MINDELEFF] DISTRIBUTION OF CANYON RUINS 157 
IV. Cliff outlooks and farming shelters occupy sites 2, 6, 7,8, 9, 11, 14, 18, 19, 21, 22, 
93, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 33, 35, 38, 39, 42, 43, 45, 46, 49, 50, 53, 54, 56, 57, G4, 63, 65, 
68, 69, and 70; in all, thirty-seven, or more than half. Some of these sites 
are now marked only by Navahg remains, and possibly a small percentage of 
them are of Navaho making, but the sites which are clearly and unmistakably 
Nayaho are not mentioned here. Of all the sites only one (No. 7) is actually 
inaccessible without artificial aid. 
The absence of any attempt to improve the natural advantages of the 
sites is remarkable. No expedients were employed to make access 
either easier or more difficult, except that here and there series of 
hand and foot holes have been pecked in the rock. Steps, either con- 
structed of masonry or cut in the rock, such as those found in the 
Mancos canyon and the Mesa Verde region, are never seen here. The 
cavities in which the ruins occur are always natural; they are never 
enlarged or curtailed or altered in the slightest degree, and very rarely 
is the cavity itself treated as a room, although there are some excellent 
sites for such treatment. The back wall of a cove is often the back 
wall of a village, but aside from this the natural advantages of the sites 
were seldom realized. 
The settlements were always located with reference to the canyon 
bottom, and access was never had from above, notwithstanding that in 
some cases access from above was easier than from below. Yet the 
inhabitants must necessarily have obtained their supply of firewood 
from above, as the quantity in the canyons, especially in that part 
where most of the ruins occur, is very limited. The Navaho throw the 
wood over the cliffs, afterward gathering up the fragments below and 
carrying them on their backs to their hogans at various points on the 
canyon bottom. The crash of falling logs, dropped or pushed over the 
edge of a cliff, sometimes 400 or 500 feet high, is not an infrequent sound 
in the canyon, and is at first very puzzling to the visitor. 
The canyon walls are so nearly vertical, or rather so large a propor- 
tion is vertical, that egress or ingress, except at the mouth of the can- 
yon, isa matter of great difficulty. Near the junction of Monument 
canyon, 13 miles above the mouth of De Chelly, there is a practicable 
horse trail ascending a narrow gorge to the southeast. The Navaho 
callit the Bat trail, on account of its difficulties. Another horse trail 
crosses Del Muerto some 8 or 10 miles above its mouth. With these 
exceptions there is no point where a horse can get into the canyons or 
out of them, but there are dozens of places where an active man, accus- 
tomed to it, can scale the walls by the aid of foot-hoies which have 
been pecked in the rock at the most difficult places. These foot trails 
are in constant use by the Navaho, who ascend and descend by them 
with apparent ease, but it is doubtful whether a white man could be 
induced to climb them, except perhaps under the stress of necessity. 
There are even some trails over which sheep and goats are driven in 
and out of the canyon, but anyone who had not seen the flocks actually 
passing over the rocks would declare such a feat impossible. Some of 
these trails at least are of Navaho origin. Whether any of them were 
