4 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 56 



the species of birds and mammals which occur abundantly are 

 altogether too small and too difficult to obtain with crude weapons 

 to be useful as food. Among the birds m this class may be men- 

 tioned nuthatches, hummingbirds, goldfinches, and sparrows. Robins 

 and longcrested jays are also common, but a single meal for a fair- 

 sized clan would require all that are to be found in any one canyon. 

 Pinon and Woodhouse's jays and mourning doves are abundant, 

 probably as numerous now as they ever were, but not easy to secure 

 even with modern weapons, and may be almost ignored as food 

 birds for })rimitive people. Hawks, owls, and eagles are all too 

 rare and too hard to obtain to be considered. During the autumn 

 grouse and turkeys were probably obtainable m considerable numbers, 

 and, with the ducks and other water birds along the river, constituted 

 the only really important food bu-ds of the region. 



In case of the mammals, not infrequently a deer, elk, bear, or 

 mountain sheep must have been obtained. With hundreds of people 

 living on the mesas and in neighboring canyons, all constantly seeking 

 to catch or kill these animals for food, we can not suppose their 

 existence in much greater numbers than at present, when, though 

 hunted with more effective weapons, they surely are not here hunted 

 as persistently or by very many people. The same is true of the 

 rabbits and squirrels. While they must have had constantly a 

 small supply of such game, when the number of mouths awaiting it 

 is considered, the meat diet of these ancient people was surely very 

 limited. The other mammals were either too small or too rare 

 to add materially to the food supply. 



This region is almost undisturbed by civilization and therefore 

 affords an excellent field for the naturalist as well as for the study 

 of ethnozoology. There seems no good reason for supposing any 

 great change in the fauna of the locality since the period of its occu- 

 pancy by the people who constructed the pueblos and other dwellings 

 long ago abandoned. Changes in faunas usually progress slowly, 

 notwithstanding such conspicuous examples of rapid extermination 

 or of introduction of species as are afforded by the bison, the passenger 

 pigeon, and the English sparrow in America. Such examples, due 

 to the superior facilities for destruction or introduction developed 

 by the white race, are abnormal. It is quite possible that a few 

 species besides elk and mountain sheep have disappeared from the 

 vicinity within the period of human occupancy and that some others 

 have extended theii- range into this area, though there is no evidence 

 of such changes. The topography is certainly virtually the same 

 as it has been for a very long period. If there has been since the 

 beguining of human occupancy a general desiccation of the country 

 sufficient to reduce the possibilities in the line of agriculture, it 

 would not necessarily have produced much, if any, change in the 



