ARCHEOLOGICAL FIELD WORK IN ARIZONA. 851 



mixture with some of the clans, through whom, no doubt, they received 

 sheep and their first lessons in pecudiculture." 



The original Hopi clans, the Snake and Bear, forming the nucleus 

 of the settlement, traditionall}^ came to Tusayan from the northwest 

 and southwest at an early date, possibly as early as the fourteenth 

 century. This marks the end of the wanderings of those clans, the 

 location having many permanent springs and the stream beds giving 

 fair opportunity for agriculture. It is not the country that civilized 

 man would choose for a habitation, but to the Indian its isolation gave 

 safety and the desert gave subsistance to those who knew the field craft 

 for the desert. 



There can scarcely be more than conjecture as to the origin of these 

 early clans. From the language they were of the great Uto-Aztecan 

 stock, which forms at this day the largest linguistic family on the 

 Western Hemisphere. The history of this family is comprised in less 

 than four centuries since the conquest, and tradition in Mexico, where 

 the tribes reached their greatest efflorescence, places their migration 

 from the north at two centuries before the conquest. Cubas places 

 the first ''king" at 1352. 



There is little doubt that before the date of the entrance of the 

 Aztecs into Mexico the Pueblo region possessed its characteristic cul- 

 ture. Whether this culture was environmental (Brinton) or an outer 

 wave from the great ancient cultures of Central America, or both, is 

 an open question. 



The Shoshoneans, like the Navaho, came in contact and union with 

 pueblo tribes at one of the early centers of population, presumably in 

 southeastern Utah or northern New Mexico. Here they receiv^ed a 

 modifying element assimilating them to pueblo culture. It might not 

 be going too far to say that Nahuatl incursions into Mexico from the 

 north were filtered through the Pueblo region; indeed it seems proba- 

 ble. The Hopi, then in their beginnings, may be regarded as a product 

 of pueblo environment and culture upon hunting tribes of Shoshoneans 

 whose virility fitted them to move about in the Pueblo region, pre- 

 serving their organization and language. If it be true that the early 

 tribes did not possess corn, but depended upon the chase, the most 

 important, in fact a well-nigh essential, need was supplied b}^ this food 

 of foods, and the modifying effect was like that of the acquisition of 

 sheep by the Navaho. Contact of the Hopi with cliff-dwelling tribes 

 of Pueblo Indians is undoubted; the traditions hint at it, and the dis- 

 coveries of George H. Pepper in northern New Mexico reveal basket- 

 making tribes using symbolism familiar among the Hopi.^ In truth 



« F. W. Hodge. The early Navajo and Apache, American Anthropologist, VIII, 

 1895, p. 223. 



^^The Ancient Basket-Makers of Southeastern Utah, G. H. Pepper, Journal of the 

 American Museum of Natural History, New York, II, Supplement, April, 1902. 



