NO. 6 



SMITHSONIAN EXFLORATIONS, I92O 



85 



sonry (fig. 108), the highest products of the mason's craft in pre- 

 historic North America. This evolution may have occurred on the 

 area now reserved as a national park, but was not limited to it. 



After the abandonment of Fire Temple and the desertion of build- 

 ings of the culminating epoch that followed, people of like culture 

 may have still inhabited the great pueblos at Aztec and in the Chaco. 

 But these in time also succumbed and were deserted before the arrival 

 of the white man. Their descendants were amalgamated with nomadic 

 or non-pueblo peoples and their survivors still inhabit the modern 



Fig. 102. — Bins for grinding corn in upper cave of Fire Temple 

 House. Photograph by J. A. Jeancon. 



pueblos along the Rio Grande. Both blood and culture suffered 

 changes in this mixture, and architectural features remain to espe- 

 cially indicate the modifications. The Hopi, Zuni, and modern Rio 

 Grande pueblos have no specialized buildings like Sun Temple nor 

 Fire Temple for sun or fire cults, although they have ceremonial rooms 

 where they formerly kindled the new fire annually. They no longer 

 conserve the fire in this room, but there are legends that they did so 

 in former times, pointing to a remote cultural connection between the 

 cliff dwellers and their modern survivors, the Pueblos. 



