8o 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to its elucidation." * And in the same work this distinguished 

 author adds that the same common principle runs through all 

 this Indian architecture, " from the ' long house ' of the Iroquois 

 to the ' pueblo houses ' of New Mexico, and to the so-called ' pal- 

 ace ' at Palenque and the ' house of the nuns ' at Uxmal. It is 

 the principle of adaptation to communism in living, restricted in 

 the first instance to household groups, and extended finally to 

 all the inhabitants of a village or encampment by the law of hos- 

 pitality. Hunger and destitution were not known at one end of 

 an Indian village while abundance prevailed at the other. Joint- 

 tenement houses, each occupied by one large household, as among 

 the Iroquois, or by several household groups, as in Yucatan, were 

 the natural and inevitable result of their usages and customs. 

 Communism in living, and the law of hospitality, it seems prob- 

 able, accompanied all the phases of Indian life in savagery and 

 barbarism." 



Several years ago the present writer visited the pueblo of 

 Zuiii in New Mexico, and I have seen some of the others, as well as 

 the ruins of a number of the ancient ones. Both New Mexico and 

 Arizona to-day offer a rich field for the investigations of the 

 thoughtful, scientific anthropologist, for in many localities in each 

 Territory he will not only find, in all stages of preservation, the 

 old ruins of the almost extinct " cliff-dwellers, " the remains of 

 former pueblos ; but he will likewise have the opportunity of 

 comparing the previous states of those communal villages with 

 several of them still in existence. There are about twenty pueblos 

 in New Mexico that are still inhabited, and in Arizona we find 

 seven more that constitute the Moqui group. Many of these 

 have been studied by members of several of the Government ex- 

 ploring parties, and by other individuals, but there still remains 

 a vast store of knowledge in regard to them that no one has as 

 yet drawn upon. This to be done at all must now be done 

 quickly, for our own civilization presses closer upon them each 

 year that goes by, and will very soon work its invariable changes. 



Some of these pueblos are built out upon the level, open plain, 

 several miles from any high or mountainous land, and are usually 

 near some river-course, as in the case of Zuni or Santo Domingo ; 

 or they may cap the extremity of some bold mesa, five or six hun- 

 dred feet above the surrounding prairie, as is the case with the 

 Moquian pueblo, Wolpai (Fig. 3). 



Substantially their plan of structure is the same, though it 

 may differ considerably in detail, and this likewise applies to the 



* Houses and House-life of the American Aborigines. Department of the Interior, United 

 States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region. Washington, 

 1881, pp. 104, 105. 



