RACIAL GROUPS HOUGH. 629 



DWELLING GROUP OF THE WICHITA INDIANS. 



The Wichita Indians are of the Caddoan family, and lived for- 

 merly in northern Texas, not far from their present home on the 

 Kiowa Agency, Oklahoma. Their dwellings and other buildings 

 are cone shaped and dome shaped. The framework is of poles, some 

 laid perpendicular and others horizontal, and tied together like 

 latticework. Into this frame bundles of grass are woven in rows, 

 imbricated so as to shed the rain. The group shows a finished 

 house, one in process of erection, and a communal shed, or town hall. 

 The method of thatching is to be compared with that of the Papagos, 

 in Sonora, Mexico. The Wichitas became agriculturists, and dried 

 their corn on hides or frames. They also adopted the metal cooking 

 vessels of the whites. (See p. 33.) 



TRIBES OF THE SOUTHWESTERN UNITED STATES. 



These tribes may be divided into two groups: Those tribes in- 

 digenous to the region, as the Pueblos, divided by language into 

 four stocks, and the Apache and Navaho, who are recent immigrants 

 into the Southwest, and belong to the great Athapascan family of 

 Canada. Some of the ancient Pueblo tribes built their villages 

 under the great sheltering cliffs in canyons, and on account of 

 this are called cliff dwellers. The chief center of large cliff dwellings 

 is in the Mesa Verde, a great mesa mountain in southwestern Colo- 

 rado. One of the largest of these villages, called Cliff Palace, has 

 been restored and rendered accessible to visitors by Dr. J. Walter 

 Fewkes, Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian 

 Institution. 



There is no region similar to the Southwest in the United States. 

 It consists chiefly of a great plateau with ranges of mountains, wide 

 valleys, deep canyons, and extensive plains. Erosion has carved the 

 richly colored rocks into the most varied forms. Great floods of 

 lava issuing from volcanic centers have spread over parts and erosion 

 has left the remains in the form of strangely contoured buttes. 



It is a dry country averaging less than 10 inches of rainfall, and 

 stream water is scanty, the main dependence being underground 

 water from springs and wells. No other tribes of Indians have been 

 subjected to such conditions as stated, and it is not strange that the 

 Pueblos have developed a unique culture. 



The most noticeable feature of this culture is the building of vil- 

 lages consisting of clusters of stone or adobe rooms of rectangular 

 shape. For this reason the Pueblos are called the housebuilders. 

 Some of the villages are built on the summit of high mesas difficult 

 of access. Agriculture, the chief crop being maize, is the mainstay 

 of Pueblo culture. The Pueblos are skillful potters and weavers. 

 Their decorative art is excellent. 



