352 ZUXI CREATION MYTHS. [eth.ann.13 



cially the potteries, as uaturally they came to be under the less restricted, 

 more favorable conditions of life in the open plains. Everything, in 

 fact, to be learned of the round-ruin people points quite unmistakably 

 to their descent in a twofold sense from the cliff-dwelling people; and 

 it remains necessary, therefore, only to account for their change of hab- 

 itat and to set forth their supposed relationship finally to the modern 

 Zuni pueblos. 



In earlier writings, especially in a "Study of Pueblo Pottery,"' 

 where the linguistic evidence of the derivation of the Zunis from cliff- 

 dwelling peoples is to some extent discussed, I have suggested that 

 the i>rime cause of the abandonment of the cliffs by tlieir ancestry was 

 most probably increase of population to beyond the limits of available 

 building area, and consequent overcrowding in the cliffs; but later 

 researches have convinced me that, although this was no doubt a potent 

 factor in the case and ultimately, in connection with the obvious 

 advantages of life in more accessible dwelling places, led by slow 

 degrees, as the numbers and strength of the cliff' villages made it i>ossi- 

 ble, to the building of contiguous pueblos both above their cliffs on the 

 mesas and below them in the valleys, still it was by no means the only 

 or the first cause of removal from these secure strongholds. Nor is it 

 to be inferred from the evidence at hand that the cliff dwellers were 

 ever driven forth from their almost inaccessible towns, either by stress 

 of warfare or by lack of the means of subsistence, as has been so often 

 supposed. On the contrary, it is certain that long after the earliest 

 descents into the plains had been ventured, the cliffs continued to be 

 occupied, at first and for a very long period as the permanent homes 

 of remnant tribes, and later as winter resorts and places of lefiige in 

 times of danger for these latter tribes, as well as, perhaps, for their 

 kinsfolk of the plains. 



It is by this supposition only that the comparatively modern form 

 of the square and terraced x)neblos built contiguously to the latest 

 abandoned of the cliff' towns may be explained. For when the cliff 

 dwellers had become numerous enough to be able to maintain them- 

 selves to some extent out on the open jjlaius, it has been seen that they 

 did not consider their villages safe and convenient or quite right unless 

 builded strictly, in both general form and the relative arrangement 

 of parts, as had been for many generations their towns in the cliffs — did 

 not, it is reasonable to suppose, know at once how to build villages of 

 any other form. Thus we may confidently regard these round towns as 

 the earliest built by the cliff dwellers after they first left the cliffs. 



The direction in which these cavoid or cliff-form or rounded village 

 ruins may bo farthest and most abundantly traced, is, as has been said 

 before, to the southward into and through the land of Zufii as far as 

 the clifBess valleys bordering the Rito (^ueniado region in southerly 

 central New Mexico, wherein lies the inexhaustible Lake of Salt, which 



' Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1882-83. 



