SUCCESSIVE STAGES OF CULTURE IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO. 85 



the later and far less extensive Pueblo occupation) as is the modern American occupation 

 from that of the Spaniards. The first inhabitants spread far more widely than their 

 successors. They seem to have felt no need of being near the main sources of water nor 

 yet of gathering together, as the later people did, in places which could easily be defended. 

 For a long period before the advent of the enemy which finally displaced them, their lives 

 were apparently free and comfortable in their liigh forest homes. How or why they 

 vanished is as unknown to us as is their origin, but perchance we shall learn the story 

 little b}' httle. It will not be a story of peace and monotony, for those are not the conditions 

 which prevail when a race comes into a country nor when it is forced out. We can scarcely 

 doubt that raids, plunder, repeated invasions, great distress, and the final disappearance 

 of one type of civilization and its replacement by another were the order of events. 



This painful process of a change of civilization took place not once alone, but at least 

 twice. Formerly the cliff-dwellers who built the compact villages like Tyuonyi and Pueblo 

 Alto were supposed to have been of the same race as the modern Pueblo Indians, but 

 recent investigations indicate that this is not true. Possibly, indeed probably, the modern 

 Pueblo is related to the second or village-building type of ancient inhabitants, whom we 

 may call Pajaritans in distinction from the still older type who may perhaps be classed as 

 Hohokam, but the relationship is not close. The bones of the dead, exhumed after cen- 

 turies, tell sometliing of the tale. The modern Pueblo Indians are brachycephalic accord- 

 ing to Dr. Hrdlicka;* their heads are relatively broad, as anyone can tell by looking at them. 

 Some, however, are doHchocephahc, with long heads, but these are in a minority. The 

 present Indians are clearly of mixed descent. Their predecessors, on the contrary, were of 

 a pure race, predominantly long-headed like ourselves. Therefore we infer that they were 

 conquered by invading broad-heads, and that finally the invading broad-heads and as 

 many of the long-heads as had neither fled nor perished became amalgamated into a 

 single race. Perhaps the ancient farmers, the medieval villagers, and the modern Pueblo 

 Indians were not the only races which have passed across the stage of history in the pre- 

 historic days of America. In other parts of the Southwest faint glimmerings of still 

 other cultures are seen, which show that change and movement have been as characteristic 

 of the ancient history of America as of that of Europe and Asia. 



We have seen that at least two types of prehistoric civilization spread widely over 

 areas which are now uninhabitable. The early Hohokam farmers have left their ruins 

 over all parts of the high plateaus and of the great lowland valleys far from any visible 

 source of water, even for drinking. The later Pajaritans, both village- and cliff-dwellers, 

 did not spread so widely, but they managed to live and raise food in hundreds of valleys 

 where this now seems to be impossible. Let us next inquire whether the latest of the 

 original American types of civihzation, the Pueblo Indians, were ever blessed with climatic 

 conditions such that they, too, could inhabit regions whence di'ought now excludes them. 



The well-known ruins of Tabira, popularly called Gran Quivira, are located about 6,000 

 feet above the sea near the center of New Mexico, about 65 miles south-southeast of Albu- 

 querque. They lie on a rounded hill, about 200 feet above a broad, open valley draining 

 toward the south and a mile or more in width. The ruins consist of two distinct portions, 

 Pueblo and Spanish. The ground area is about 700 by 350 feet, with a few buildings out- 

 side these limits. All the structures were built of hght-gray limestone broken into roughly 

 rectangular blocks. The exact source of the building material is not evident, although there 

 is stone of the same sort visible in small outcrops not far awa3^ The character of the stone, 

 however, is such that it would be difficult to get it out in large quantities without the 

 aid of explosives. Inasmuch as the village was evidently built long before the coming of 

 the Spaniards, we must assume that the Indians put themselves to a vast amount of labor 

 in the process of quarrying, squaring, and transporting the stones of their numerous houses. 



* See Hewett, Edgar L.: The Pajaritan Culture. Papers of the School of American Archaeology, No. 3, p. 341. 



