20 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



tiful stream is running, this valley having been cleared of its debris 

 not more than eighteen months ago. Abundant instances of this 

 kind can be brought up. 



Savage people abandon their homes for reasons not fully or easily 

 appreciated by civilized men. Some disease carries off a great man 

 or a number of persons in a tribe, and panic seizes the people and 

 they leave their homes, perhaps burn them, under the belief that 

 evil beings or evil influences have taken possession thereof. And 

 this occurs very often. I have myself more than once witnessed the 

 effect on a tribe of an epidemic or the mysterious death of a noted 

 personage. For this reason the sites of Indian villages, even though 

 dwellings may be erected of stone, are not very permanent; they are 

 constantly changing. In the southwestern portion of the United 

 States there are other causes for change, namely, those mentioned 

 above — physical causes. A tribe settling on a flowing stream at 

 one time may have that stream buried by drifting sands and the 

 springs all masked and be compelled thereby to change their habi- 

 tation. And such changes doubtless were frequent. 



Again, we know that a people living in a central village build 

 small summer residences scattered about the country by the sites of 

 springs, where they cultivate their little crops of grain and other 

 vegetables; so that a large group of such dwellings may be ofund 

 gathered about some central pueblo — not giving evidence of a dense 

 population, but only of the habits and customs of a small body of 

 people. In such manner it may be shown that the extensive popu- 

 lation of the southwestern portion of the country, based upon the 

 evidence of the ruins so abundantly found, does not hold. A few 

 people moving here and there from spring to spring and from stream 

 to stream as pestilence and superstition and physical changes de- 

 manded would in many recurring centuries leave behind all the 

 ruins now discovered. The antiquity of man widely scattered 

 throughout this continent is firmly established on good geologic 

 evidence, and it is not necessary to resort to evidence of doubtful 

 character. 



