MESA VEEDE PUEBLO FEWKE8. 483 



were abandoned later than the villages on the mesa. Some features, for ex- 

 ample, the superposition of walls constructed with the greatest proficiency on 

 others built in a more primitive fashion, indicate that the cliff dwellings have 

 been inhabited at two different periods. They were first abandoned and had 

 partly fallen into ruins, but were subsequently repeopled, new walls being now 

 erected on the ruins of the old. The best explanation hereof seems to be the 

 following: On the plateaus and in the valleys the Pueblo tribes obtained their 

 widest distribution and their highest development. The numerous villages, at 

 no great distance from each other, were strong enough the defy their hostile 

 neighbors. But afterwards, from causes difiicult of enunciation, a period of 

 decay set in, the number and population of the villages gradually decreased, and 

 the inhabitants were again compelled to take refuge in the remote fastnesses. 

 Here the people of the Mesa Verde finally succumbed to their enemies. The 

 memory of their last struggles is preserved by the numerous human bones found 

 in many places strewn among the ruined cliff dwellings. These human remains 

 occur in situations where it is impossible to assume that they have been interred. 



The supposition that the cliff dwellers were exterminated by their 

 enemies in their eyrie homes appears to the writer improbable; nor 

 is there ample proof that such a catastrophe as that mentioned in the 

 closing lines of the above quotation took place while they inhabited 

 the plateau. The " numerous human bones found in many places 

 strewn among the ruined cliff dwellings " admit of another explana- 

 tion. The disjointed skeletons may have been left there by "pot 

 hunters" who tore them out of their graves and sacrilegiously strewed 

 them over the floors of the rooms. The writer does not believe all 

 the aborigines of the plateau were destroyed in or near their cliff 

 dwellings or on the plateau. He holds the opinion that they mi- 

 grated in groups large or small to the plains. The Utes, their ene- 

 mies, have a tradition that they fought and killed many of the 

 ancients inhabiting the valleys at Battle Rock, near the Sleeping Ute 

 Mountain at the entrance to the McElmo Canyon. 



In a comparison of the pueblo above described with cliff dwellings 

 protected by the natural roof of a cave (pi. 12) the amount of denud- 

 ation of walls should have little weight in determining chronology, 

 for the wear resulting from rains beating on the walls is reduced to 

 a minimum in the latter case, while in the former it is very great. 

 The walls of pueblos built centuries later often suffer much more 

 erosion than cliff houses in the same length of time. 



The relative excellence of the masonry is also not a safe chronologi- 

 cal guide, for it degenerates as well as improves with successive gener- 

 ations of workmen. Poor masonry generally but not always ante- 

 dates good masonry. The houses in Hopi villages, still inhabited, are 

 not as well made as those of buildings now in ruins, in which they 

 say their ancestors lived. If legends are reliable the skill of the 

 Hopi masons has deteriorated; they have lost the ability they once 

 exercised. Thus it by no means always follows that the walls of 

 a well-made pueblo ruin are necessarily more modern than one with 



