to many a clan by his forays, and his brother, the Ute, from the mountains to the north, was a dangerous enemy to encounter and at many times in the past attacked the villages of the Hopi. To the west were the Yuma and Mohave, to the south were the Pima, extending into Mexico, and in the Cataract Canyon of the Colorado lived the Havasupai deep in the earth. These have been the neighbors of the Pueblos since recorded history began. Also the tent dwellers of the buffalo plains sometimes visited the Pueblos, tracking up the Canadian, and perhaps other neighbors there were, now vanished beyond resurrection or legend or the spade of the archeologist into the dust of the wind-swept plains.
Besides the harrying of enemies of the wandering sort, there were quarrels among the sedentary tribes and the old-fashioned way of fighting it out according to Indian methods left many a village desolate. For this reason the villages were often built on mesas before the ancient enemies of their occupants began their range of the Southwest, and hostilities were carried on against brothers located near the corn lands and life-giving springs of the Pueblo country.
In the ancient days, as at present, the secret of the distribution of Pueblo men was the distribution of water. It seems that in the vast expanse embraced in the Pueblo region every spring has been visited by the Indians, since whoever would live must know where there is water. The chief springs near the villages they dug out and walled up and built steps or a graded way down to the water, and often these works represent great labor. Likewise, the irrigation canals and reservoirs of southern Arizona show what he could do and surprise the moderns. One soon sees that there is not a spring near the present villages that does not receive its offerings of painted sticks adorned with feathers, as prayers to the givers of water. These simple-hearted folk in the toils of drought seem to have all their ceremonies to bring rain, and there is nothing else quite as important in their thoughts. In the same way the Southwest has made the settlers workers in stone and clay, for Nature has withheld the precious wood. Few other parts of the world show so clear an instance of the compelling power of the surroundings on the customs of a people.
Why or how the pueblo builders came into this inhospitable region no one may decide. The great plateau extending from Fremont’s Peak to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, with its varied scenery, its plants and animals, and its human occupants is replete with interesting problems of the Old New World. Perhaps as the people crowded from the North along the Rockies toward the fertile lands of Mexico, some weaker tribes were thrust into the embrace of the desert and remained to work out their destiny. It would appear that no tribe could adopt the land as a home through free choice, because the sparseness of the arid country must make living a desperate struggle to those who had not the precious seeds of corn.