THE TUSAYAN RITUAL. 685 



consider these peculiarities of the environment. In physical features 

 this province is a part of the great arid zone of the Kocky Mountains, to 

 which in former times was given the name of Great American Desert. 

 It lies in the northeastern part of Arizona, about 90 miles from the 

 nearest village of white men on the south and about the same distance 

 east of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. On all sides it is isolated 

 by dry deserts, a dreary extent of mountains, mesas, and arid plains 

 about G,000 feet above the level of the sea. No permanent streams 

 of water refresh these parched canyons or fields, and the surroundings 

 of this isolated tribe, organic and inorganic, belong to those character- 

 istic of desert environment. The rains are limited in quantity — liable 

 to fail at planting times, although later in the summer pouring down 

 in copious torrents, that fill the depression by which the water is 

 rapidly carried away from the thirsty fields. Springs of permanent 

 water are small and weak, and when abundant, poor and hardly pota- 

 ble. In this unpromising land a few less than 2,000 Indians strwe to 

 maintain themselves by agriculture from a barren sandy soil which 

 a white farmer would despise. 



Nor is the unremunerative soil the only hostile environment with 

 which this industrious race of aboriginal farmers has had to contend. 

 Incoming marauders, in the form of nomadic enemies, have from pre- 

 historic times harassed them, preyed on their farms, and forced them 

 to adopt inaccessible mesa tops, high above their fields, for protection. 

 Perched on these rocky eminences they have erected seven stone vil- 

 lages in so clever a way that they seem to be a part of the cliffs. Ani- 

 mals in desert surroundings as a protective device have taken on the 

 color of the soil, but these men have built their towns in the cliffs so 

 deftly that they seem to be parts of the mesas themselves. They have 

 succeeded well in this protective device, due to environment, for at a 

 distance the pueblos are indistinguishable from the cliffs on which they 

 stand. 



I need not dwell on the forbidding aspect of the mesa tops on which 

 these villages are built. Not a sprig of verdure, drop of water, or frag- 

 ment of fuel is to be found upon them. If there is one physical feature 

 which may be said to characterize Tusayan, it is the paucity of water, 

 or rather its unequal distribution in different seasons of the year. 



The character of animal life is also significant, for it is of such a 

 nature as to exert a profound influence. A race dependent on animal 

 food alone would have starved for game. The great ruminants, as the 

 bison, which more than any other animal influenced the culture of the 

 Indians of the great plains of the Mississippi, never visited this region. 

 No domesticated animals made pastoral culture possible. There were 

 small rodents, many rabbits and hares, and a scanty supply of antelope 

 in distant mountains. Unpromising as was the soil for agriculture, the 

 resources of the hunter were much less, and in this region man was 

 forced to become an agriculturist. 



