ACROSS THE NAVAJO DESERT 43 



of the village, which in all essentials was like 

 a Hopi village of to-day, were plastered against 

 the wall in stories, each resting on a narrow 

 ledge. Long poles permitted one to climb from 

 ledge to ledge, and gave access, through the 

 roofs, to the more inaccessible houses. The im- 

 mense size of the cave — or overhanging, re- 

 entrant cliff, whichever one chooses to call it — 

 dwarfed the houses, so that they looked Hke 

 toy houses. 



There w^ere many similar, although smaller, 

 villages and Httle clusters of houses among the 

 cliffs of this tangle of canyons. Once the cliff- 

 dwellers had lived in numbers in this neighbor- 

 hood, sleeping in their rock aeries, and ven- 

 turing into the valleys only to cultivate their 

 small patches of irrigated land. Generations 

 had passed since these old cliff-dwellers had been 

 killed or expelled. Compared with the neigh- 

 boring Indians, they had already made a long 

 stride in cultural advance when the Spaniards 

 arrived; but they were shrinking back before 

 the advance of the more savage tribes. Their 

 history should teach the lesson — taught by 

 all history in thousands of cases, and now being 

 taught before our eyes by the experience of 

 China, but being taught to no purpose so far 

 as concerns those ultra peace advocates whose 



