407 



[Gushing. 



possessed throughout, also, much else in common, particularly in the 

 matter of biotic characteristics, plant and animal life as they pre- 

 vailed in at least the marshy borders and immediately contiguous 

 lands. Such characteristics, since so intimately associated with sub- 

 sistence and art activities, are of course the most potent of factors in 

 giving direction to the movements and developments of primitive peo- 

 ples, — especially when combined with generally like physical conditions 

 throughout a given area, — and go far in themselves toward making thus, 

 a distinctively etfinicarea. Let me offer an example of this : In its way, 

 the arid region of our tarther Southwest, is more distinctive than is the 

 region of the Southern seas and great contiguous rivers and flood-plains. 

 That is, it is a region the climatic conditions of which are so homoge- 

 neous and so pronounced throughout, and the flora and fauna of which 

 are therefore so uniform, that it has been potent to mould into or toward 

 a common condition and type, and a common state of mind, too, nearly 

 all the peoples who have ever entered it and therein dwelt long 

 enough. In the centuries of a far-off time, it presently made of little 

 bands wandering and seeking refuge in its desolate wastes — seeking 

 throughout them for water and seeds — petty agriculturists. It forced 

 them as they throve apace, to permanent occupancy, then to cultiva- 

 tion of, these far-sundered watering-places ; then, later, through conten- 

 tions over these places and possessions, with other comers or with one 

 another, to occupancy of and building in the cliffs, for defense. Thus 

 out of such hard conditions was born the famous Clift" Dweller, his 

 architecture, and his culture. It was my good fortune, years ago, to first 

 definitely relate the Zuiii Pueblo Indians, linguistically and traditiou- 

 all}% with these ancient denizens of the cliffs, and to ascertain posi- 

 tively, and announce in various publications (especially of the Bureau 

 of Ethnology) that the architecture of these and other Pueblo Indians 

 was almost wholly, as they were themselves in part, derived from that 

 of older cliff dwellers. But it seems that the Northerly cliff dwellers 

 were the first in this long succession, as the Zuiiis were (to the extent 

 to which they were descended from them) their earliest successors. 

 Yet as the ancestors of other Pueblo peoples penetrated into that con- 

 straining region, they too, under the potent influence of the same 

 environment — probably more than by the example of these earlier 

 predecessors who had been wrought upon thereby — adopted, one after 

 another, a precisely similar mode of living and building. It is only 

 eight or nine hundred years since the Navajo and Apache Indians 

 gradually descended from their far-northern homes into this desert 

 region. The Navajo Indians are not Pueblos, but it is sufficiently evi- 

 dent from facts relating to them given in the- splendid treatises of 

 Dr. Washington Matthews, that they were, especially along the line of 

 their sociologic and religious development and the art thereto pertain- 

 ing, rapidly becoming moulded, by accultural and environmental condi- 

 tions combined, to the Pueblo condition of mind and life ; and had their 



