6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 68 



sive and rich in ruins of all kinds, open air pueblos predominating. 

 It is too great a task to visit all of these ruins during one summer, 

 and the work accomplished in a single month seems small, but a 

 beginning was made in the hope that the cumulative work of many 

 summers will make it important. 



The farther we recede from the Hopi country the more obscure 

 become their clan trails, and the more difficult it is to identify the 

 localities mentioned in legends. The inhabitants of some of the 

 pueblos now in ruins between Jemez and Hopi, may have died out 

 without leaving any representatives; others, when they left their 

 village, may have gone to Zuni or elsewhere. In the country east 

 of Fire House, as far as Fort Defiance, several ruins were observed, 

 but none of them seemed to show close archeological likeness to the 

 oval Fire House, or to corroborate the traditions of the descendants 

 of the clans now absorbed into the population of Walpi. A large ruin 

 near Ganado was visited, and an imperfect sketch made of its ground 

 plan. Its walls are so much worn down by the encroachment of the 

 stream on one side, and the road on the other, that little could be 

 learned from superficial examination. Although it is not a circular 

 ruin like Fire House, yet an extended excavation might reveal some 

 interesting details of ceramic symbolism 1 which would be important. 



RUINS IN NASHLINI CANYON 



Two cliff houses of small size were visited in Nashlini Canyon 

 which appear to be those casually mentioned by Dr. Prudden, 2 but, 

 so far as known, they have not been described. This canyon is one 

 of the southern branches of the Chelly Canyon, and although not very 

 extensive shares with it many characteristics. A trip can be made 

 into it by automobile as far as the first cliff house. 



The ruin most easily visited (fig. 2) in this canyon is on a com- 

 paratively low shelf in a shallow cave, 40 feet high, a few feet above 

 the top of the talus. Like many other cliff houses it is divided into 

 two parts, called the upper and the lower, according to the level 

 they occupy. The lower is practically buried under rocks fallen 

 from the walls of the upper house. The front wall of the upper part 



1 The specialized symbolism so elaborately shown on Sikyatki pottery is 

 regarded as a local development and for that reason can not be expected else- 

 where even in the ancestral homes o-f the clans whose later members lived at 

 Hopi. 



2 The Prehistoric Ruins of the San Juan Watershed in Utah, Arizona, 

 Colorado and New Mexico. Amer. Anthropologist, N. S. Vol. 5, p. 280. 



