356 ANCIENT POPULATION IN 



prevented me from making a detailed examination of them. In the opposite 

 direction I observed a similar ruin on an outlying hill adjacent to the south- 

 ern portion of the southern hog-back. This one is of larger size than any 

 of the others, but I was unable to visit it. 



The position of these buildings is susceptible of the same explanation 

 as that of the still inhabited Moqui villages of Arizona, so interestingly de- 

 scribed by Lieutenant Ives in his report on Ins survey of the Rio Colorado 

 of the West, and of the route from its canon to Santa Fe. They were 

 doubtless perched on these high eminences for purposes of defense, and 

 they were conveniently located near a perennial stream, which permitted 

 them to carry on a system of agriculture no doubt similar to that now prac- 

 ticed by the Moquis. The inhabitants of Cristone felt, however, one disad- 

 vantage not known to the Moquis ; they were, so far as present indications 

 go, without water on their elevated rocks, but were dependent for their 

 supply on the Grallinas creek I found no indication of cisterns which 

 should furnish such supply in time of siege, although they doubtless could 

 depend for a considerable length of time on rain-water, which they caught 

 and preserved in the many vessels of pottery whose fragments are now so 

 numerous about the ruins. 



At this point the bluffs of the Eocene bad-lands are from nine to ten 

 miles from the Grallinas creek. Here also the slopes are in places covered 

 with broken pottery, and on the summits of some of the less elevated buttes 

 circular walls indicate the former existence of buildings similar to those 

 crowning the conical hills along the creek. The latter contains the nearest 

 water to these ruins. In other localities ruined stone buildings occupy the 

 flat summits of mesa hills of the bad-lands, often in very elevated and well- 

 defended positions. It was a common observation that the erosion of the 

 faces of these bluffs had undermined the foundations of the houses, so that 

 their wall- stones, with the posts, were mingled with the pottery on the talus 

 below. At one point foundation-walls stand on an isthmus, connecting a 

 butte with the mesa, of which a width of 20 feet remains, but which is fur- 

 rowed with water-channels. Here Eocene fossils, and pottery, including a 

 narrow-necked jug, were confusedly mixed together. At another point the 

 narrow summit of a butte, of nearly 200 feet elevation, is covered with 



