80 THE CLIMATIC FACTOR AS ILLUSTRATED IN ARID AMERICA. 



of ruins may be located far away from any visible supply of water, the larger, more compact, 

 and apparently later ruins are always located fairly near to a permanent source of drinking 

 water. Nevertheless, water was evidently not the only desideratum iia choosing the sites 

 of many villages. Pueblo Alto, near Pueblo Bonita, lies on the plateau high above the 

 valley on the north side, wliile the ruin of Hermoso lies in a similar situation on the other 

 side of the canyon. There are traces of an ancient spring about half a mile from Hermoso, 

 but it is dry now and has been for an unknown period. As for Pueblo Alto, unless the 

 inhabitants climbed down the cliffs they can have obtained water only from small reservoirs. 

 In dry seasons, even with a considerably greater rainfall than now, both villages would 

 probably have had to send their women down to the main canj^on for water; clearly they 

 were not located with any reference to ease in olataining water. Nor were their situations 

 easy of defense. Both Pueblo Alto and Hermoso are on the nearly smooth plateau in places 

 of no special strategic strength. To be sure they are more or less completely surrounded 

 by cliffs that can be scaled only with difficulty, but the cliffs are far away from the houses, 

 and no attempt has been made to locate the villages in places surrounded and protected 

 by natural barriers. The upland villages are removed from the main line of easy travel, 

 but otherwise are not much more protected from sudden raids than are their neighbors in 

 the valley. They have left their own record of the fact that, at least in their later days, 

 they were harassed by enemies. The record takes the form of long walls which sometimes 

 jut out half a mile from a village, apparently to furnish a shelter behind which to flee to 

 the village in case of attack. Other evidences of the fear of enemies are found in circular 

 shelters of stones, placed upon commanding hilltops or upon less noticeable elevations. 

 Yet the villages themselves are not placed in sheltered spots but merely on some slight 

 eminence in the midst of the generally level plateau. If, then, the plateau villages were 

 not located with special reference to the most permanent water- supplj^, nor in the places 

 most easily defensible, what was the determining factor in their location? The answer 

 seems to be, "arable land." If the population was as great as we have inferred, the flat 

 land of the valley bottom must have been inadequate to support so large a number of 

 people, even if it could all be used. The choice apparently lay between putting the village 

 in the main valley and climbing up the cliffs to reach the fields, on the one hand, or placing 

 the village on the plateau and climbing down to the canyon for water, on the other hand. 

 Some chose one way and some the other, but probably those who chose the valley fared 

 best in the long run. If the climate became drier, the upland fields might have to be 

 abandoned, but those in the valley bottom could still be cultivated. Moreover, a decreasing 

 supply of water would not occasion them more work in order to get enough to drink, 

 whereas the necessity of descending to the valley for water in dry seasons would become a 

 distinct tax upon their lofty neighbors. Finally, the people up above, being already 

 impoverished, would be especially subject to irreparable injury in the raids of enemies, 

 and so not only would have to build works of defense, but would perhaps be killed off, 

 forced to migrate, or impelled to take to plundering on their own account. So long as 

 the rainfall sufficed to render cultivation possible upon the plateaus, the villages there had 

 a reason for existence. If present conditions prevailed when they were built, their dry, 

 exposed location is difficult to explain. 



After all that has been said, it may seem almost superfluous to speak further of the 

 inadequacy of the present agricultural resources of the Chaco region, yet it is necessary 

 because scientific writers have so largely maintained that the present water-supply is 

 adequate for as large a population as ever at any time dwelt here. Oddly enough, the 

 majority of thoughtful, non-scientific observers who have lived or traveled extensively 

 in New Mexico have largely been of the opposite opinion and have agreed wdth Presi- 

 dent E. McQ. Gray, of the University of New Mexico, who, when asked his idea as to 

 the conditions prevaiUng in pre-Columbian times, remarked: "I never thought of enter- 



