SS ee 
CONCLUSION. 183 
Plains tribes, but they themselves periodically became 
nomads and hunted the buffalo for themselves. The 
pre-Spanish inhabitants of the San Juan region and the 
present-day village and camp-dwelling peoples have a 
basketry art which appears to be either a borrowing 
from, or early participation in, the culture of California 
and the Great Basin. 
The Pima and the Papago may represent a southern 
variety of the culture which existed in the Southwest 
before the development of elaborate architecture and 
highly specialized and decorated pottery. It may be, 
however, that the Pima in particular built great houses 
and developed a wonderful irrigation system on the 
Salt River, and then, for some-reason, reverted to the 
use of individual family houses. With less plausibility, 
the same conjectures may be made for the Athapascan- 
speaking people. It seems more probable in their case 
that they came into the Southwest from the north, but 
that their invasion was not very recent. 
There still remain many unanswered questions con- 
cerning this most interesting region. Some of these will 
undoubtedly be answered when the studies of the 
archaeologist have covered the whole region and have 
pushed further back into the past. It is hoped that de- 
tailed statistical studies of the living people and of the 
abundant skeletal remains may tell at least part of the 
story of the movements and mingling of the tribes in 
the past. 
