OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. 255 



possession of a single cereal, Indian corn ; of one textile plant, cotton ; and upon 

 one principal mechanic art, that of making sun-dried brick. X)ut of these, in due 

 time, came the cultivation of irrigated garden-beds, the improved costume, and the 

 house of more than one story high ; first, with walls of sun-dried brick, then of 

 slate and rubble-stone, the latter cemented with mud-mortar ; and, finally, of cut 

 stone laid with mortar probably without lime. Of the last class were the pueblo houses 

 in Yucatan, now in ruins. When the transformation from fish and game to agri- 

 cultural subsistence, from temporary lodges to permanent villages, and from houses 

 of a single story constructed with perishable materials, to houses of more than one 

 story constructed with durable materials, had become completed, the change in this, 

 as well as in other respects, was very great intrinsically. It resulted in a degree of 

 civilization that appeared to separate the Village Indians genetically from the 

 remaining nations, until it was afterwards found that the Northern Indians pre- 

 sented all the intermediate shades of condition between the Village Indians proper 

 and the Roving nations. The differences, it was seen, could be rationally explained 

 as an advance by a portion of the same original family from a lower to a higher 

 condition of life, since it was not accompanied with any radical change of domestic 

 institutions. And yet the degree of this civilization is sufficiently remarkable to 

 demand special evidence to establish the right of the Village Indians to admission 

 into the Ganowanian family. If those in New Mexico could be shown to be of 

 Ganowanian lineage, it would prepare the way for the like admission of the Village 

 Indians of Mexico, and of Central and South America. 



Our knowledge of the existence, and, to some extent, of the condition of the 

 Village Indians of New Mexico commences within twenty years after the conquest 

 of Mexico by Cortes, and has been substantially continuous down to the present 

 time. It opens with the extravagant relation of Friar Marco de Ne?a " touching 

 his discovery of the Kingdom of Cevola," made in 1539, which led to the expedi- 

 tion of Coronado in 1540-1542, for the conquest of this "kingdom," to use the 

 common term employed by the Spanish writers of that epoch to describe a cluster 

 of Pueblo Houses. Of the several places visited by Coronado, Acoma, and perhaps 

 Zuni, both existing pueblos, have been identified ; but the " Seven Cities" still 

 remain unknown. There are seven or eight remarkable Pueblo Houses of stone, 

 now in ruins, on the canon of the Rio de Chaco, a tributary of the San Juan, which, 

 in location and character, answer the nearest to the " Seven Cities," of any existing 

 or ruined Pueblos in New Mexico. They are situated about one hundred and 

 forty miles northwest of Sante Fe. This expedition established the existence of 

 Village Indians upon the Rio Grande, the Gila, and the Colorado; of their 

 dependence upon agriculture for subsistence ; and that they lived in houses of more 

 than one story high, constructed of some kind of stone masonry, or adobe brick, 

 Coronado thus speaks, in his relation of the villages he visited : " It remaineth now 

 to testify, your honor, of the seven cities, and of the kingdoms and provinces 

 whereof the father provincial made report to your lordship ; and, to be brief, I can 

 assure you that he spoke the truth in nothing that he reported ; but all was qxiite 

 the contrary, saving only the names of the cities and great houses of stone ; for 

 although they be not wrought with turqueses, not with lime, nor bricks, yet they 



