544 EXPEDITION TO ARIZONA IN 1895 [ETH. ANN. 17 
plain (which had undoubtedly been cultivated in ancient times) is con- 
cerned, the position of some of them may be regarded good for that 
purpose, but certainly not so commanding as that of the hill or mesa 
above, where well-marked ruins still exist. 
The position of the cavate dwellings is a disadvantageous one to 
reach any cultivated fields if defenders were necessary. When the 
Tusayan Indian today moves to his kis? or summer brush house shelter 
he practically camps in his corn or near it, in easy reach to drive away 
crows, or build wind-breaks to shelter the tender sprouts; but to go to 
their cornfields the inhabitants of the cavate dwellings I have described 
were forced to cross a river before the farm was reached. That these 
cavate dwellings were lookouts none can deny, but I incline to a belief 
that this does not tell the whole story if we limit them to such use. 
It is not wholly clear to me that they were not likewise an asylum 
for refuge, possibly not inhabited continuously, but a very welcome 
retreat when the agriculturist was sorely pressed by enemies. TI ol- 
lowing the analogy of a Hopi custom of building temporary booths 
near their fields, may we not suppose that the former inhabitants of 
Verde valley may have erected similar shelters in their cornfields 
during summer months, retiring to the cavate dwellings and the mesa 
tops in winter? All available evidence would indicate that the cavate 
dwellings were permanent habitations.! 
There are several square ruins on top of the mesa above the cavate 
dwellings. The walls of these were massive, but they are now very 
much broken down, and the adobe plastering is so eroded from the 
masonry that I regard them of considerable antiquity. They do not 
differ from other similar ruins, so common elsewhere in New Mexico 
and Arizona, and are identical with others in the Verde region. I 
visited several of these ruins, but made no excavations in them, nor 
added any new data to our knowledge of this type of aboriginal build- 
ings. The pottery picked up on the surface resembles that of the ruins 
of the Little Colorado and Gila. 
The dwellings which I have mentioned above are said” to be dupli- 
cated at many other points in the watershed of the Verde, and many 
undescribed ruins of this nature were reported to me by ranchmen. I 
do not regard them as older than the adjacent ruins on the mesa above 
or the plains below them, much less as productions of people of different 
stages of culture, for everything about them suggests contemporaneous 
occupancy. 
From what little I saw of the village sites on the Verde I believe 
that Mindeleff is correct in considering that these ruins represent a 
1See Mindeleff, Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, American Anthropologist, April, 1895. The sug- 
gestion that cliff outlooks were farming shelters in some instances is doubtless true, but I should 
hesitate giving this use a predominance over outlooks for security. In times of danger, naturally 
the agriculturist seeks a high or commanding position for a wide outlook; but to watch his crops he 
must camp among them. 
2Ancient Dwellings of the Rio Verde Valley, Dr E. A. Mearns; Popular Science Monthly, vol. 
xxvul. Mindeleff, Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley; Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau 
of Ethnology. 
