310 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts,, and Letters. 



III. We turn then, in the third place, to consider the archi;ect- 

 ure of the Pueblos, The name Paehlo signifies village, and we 

 shall find that village life is better represented by them, than any 

 otijier people. This life is indeed compact and coocentrated, a 

 whole village being often contained in a single house, a house 

 constituting a village. But if a numerous population and the 

 concentration of a large number of families into one locality, 

 constitutes a village, we certainly have the essential feature of 

 village life, here. 



Ordinarily the different occupations of villagers are pursued 

 separately. Either the houses will be distinct, or the people who 

 dwell in them will follow these occupations separately, with the 

 places where they labor, removed from their residence. This is 

 so in civilized countries. There is an approach to the Pueblo 

 life in' some of our cities, where the blocks of houses are so simi- 

 lar and so connected, and where the people swarm out from apart- 

 ment which are constructed exactly the same. 



Village life is less compact than city life, and we might prop- 

 erly consider that it was the life, which both the later Indians 

 and the earlier Mound Builders pursued. In that case we should 

 class the Puebloes with city architecture, and ascribe city life to 

 the Pueblo Indians. We have preferred, however, to use the 

 term village life here, and if we were to ascribe city life to any 

 people, would refer it to those races who have left their ruins to 

 the southwest; i. e. the civilized races of America. There was a 

 necessity for this concentrated life among the Puebloes, as the 

 country which they occupied would not admit of a wide spread 

 population. The mesas which stretch from valley to valley 

 throughout this whole region where the great plateau of North 

 America is found, are barren, rocky and uninhabitable. The 

 only places which admit of settlement and afford the means of 

 living to any number of people, are the valleys of the streams, 



Mr. L. H. Morgan says that New Mexico is a poor country for 

 civilized man, but quite well adapted to sedentary Indians, who 

 cultivate about one acre out of every 100,000. The region is 

 composed of valleys which intervene between the mesas, though 

 the canons here are less abrupt and are wider in extent than in 



