SUCCESSIVE STAGES OF CULTURE IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO. 87 



on the lower Altar River in northwestern Mexico. Caborca, it will be remembered, is the 

 last inhabited place on the river. Farther downstream there is no water except during the 

 brief season of floods. At Buzani a few Papago Indians cultivate a considerable quantity 

 of land in good years, but do not hve there all the time. They might remain through the 

 year, for they have a well, but it is very deep, and the labor of drawing water is great. 

 Here, as in the other case, the Spaniards established a mission in a place which sensible 

 people would now scarcely choose for the purpose. I have not been able to ascertain the 

 date of the Buzani church, and am not certain whether it dates from the seventeenth or 

 eighteenth century, but probably from the latter. Its evidence is by no means so clear or 

 pronounced as that of the Gran Quivira. In both cases, however, the point to be borne in 

 mind is this: we have before us two theories which stand on an absolutely equal footing 

 so far as innate probability is concerned. The only question is which one best fits all the 

 facts. One theory holds that the chmate of the past three centuries has been uniform; 

 while the other assumes that there has been a change, the seventeenth century or at least 

 its first half presumably having been considerably moister than the nineteenth, while the 

 eighteenth was probably intermediate between the other two. Viewing the two theories 

 without prejudice, it seems fair to say that the theory of change fits the facts better than 

 the theory of uniformity. 



We have now finished our survey of the ruins of the United States. Let us sum up our 

 conclusions, and see whither they have led us and what possibilities they suggest. The 

 evidence that the climate of the past was different from that of the present seems to be too 

 strong to be ignored. The simplest mathematical calculation shows that where it is possible 

 to raise food for only 10 people 100 people never could have found sustenance. Neverthe- 

 less, many men whose opinion is entitled to the greatest respect doubt the conclusion to 

 which this simple sum in division would seem to lead. They admit that 100 people could 

 never have lived in the places which furnish food for only 10, but say that the solution 

 of the problem is not to multiply the ancient food supply by 10, but to divide the apparent 

 population by 10. Their argument does not seem to be conclusive, because it involves the 

 assumption that the people of the past were radically different from those of the present; 

 yet such arguments are extremely difficult to discuss, because no one can assert that 

 certain races of people may not have had habits quite contrary to those of the rest of the 

 world. The burden of proof, assuredly, is on those who assume such pecuHarities in the 

 ancient Americans, and it seems as if they had not proved their point, but this is purely a 

 matter of opinion. If there were no other way of setthng the question it would be necessary 

 to take up this matter step by step and discuss the exact degree of mobihty among modern 

 races of various degrees of development, and then to go on to an attempt at estimating 

 the exact amount of food that could be supphed in the best as compared with the worst 

 years. Then we should have to calculate the number of people who could possibly have 

 made a living and to compare that with the number whom the ruins seem to indicate. 

 Next we should have to estimate the amount of work which would be required to build 

 such ruins as those of Pueblo Bonita, for example, and should have to determine how many 

 decades or centuries of constant labor the construction of all the numerous ruins in and 

 around the Chaco Canyon would have required on the part of the handful of people who 

 could there find sustenance. When that was fimshed, we might perhaps be in a position 

 to say just how phenomenal must have been the ancient race which migrated so quickly 

 from place to place, and worked so hard in order to leave ruins that look as if they had 

 been the work of many people instead of a few. By the time we had finished we should 

 have made so many assumptions that our conclusions would be inconclusive, and we 

 should end where we began. 



The only way to arrive at a firm conclusion is to test the matter by some means which 

 does not involve any assumptions as to the nature of man, either now or in the past. Such 



