288 
This gave rise both to dwellings of a more permanent character 
and to the need of storage of the crops, meager though they must 
have been at first (Fig. 3). As the food supply increased, the 
population was augmented, for people of a roving nature realizing 
the benison that corn proved to be, settled down to farm life like 
the others. Later on, rude pottery was invented, houses were of 
the pit-type; slab-houses with pole-and-brush roofs were per- 
fected and became grouped in villages; the bow gradually super- 
seded the throwing-stick. By this time these “ Basket-makers ” 
had spread throughout the San Juan drainage of Utah, Colorado, 
Arizona, and New Mexico, and to.the Little Colorado watershed 
in Arizona. Progress continued through the generations. The 
food quest no longer meant such a precarious existence, for Chief 
Maize had led the way. Later came cotton; dwellings emerged 
from the ground, became rectangular and were grouped more 
closely—the Pueblos, as we know them, originated in this way. 
Remains showing this latest advance are found in parts of the Rio 
Grande, Little Colorado, and upper Gila rivers, and recent investi- 
gation indicates that it extended into western Texas (Fig. 4). 
The people branched out more and more as the centuries rolled on, 
and the women found time to decorate their pottery in black-and- 
white and in beautiful corrugated patterns. Then there was 
greater concentration of population in certain areas, greater archi- 
tectural and ceramic achievement. 
Let this suffice to show the influence of corn on a lowly people 
from the time of its introduction until the Spaniards made their 
appearance in the Southwest near the middle of the 16th century. 
Before they knew corn they were probably not unlike the Indians 
of the Nevada deserts, existing on anything they found edible, 
huddling from winter gales beneath brush structures unworthy the 
name of dwellings, producing little or nothing in the way of art. 
But the Basket-makers, once familiar with corn, were augmented 
by newcomers until in course of time a true Pueblo culture was 
developed, characterized by elaborate rites, ceremonies, religious 
and fraternal organizations, a mythology of high ingenuity, agri- 
culture with irrigation requiring engineering skill, houses and 
ceremonial chambers sometimes of daring construction, and a- 
social system of marvelous intricacy and tribal beneficence. All 
