XCIV BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 
sought protection against enemies and the control of lands and 
waters through aggregation in communities. It is practically 
certain that they migrated, probably under the stress of pre- 
dation by neighboring tribes, into this district, in which they 
were fain to gather for sustenance and mutual protection on 
easily defended sites near the moist or irrigable bottom lands 
on which their maize and beans and other crops were planted 
and harvested. Thus the cliff dwellers and their works illus- 
trate forcibly the dependence of primitive men on their imme- 
diate surroundings. 
The chief ruins described by Mr Mindeleff are those of 
both permanent and temporary habitations; but these were 
so constructed and disposed as to indicate a considerable range 
of industries. At the same time the structures and the associ- 
ated relics throw light on the primitive arts, and also on the 
social organization, and even on the fiducial system of the 
ancient cliff dwellers. Numerous interrelations are brought 
out in the memoir; others remain for fuller presentation as the 
researches in the pueblo country mature. 
It may be noted that Mr Mindeleff’s work tends to correct a 
misapprehension which grew up in the early days of Ameri- 
can ethnology, and which still retains some hold, i. e., that the 
cliff dwellers were one of a number of essentially distinct 
peoples. His observations show that the cliff dwellings were 
merely a type of habitation rendered necessary by surround- 
ings, and that the people who built them also established 
temporary habitations on indefensible sites located more con- 
veniently with respect to tillable lands; and they show, also, 
that the cliff type of domicile grades into the pueblo type, 
whether of rock or of adobe, as local conditions required. 
These observations, with others, demonstrate, indeed, that the 
cliff people were nothing more than Indians, sometimes not 
related among one another by consanguinity or institutional 
affinities, yet related in most of their characteristics, not only 
among each other but with the neighboring tribes, and, through 
these, with all of the aborigines of the continent. Locally, 
the ancient villages of Canyon de Chelly, whether in the 
cliffs, on the mesas, or over the bottom lands, are known as 
