456 EEPOKT UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



was agriculturally good, well watered and wooded, we have proof from a 

 mere glimpse. Since the climatic change it is not lit to support life in the 

 great majority of cases. This change has been attributed to geological 

 causes. In this I do not fully agree. In Arizona are remains of arroyos 

 about 40 feet above the present level of any streams, by which theagri- 

 cultural regions were irrigated. 



In tracing up these remains, we find them to have originated in val- 

 leys from 10 to 18 miles away, where there was an abundance of water 

 at one time, as the pebbles and rounded bowlders show. These have 

 long since dried up. In nearly every locality we find evidence of a time 

 when water was abundant. 



It is natural to suppose that a community, however large or small, 

 must iu time cut away the timber, both for building and as fuel. This 

 thoughtless or negligent dehoscation mnst eventually affect the soil and 

 annual rain-fall. Aqueous precipitation decreases year by year, springs 

 and streams begin to dry up and disappear, until there is not enough for 

 ordinary consumption. These statements are made from direct observa- 

 tion of the physical features of the cliff-dwellers' country, and the results 

 of cutting away forests and woods in other localities, and I suppose 1 will 

 be borne out in my belief that the gradual depopulation of the country 

 under discussion was due, indirectly, to their own ignorance or thought- 

 lessness, as much as it was to the influence of hostile neighbors. The 

 latter they had in any number, if we can take into consideration the 

 positions of their architectural remains, but when a country is getting 

 poorer and poorer, and the outside annoyances are greater than a posses- 

 sion of the soil is worth defending, we can very readily understand what 

 would be the final result. 



In connection with the skull there was one bone found, apparently 

 belonging to the Tetraonidce. The bone has not been further identified. 



Dr. Bessels seems to think the present Pueblos are a remnant of the 

 ancient race of Pueblos or Clift-Dwellers.* He bases his hypotheses 

 upon the similarity in architectural and ceramic remains. The crania 

 which he describes in his report present occipital flattening, but not 

 in so marked a degree as exists in the Chaco cranium. This head- 

 flattening is practised by various tribes of aborigines in the Columbia 

 Eiver region, but south of that we lose all trace of it until we reach the 

 northern portion of the country formerly included in the Mexican region. 

 It has been supposed by various prominent ethnologists and old writers 

 that there had been in remote times, a migration towards the regions 

 In various directions northward from Mexico. In time a return is traced, 

 some assuming Aztlan to have been the point of departure, while a 

 large and long- continued influx of people came from a country or king- 

 dom in the northeast. Language has left its imprint among various 

 existing races, and we find great affinity between that of the Natchez, 

 who formerly occupied the lower portion of the Mississippi Valley, and 

 the Mayas. Greater radical affinity is observable among many of the 

 tribes scattered southward through Mexico into Central America, and 

 similar customs to a remarkable degree can be traced. The head-flatten- 

 ing is also found to have existed, to more or less extent, among some 

 of the Peruvians, Caribs, Mexicans, and Natchez. In comparisons made 

 with specimens at the Army Medical Museum, we can observe more or 

 less similarity. 



Dr. Mortont figures several crania, the measurements of which I give 



*Bul. U. S. Geolog. and Geograpb. Survey of the Territories, Vol. II, 1876, pp. 47- 

 63, Pll. 23-29. 

 tCrania Americana, S. G. Morton, M. D., Philadelphia 1839. 



