50 BUKEAU OF AMEEICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 54 



Hoffman/ writing of northwestern New Mexico, says: 



That the country was agriculturally good, well watered, and wooded, we have 

 proof from a mere glimpse. Since the climatic change it is not fit to support life in 

 the great majority of cases. 



He attributes the alleged change of climate to the cutting away 

 of forests by the ancient inhabitants; for this conclusion he offers no 

 proof, and with his argument all men do not agree. 



Speaking of the region about one hundred miles south of Santa Fe, 

 Morrison^ says: 



North of the Oscuras are the Chupadero Mesas, a low table-land cut up by almost 

 innumerable canons and drains, well grassed, but perfectly dry, excepting the little 

 water at Chupadero Spring, which has been developed and a tank dug to hold the 

 limited supply. Here we found one of the old Spanish ruins. The foundations of 

 the houses and the churches still remained. Here, where we now find but water suffi- 

 cient for one family, formerly lived several hundred people, in stone houses — the early 

 Spaniards and their Indian slaves [sic]. In the dry mesas to the east are still other 

 ruins. About 15 miles to the east is the Gran Quivira ruin, the largest of these Span- 

 ish relics. Fifteen miles from water of the present day lived in this town probably 

 several thousand people. . . . Walled-up cisterns, apparently for the public use, 

 were found at the crossings of streets. . . . Several square miles of ground about 

 the old town had been under cultivation, as was apparent from the vegetation. 

 . . . In all this country there is not now a drop of permanent water, such changes 

 have three hundred years made. The country described by Juan Jaramillo, one of 

 Coronado's captains, in 1542, as being "as beautiful as any he had seen in all France, 

 Spain, or Italy, and watered by many streams," is to-day utterly dry, covered, to be 

 sure, with nutritious grasses, but otherwise almost a desert. 



Of northwestern New Mexico, Cope^ wrote: 



Perhaps the most remarkable fact in connection with these ruins is the remoteness 

 of a large proportion of them from water. They occur everywhere in the bad lands 

 to a distance of twenty-five miles from any terrestrial source of supply. The climatic 

 character of the country there has either undergone material change, or the mode of 

 securing and preserving a supply of water employed by these people differed from 

 any known to us at the present time. I found no traces of cisterns, and the only 

 water holders observed were the earthenware pots buried in the ground, which did 

 not exceed eighteen inches in diameter. There is, however, no doubt that these 

 people manufactured great numbers of these narrow-necked globular vessels, whose 

 principal use must have been the holding of fluids, and chiefly of water. Neverthe- 

 less, it is scarcely conceivable that the inhabitants of the houses now so remote from 

 water could have subsisted under the present conditions. 



On the other hand Hough,* in discussing the Gila valley, farther 

 south west ward, says: 



There was probably not one village surviving in this vast area at the time of Coro- 

 nado's journey; but the ancient ruins, by their profusion, indicate that a compara- 



1 Hoffman, W. J., Report on the Chaco Cranium, ibid., p. 455-50, 1878. 



2 Morrison, Charles 0., Executive and Descriptive Report of Lieutenant Charles C. Morrison, Sixth 

 Cavalry, on the Operations of Part}' No. 2, Colorado Section, Field Season of lS77,in^nn. Rep. U. S. Geogr. 

 Expl. A Surv. W. of 100th Meridian for 1878, pp. 136-37, 1878. 



3 Cope, E. D., On the Remains of Population Observed On and Near the Eocene Plateau of North- 

 western New Mexico, in Ann.. Rep. U. S. Geogr. Expl. and Surv. W. of 100th Meridian for 1875, -p. 172, 

 1875; Final Report of same Survey, vol. vit, pp. 351-01, 1879. 



< Hough, Walter, Antiquities of the Upper Gila and Salt River Valleys in Arizona and New Mexico, 

 Bvl.. 35. Bur. Amer. Ethn., pp. 10-11, 1907. 



