PUEBLO ART. 



Distribution. — The ancient Pueblo peoples dwelt in aland of canons 

 and high plateaus. They had their greatest development in the valley 

 of the Eio Colorado, where they delighted to haunt the shadows of the 

 deepest gorges and build their dwellings along the loftiest cliffs. The 

 limits of their territory are still in a measure undefined. We discover 

 remnants of their arts in the neighboring valleys of Great Salt Lake, 

 the Arkansas, and the Rio Grande, and southward we can trace them 

 beyond the Rio Gila into the table-lands of Chihuahua and Souora. 



Thus outlined, we have an area of more thau one hundred thousand 

 square miles, which has at times more or less remote been occupied by 

 tribes of town building and pottery-making Indians. 



Character. — High and desert like as this land is, it has borne a 

 noble part in fostering and maturing a culture of its own — a culture 

 born of unusual needs, shaped by exceptional environment, and limited 

 by the capacities of a peculiar people. Cliff houses and cavate dwell- 

 ings are not new to architecture, and pottery resembling the Pueblo 

 ware in many respects may be found wherever man has developed a 

 corresponding degree of technical'skill ; yet there is an individuality in 

 these Pueblo remains that separates them distinctly from all others and 

 lends a keen pleasure to their investigation. 



Treatment. — The study of prehistoric art leads inevitably to in- 

 quiries into the origin of races. Solutions of these questions have gen- 

 erally been sought through migrations, and these have been traced in 

 a great measure by analogies in archajologic remains; but in such inves- 

 tigation one important factor has been overlooked, namely, the laws 

 that govern migrations of races do not regulate the distribution of arts. 

 The pathways do not correspond, but very often conflict. The arts mi- 

 grate in ways of their own. They pass from place to place and from 

 people to people by a process of acculturation, so that peoples of unlike 

 origin practice like arts, while those of like origin are found practicing 

 unlike arts. The threads of the story are thus so entangled that we 

 find it impossible to trace them backward to their beginnings. 



For the present, therefore, I do not propose to study the arts of this 

 province with the expectation that they will furnish a key to the origin 

 of the peoples, or to the birthplace of their arts, but I shall treat them 

 with reference rather to their bearing upon the processes by which cul- 

 ture has been achieved and the stages through which it has passed, 

 keeping always in mind that a first requisite in this work is a system- 

 atic and detailed study of the material to be employed. 

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