192 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
and there. “These houses, each of which consists of but two or three small 
chambers, are built of stone, and stand but a few feet above the bottom of 
the canon. They are narrow, and not very high, as the cavity in the rock 
is not very deep. Corrals for some kind of domestic animals are found by 
the side of these houses in the same hollows in the rock. This is proved 
by a mass of excrement, about a foot in depth, still there, whether of the 
goat or sheep cannot be stated, but this fact shows that they were inhab- 
ited subsequent to the period of European discovery, although they may 
have been built and used before. The canon, at this point, is from three 
hundred to five hundred feet wide. 
I wish to call attention again to the San Juan district, to its numerous 
ruins, and to its importance as an early seat of Village Indian life. These 
ruins and those of a similar character in the valley of the Chaco, together 
with numerous remains of structures of sandstone, of cobblestone, and 
adobe in the San Juan Valley, in the Pine River Valley, in the La Plata 
Valley, in the Animas River Valley, in the Montezuma Valley, on the 
Hovenweep, and on the Rio Dolores, suggest the probability that the remark- 
able area within the drainage of the San Juan River and its tributaries has 
held a prominent place in the first and most ancient development of Village 
Indian life in America. he evidence of Indian occupation and cultivation 
throughout the greater part of this area is sufficient to suggest the hypoth- 
esis that the Indian here first attained to the condition of the Middle Status 
of barbarism, and sent forth the migrating bands who carried this advanced 
culture to the Mississippi Valley, to Mexico, and Central America, and not 
unlikely to South America as well. 
Indian migrations are gradual outflows from an overstocked area, fol- 
lowed by organization into independent tribes, and continuing through cen- 
turies of time, until the ethnic life of each tribe is expended, or a successful 
establishment is finally gained in a new and perhaps far distant land. They 
planted gardens and constructed houses as they advanced from district to 
district, and removed as circumstances prompted a change of location. 
Since the cultivation of maize and plants precedes or is synchronous 
with this stage of development, it leads to the supposition that maize must 
have been indigenous in this region, and that it was here first brought under 
