54 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 56 



FISHES 



^Most of the lateral canyons of the region are dry or nearly dry 

 through most of the year, and hence contain no fishes. The Rio 

 Grande is known to contain fishes in some portions of its course. 



The Rito de los Frijoles is at present a small stream, the waters of 

 which in places sink entirely beneath the surface of the sand, leaving 

 not even pools, and the water all along becomes very shallow at 

 times. Limited observations make final conclusions unsafe, but 

 so far as they go they seem to indicate that the water flowing in the 

 creek is dependent largely on precipitation in the mountains at the 

 head of the canyon. When frequent rains were occurring in the 

 lower part of the valley the stream reached its lowest point, but 

 during an exceedingly dry period at our camp, when it was raining 

 daily in the mountains the stream kept an even flow. The absence of 

 deep pools in which fish could survive an extended drouth seems 

 sufficient to account for their absence. In the glaciated mountains 

 farther north, the absence of fish is usually noted in streams whose 

 courses present cataracts too high for the fishes to pass over in their 

 upstream progression after the retreat of the glaciers. Two vertical 

 falls near the mouth of this canyon, one of 60 feet, the other of 90 feet, 

 would effectually block the attempts of fish to pass upstream from 

 the Rio Grande. Hence any fish which may have existed in recent 

 times must have been there before the falls were formed or have 

 been introduced in some unusual way. The transportation of eggs 

 attached to the feet of birds for the short distance over the falls 

 would not be at all impossible, though such a method of dispersion 

 is not so likely to occur as in case of fresh-water mollusks, etc. It is 

 also possible that fish may at one time have been placed in this 

 creek by former inhabitants, either the ancient dwellers who built 

 the abandoned structures or by the Mexican outlaws who made the 

 canyon their rendezvous for a century or so. At any rate, trout were 

 found in the stream from 20 to 30 years ago, according to information 

 gleaned from several sources. Bandelier, in The Delight Makers, 

 causes one of the native boys who lived in the canyon during its 

 early occupancy, to catch a trout. This would scarcely be con 

 clusive if it were not that in his formal report he refers to the stream 

 as a &quot; gushing brook, enlivened by trout.&quot; * Dr. Charles F. Lummis, 

 of Los Angeles, says he caught trout from the stream in 1891, and 

 that there were certainly many pools then which do not exist now. 

 Judge Abbott says he has heard the same from another visitor to the 

 canyon a quarter of a century ago. 



1 Bandelier, A. F., The Delight Makers, New York, 1890, p. 5. Final Report of Investigations Among 

 the Indians of the Southwestern United States, Carried on Mainly in the Years from 1880 to 1885, Part II, 

 Papers of the Archseological Institute of America, American Series, iv, p. 139, 1892. 



