646 LOCALIZATION OF TUSAYAN CLANS [ETH. ANN. 19 
be deemed good cause for the abandonment of a village situated near 
it, or the occurrence of several years of drought in succession would 
be construed as a mark of disfavor of the gods, and would be followed 
by a movement of the people from the village. Even a series of bad 
dreams which might be inflicted on some prominent medicine-man by 
overindulgence in certain articles of food would be regarded as omens 
indicating a necessity fora change of location. Such instances are 
not unknown. Toothache also is dreaded for mythic reasons, and is 
construed asa sign of disfavor of the gods; so that many a village 
has been abandoned simply because some prominent medicine-man 
was in need of the services of a dentist. Many other reasons might 
be stated, but these will suffice to show upon what slight and often 
trivial grounds great villages of stone houses, the result of much labor 
and the picture of permanence, are sometimes abandoned in a day. 
But while such movements en masse are not unknown, they have 
been comparatively rare. The main movement of the people, which 
was a constant one, was accomplished through the custom of using out- 
lying farming settlements. Such settlements were commonly single 
houses, but where the conditions permitted and the area of cultivable 
land justified it, the houses were grouped into villages. These were 
always located on or immediately adjacent to the land which was worked, 
and in some instances attained considerable size, but as a rule they were 
small. The practice was universal throughout the length and breadth 
of the pueblo country, and the farming shelters took various forms as 
the immediate topographic environment dictated. Even the cliff ruins 
are believed to be farm shelters of a type due to peculiar physical con- 
ditions, but as this idea has been exploited elsewhere’ by the writer it 
need not be developed here. 
The occupancy of farm shelters, whether individual rooms or small 
villages, was necessarily more or less temporary in character, and as 
the population moyed onward the places would be finally and completely 
abandoned. It would often be difficult to obtain from the study of the 
ground-plan of a ruin, generally all that is left of it, any idea of the 
people who inhabited it and of the conditions under which they lived ; 
but there is another element by the aid of which the length of time 
during which the village was inhabited and of the conditions under 
which such oceupancy continued may often be approximated. This is 
the localization of clans, to which allusion has been made. 
The constant movement of the tribe, due to the use of outlying farm- 
ing settlements, which has been sketched above, has its analogue within 
each village, where there is an equally constant moyement from house 
to house and from row to row. The clans which inhabit a village are 
combined into larger units or groups known as phratries: locally such 
1The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, in the Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American 
Ethnology. 
