CONCLUSION. 181 



coninuinal houses, they also understood several methods 

 of building with clay. They made pottery by a definite 

 method of coiling and decorated it with various colors. 

 Now these particular arts and methods were known 

 and practised southward to and beyond Peru. The 

 people of the Southwest seemed to have shared with the 

 IVIexicans and Peruvians a common culture as far as 

 these particular elements are concerned, and it seems 

 probable that this much of the culture at least originated 

 somewhere within this territory. That the origin of 

 the main and common elements of this culture was 

 somewhere nearer the center of the area, south of the 

 Pueblo region it is reasonable to suppose. Culture is 

 dispersed in two important ways, first, by migrations 

 which do take place, but are rarer than is generally 

 supposed, in which a moving people carry their imple- 

 ments and their arts to a new^ region; and second by 

 uninterrupted social contact of such a sort that the 

 members of one political and linguistic body meet for 

 trade and intermarry, thereby transferring objects and 

 arts from one tribe to another. It is not then necessary 

 to believe that the Aztecs migrated from the Southwest 

 or the Pueblos from Mexico. That this culture which 

 includes the raising of maize is an old one we must 

 believe. With all the force of nearly four hundred 

 years of European contact, Httle change has been 

 WTOught in the life of these sedentary people. For the 

 development of that culture and its peculiar adaptation 

 to the Southwest, more than a few centuries surel}' 

 must have been necessary. 



