cusHiNQ] ZUNI CLIFF-DWELLING TESTIMONY. 361 



other examples of diversely derived liouse-uames iu this composite 

 phraseology might be added, but one more must suffice. The ZuQi 

 name for a ladder is ^hh'tsDom; apparently from '■hlcire. slats {•hJima, 

 slat), and tsiluloiia, hair, fiber, or osier, entwined or twisted in. This 

 primary meaning of the name would indicate that before the ladder of 

 poles and slats was used, rope ladders were commonly iu vogue, and if 

 so, would point unmistakably to the cliffs as the place of its origin ; for 

 many of the clifif dwellings can not now be reached save by means of 

 ropes or rope ladders. Yet, although the name for a stairway (or steps 

 even of stone or adobe) miglit naturally, one would suppose, have been 

 derived from that of a ladder (if ladders were used before stairs, or 

 vice versa if the reverse was the case), nevertheless it has a totally 

 independent etymology, for it is iyeclikce, from iJcoiyachi, forked log or 

 crotch-log, and yehchiwe, walking or footing notched ; that is, not(-hed 

 step-log or crotch. And this it would seem points as unmistakably 

 to such use of forked and notched step logs or crotch-logs as I have 

 attributed to the rancheria builders, as does the "ropeandslat" ladder- 

 name to the use of the very different climbing device I have attributed 

 to the cliff dwellers. 



It is probable that when the round-town builders had peopled the trail 

 of salt as far from the northward as to the region of Zuiii and beyond, 

 the absence of very deep canyons, containing rock-sheltered nooks suffi- 

 ciently large and numerous to enable them to find adequate accommo- 

 dation for cliff villages, gradually led them to abandon all resort to the 

 cliffs for protection — made them at last no longer clifif dwellers, even 

 temporarily, but true Pueblos, or town dwellers of the valleys and plains. 



But other intiuences than those of merely natural or physical envi- 

 ronment were required to change their mode of building, and corre- 

 spondingly, to some extent, their institutions and modes of life from 

 those of round-town builders to those of square-town builders, such as 

 in greater part they were at the time of the Spanish discoveries. Iu 

 the myths themselves may be found a clew as to what these influences 

 were in that which is told of the coming together of the '' People of 

 the Midmost" and these " Dwellers-in-the-towns-builded-round." For 

 there is evidence in abundance also of other kind, and not a little of it 

 of striking force aud interest, that this coming together was itself the 

 chief cause of the changes referred to. It has been seen that the west- 

 ern branch of the Zuni ancestry (who were these " People of the Mid- 

 most") were almost from the beginning dwellers in square structures; 

 that their village clusters, even when several of their dwelling places ■ 

 happened to be built together, were, as shown by their remains wherever 

 found, built i^recisely ou the plans of single-house structures — that is, 

 they were simple extensions, mostly rectilinear, of these single houses 

 themselves. 



^ow peoples like those of the round towns, no less than primitive 

 peoples generally, conceive of everything made, whether structure, 



