402 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



found SO commonly among tlie ruins of adobe and wattle villages in 

 the Santa Cruz Valley and other regions farther south. 



The Canyon de Los Frijoles contains not only the main ruined 

 village of Tuyoni and several smaller ones, but also a great number oi 

 caves and cliff dwellings. Doubtless the caves were at first the chief 

 homes of the aborigines; but as time went on and a higher stage of 

 civilization was reached, the excavations were used chiefly as store- 

 rooms, and the main life of the households was conducted in rooms 

 of stone plastered with mud. Often a house consisted of thi-ee tiers 

 of rooms in front of a cave; and in many cases the rooms were built 

 one on top of another to a height of three stories. Most of the 

 rooms, like those of all the primitive people of the Southwest, as well 

 as the modern pueblos, were entered through the roof. The small 

 size of the rooms, not over 6 feet by 10 feet on an average, is sur- 

 prising. The reason, however, seems clear. On the high Pajaritan 

 Plateau the temperature often falls to 10° below zero F. The rela- 

 tively dense population must quicldy have used up all the available 

 dead firewood for many miles around, and it was no easy task for a 

 primitive people unsupplied with iron tools to cut fu-ewood sufficient 

 for anything more than the necessities of cooking. Farther south, 

 or at lower altitudes, the rooms were larger, for there it was easy 

 to keep warm. The low temperature does not appear to have dimin- 

 ished the number of inhabitants. Fiijoles Canyon alone within a 

 distance of not over a mile and a half up and down the narrow gorge, 

 had a population of full}^ 2,000 souls, according to the estimates of 

 Dr. Edgar L. Hewett, director of the School of American Ai'cheology, 

 who was personally in charge of the excavations. The actual number 

 of rooms, including the village amphitheater, the caves, and the cliff 

 dwellings, appears to have amounted to about 3,000. At the present 

 time, according to Judge Abbot, who owns all the valley except the 

 ruins, the amount of land that can be ii-rigated amounts to 21 acres. 

 Manifestly the ancient Pajaritans climbed out of the canyon to their 

 daily work, and cultivated the plateau where now not a solitary 

 person can make a living from the fruits of the earth. 



This leads us to a consideration of the older and more widely 

 scattered occupation of the country. During our drive to Frijoles 

 Canyon we watched carefully not only for cave dwellings and villages 

 of tiie Tuyoni type, but for the location of little mounds which here 

 and there at a distance from the main sources of water proclaim the 

 location of houses scattered all over the plateau. One who is not 

 closely on the watch may miss these entirely, for they are merely 

 small heaps of stones. In the space of 7 miles we saw houses of this 

 type within sight of the road in 49 different places. Inasmuch as 

 several houses were often clustered in one group, the total number of 

 dwellmgs was 67. They were obviously mere farmhouses, but some 



