MINDELEFF] DEVELOPMENT OF PUEBLO ARCHITECTURE 1195 
Although degeneration in arts is common enough, a peculiar condi- 
tion prevailed in the pueblo region. So far as the architecture was 
concerned war and a hostile human environment produced not degen- 
eration but development. This came about partly by reason of the 
peculiarities of the country, and partly through the methods of war. 
The term war is rather a misnomer in this connection, as it does not 
express the idea. The result was not brought about by armed bodies 
of men animated by hostile intentions or bent on extermination, 
although forays of this kind are too common in later pueblo history, 
but rather by predatory bands, bent on robbery and not indisposed to 
incidental killing. The pueblos, with their fixed habitations and their 
stores of food, were the natural prey of such bands, and they suffered, 
just as did, at a later period, the Mexican settlements on the Rio Grande, 
with their immense flocks of sheep. It was constant annoyance and 
danger, rather than war and pitched battles. 
The pueblo country is exceptionally rich in building material suited 
to the knowledge and capacity of the pueblo builders. Had suitable 
material been less abundant, military knowledge would have developed 
and defensive structures would have been erected; but as such material 
could be obtained everywhere, and there was no lack of sites, almost 
if not quite equal to those occupied at any given time, the easiest and 
most natural thing to do was to move. Owing to the nature of the 
hostile pressure, such movements were generally gradual, not en masse; 
although there is no doubt that movements of the latter kind have 
sometimes taken place. 
These conclusions are not based on a study of the ruins in Canyon de 
Chelly alone, which illustrate only one phase of the subject, but of all the 
pueblo remains, or rather of the remains so far as they are now known. 
They imply a rather sparsely settled country, occupied by a compara- 
tively small number of tribes and subtribes, moving from place to place 
under the influence of various motives, some of which we know, others 
we can only surmise. It was a slow but practically constant migratory 
movement with no definite end or direction in view. The course of 
this moyement in a geographical way does not as yet reveal a prepon- 
derance in any one direction; tribes and subtribes moved from east to 
west and from west to east, from north to south and from south to north, 
and many were irregular in their course, but the movements, so far as 
they can now be discerned, were all within a circumscribed area. 
There is no evidence of any movement from without into the pueblo 
group, unless the close relation of the Hopi (Moki) language to the 
other Shoshonean dialects be such evidence, and none of a movement 
from within this area out of it, although such movements must have 
taken place, at least in the early history of the regign. It must be 
borne in mind in this discussion that while we can assign approximate 
boundaries to the ancient pueblo region on the north, east, and west, 
no limit can as yet be fixed on the south. The arid country southward 
of Gila river and northward of the Mexican boundary would bea great 
