MINDELEFF] DEVELOPMENT OF PUEBLO ARCHITECTURE 155 
not wholly completed even fifty years ago. The pueblo of Acoma was 
in this stage at the time of the conquest, and has remained so to the 
present day. As a rule each of the small villages preserved its inde- 
pendence, but in some cases they combined together to occupy together 
a high defensive site. Such combination is, however, unusual. 
4. The final stage in the development of pueblo architecture is the 
large, many-storied, or beehive village, located generally in the midst 
of broad valleys, depending on its size and population for defense, and 
usually adjacent to some stream. In this class of structure the defen- 
sive motive, in so far as it affected the choosing of the site, entirely 
disappears. The largest existing pueblo, Zuni, made this step early in 
the eighteenth century; the next largest, Taos, was probably in this 
stage in 1540, and has remained so since. In some cases ruins on foot- 
hill sites (2) have merged directly into many-storied pueblos on open 
sites (4), without passing through an intermediate stage. 
There is another step in the process of development which is now 
being taken by many pueblos, which, although an advance from the 
industrial point of view, is to the student of architecture degeneration. 
This consists of a return to single houses located in the valleys and on 
the bottom lands wherever convenience to the fields under cultivation 
required. This movement is hardly twenty years old, but is proceeding 
at a steadily accelerating pace, and its ultimate result is the complete 
destruction of pueblo architecture. Whatever we wish to know of this 
phase of Indian culture must be learned now, fer two generations hence 
probably nothing will remain of it. 
This hasty sketch will illustrate some of the difficulties that lie in 
the way of a complete classification of the ruins of the pueblo country. 
It is impossible to arrange them in chronologic sequence, because they 
are the product of different tribes who at different times came under 
the influence of analogous causes, and results were produced which 
are similar in themselves but different in time. It is believed, however, 
that the classification suggested exhibits a cultural sequence and prob- 
ably within each tribe a chronologic order. 
In this classification no mention has been made of the cliff and cave 
ruins. These structures belong partly to class 111, villages on defensive 
sites, and partly to a subclass which pertained to a certain extent to 
all the others. In the early stages of pueblo architecture the people 
lived directly on the land they tilled. Later the villages were located 
on low foothills overlooking the land, but in this stage some of the vil- 
lages had already attained considerable size and the lands overlooked 
by them were not sufficient for their needs. As a consequence some of 
the inhabitants had to work fields at a distance from the home village, 
and as a matter of convenience small temporary shelters were erected 
near by. In a still later stage, when the villages were removed to 
higher and more easily defended sites, the number of farming shelters 
must have largely increased, as suitable sites which also commanded 
large areas of good land could not often be found. At a still later 
