486 ANNUAL REPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1916. 



property. Water from the cliff dwellers' spring is still sought and 

 used in some ceremonies of the Hopi for the same reason.^ 



These and many other facts support the legends that some of the 

 Hopi clans are descended from cliff-dwelling clans or those formerly 

 living in pueblos near cliff dwellings.^ Not the least important 

 fact supporting this statement is the identity in artifacts among the 

 two peoples. 



As the only other building situated under the open sky on the 

 plateau is Sun Temple, it is natural to consider Avhether the newly 

 excavated ruin tliroAvs any light on the purpose of this mysterious 

 structure. 



In general form there is no likeness betAveen the two buildings, 

 although certain details of masonry show the handiwork of a people 

 in the same stage of culture. The Mummy Lake pueblo lacks the 

 unity and dignity of the religious building and presents evidences of 

 liaving been repeatedly patched, as if constructed at intervals by 

 different masons, often unskilled workmen. Its Avails have been shat- 

 tered and repaired. Buttresses Avere constructed by the aborigines 

 to prop it up in places before they deserted it, and, as a rule, the 

 raiasonry is poorer. In Sun Temple we find two kivas in an open 

 court separated by passageAvays from bounding walls; in the new 

 ruin domiciliary and ceremonial rooms are massed or crowded to- 

 gether, the court being situated not Avithin the main structure but 

 extramural, surrounded by a wall on the south side. 



There is a certain likeness in what has been designated the kiva of 

 the annex of Sun Temple to the small kivas of the pueblo, but the 

 arrangement and form of rooms about them are different. The 

 ventilation of the Sun Temple kivas was accomplished in a different 

 way. The secular rooms are larger, doorAvays higher and broader in 

 the ruin excavated at Mummy Lake than in Sun Temple. 



The writer desired to find decisiA^e evidences in his field Avork at 

 Mumm}'' Lake supporting or denying that the name, Sun Temple, 

 was Avell given to the mysterious ruin opposite Cliff Palace. In that 

 hope he was disappointed, but not wholly. The work aboA-e briefly 

 outlined confirms his belief that Sun Temple and Far View House 

 of the Mummy Lake group of buildings were constructed by an 



1 On a visit to Betatakin a large cliff house of the Navaho Monununt, in northern 

 Arizona, a few years ago, a Hopi courier, who was on a pilgrimage there to obtain water 

 from an ancestral spring, told the writer, in sight of the ruin, that the ancestors of the 

 Snake people once lived there. 



If the ancestors of the largest clan in AA'alpi once inhabited the cliff houses of the 

 Navaho Monument, and if the cliff dwellers of the San Juan had a culture identical with 

 them, can it reasonably be doubted that cliff dwellers transmitted their blood and culture 

 to pueblos, where they still survive? 



" A discussion of all the causes of the desertion of the Mesa Verde villages, cliff dwell- 

 ings or pueblos would take me too far afield for this article. Little can be added to the able 

 remarks by Dr. Prudden in his analysis of the influence of climatic changes. See loc. cit, 



