HUMAN CULTURE. 343 



The Pueblo area. 



The plateau bounded by the Colorado and the Eio Grande was 

 long the home of the clay and adobe worker. The men were short, 

 and the height of the women in the pueblos was 93 per cent, of that of 

 the men. Eabbits, mountain sheep, antelopes, coyotes, mountain lions, 

 hawks and rattlesnakes were the useful and mythical animals. The 

 vegetal kingdom furnished poor timber, but good textile fibers and a 

 varied diet of corn, melons and beans. As in the Ohio valley, though 

 in different materials, artificial food production was associated with 

 defense. The cliff home and the pueblo solved the problem of architec- 

 ture and fortifications in the best possible situations and materials. 



The artificializing of this pueblo life can not be divorced from water 

 culture and cult, woman's prerogative. In a region whose life is a per- 

 petual sigh for water, the nymph and the potter are one. Women are 

 pack beasts for clay; modelers, decorators, burners of pottery. The 

 water seeker, carrier, storer, user, server, is the potter. The tempting 

 foods set before the gods of the elements were served in baskets and 

 vessels of clay. The feminal life of the pueblos, therefore, was higher 

 than the virile, and it is so to-day. Gushing says that the men's efforts 

 were concentrated on activities connected with maintenance and the 

 worship going therewith. Most of the fine art, however, excepting the 

 little painted dolls, in the service of religion, is feminal ; it is on pottery 

 and basketry, not on shields and manly costume. 



The Mexican area. 



At the genial southern extremity of the same plateau, reaching from 

 Quimbawa, in Zacatecas, to Nicaragua, lie the Mexican uplands, man's 

 best friend in all aboriginal North America, as the region about Quito 

 was in South America — a climate whose daylight varied little through- 

 out the year, whose temperature was so equable that food plants, like 

 the trees of the Apocalypse, bore their fruit every month, a region whose 

 elevation and proximity to the gulf and the ocean gave the largest 

 yield of land and sea food for the smallest effort, especially, however, a 

 region abounding in architectural stone in which men might fix their 

 epics and their dreams, and in hard rock for stone cutters' tools. 



Mean temperature of the City of Mexico. 



Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. 

 75 80 80 79 75 69 69 66 63 66 70 73 



Such a land was favorably situated for leisure, for organization, 

 for unbroken cooperation in economic social and religious activities on 

 a large scale and, proportionally, to develop the manliness of men. One 



