360 ANCIENT POPULATION IN 



is undoubtedly very slow. The only means which suggested itself at the 

 time as available for estimating this rate was the calculation of the age of 

 pine trees which grow near the base of the bluffs. These have, of course, 

 attained their present.size since the removal of the front of the stratum from 

 the position which the trees now occupy, so that the age of the latter rep- 

 resents at least the time required for the erosion to have removed the bluff 

 to its present position, but how much time elapsed between the uncovering 

 of the position now occupied by the tree and its germination, there is, of 

 course, no means of ascertaining. My assistant, an educated and exact 

 man, counted the rings in a cut he made into the side of a pinon (Pinus 

 cembroides) which stood at a distance of 40 feet from a bluff, not far from a 

 locality of ruins. In a quarter of an inch of solid wood he found 16 con- 

 centric layers, or 64 in an inch. The tree was fully 20 inches in diameter, 

 which gives 640 annual growths. The pinon is a small species, hence the 

 closeness of the rings in an old tree. 



At present it is only possible to speculate on the history of the builders 

 of these houses, and the date of their extinction. The tribes of Indians at 

 present inhabiting the region at irregular intervals can give no account of 

 them. But it is not necessary to suppose that the ruin of this population 

 occurred at a very remote past. On the Rio Chaco, not more than thirty 

 miles from the Alto del Utah, are the ruins of the seven cities of Cibola, the 

 largest of which is called Hungo Pavie. These have been described by 

 General Simpson,* who shows that each of the towns consisted of a huge 

 communal house, which would have accommodated from 1,500 to 3,000 

 persons. Their character appears to have been similar to that of the exist- 

 ing Moqui villages. 



The "cities of Cibola" were visited by the marauding expedition of 

 Coronado in 1540, which captured them to add to the viceroyalty of Mex- 

 ico. In his letter to Mendoza, the viceroy, Coronado states that the inhab- 

 itants, on the fourth day after the capture, "set in order all their goods and 

 substances, their women and children, and fled to the hills, leaving their 

 town, as it were, abandoned, wherein remained very few of them." There 



* Report of Lieut. James II. Simpson of an expedition in the Navajo country in 1849, Ex. Doc. 1st 

 sess. Thirty-first Congress. 



