ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY 
Those who have seen much of the 
Pueblo Indians, even under trying cir¬ 
cumstances, have profound respect for 
their patient and kind dispositions, the 
natural instinct of hospitality every¬ 
where present, and for their general 
attitude. If they are reluctant to speak 
about certain customs, we can but feel 
kindly toward them for their very reti¬ 
cence, for it is this trait which has en¬ 
abled them to preserve their customs 
against influences which deliberately 
attempt to undermine them. 
The old villages, situated beside 
streams or perched on mesa-tops, show 
as blotches of warm brown against the 
snowy fields of winter and bask in the 
bright sunshine of the summer days. 
Such a scene means home and home¬ 
land to the inhabitants. Each indweller 
knows every other, and all his relation¬ 
ship, ancestry, and connections; is fam¬ 
iliar with all the places inside the village 
and round about from sacred shrines to 
goat corrals; and every happening, small 
or great, needs no newspaper for prompt 
circulation. Each village possesses al¬ 
most unlimited charm for the artist, 
photographer, ethnologist, and those 
who merely like to become acquainted 
with the Indian. 
Still more romantic is the fact that 
the Pueblo Indians are the lineal de¬ 
scendants of the ancient cliff-dwellers. 
Some of the ancestors of the Pueblos 
inhabited the cliffs so few generations 
ago that the modern survivors possess 
definite traditions as to the cliff-dwell¬ 
ings, know their geographical names 
and what clans inhabited them. Tradi¬ 
tions corroborate the conclusions of 
ethnologists and archaeologists that the 
dwellers in caves or cliff-houses were 
Pueblo Indians who were forced to take 
up this mode of life at various times 
for defense against Apache, Navaho, 
Comanche, and other Indian neighbors. 
In fact, the Pueblo country can be 
said to have been inhabited simultane¬ 
ously by these two classes of Indians of 
variant culture. The nomads moved 
around and between the Pueblos, never 
losing a good chance to attack their 
more sedentary and agricultural neigh¬ 
bors or to steal their stored-up food 
products. The Pueblos were certainly 
a peace-loving people, although prob¬ 
ably in former times more warlike than 
some writers have supposed. The no¬ 
madic Indians harassed them con¬ 
stantly, ambushing individuals when 
they had opportunity and stealing live¬ 
stock during the period since the latter 
has been introduced. The Pueblos, on 
the other hand, cherished a bitter en¬ 
mity and desire for revenge, and this 
state of things would doubtless have 
continued indefinitely if it had not been 
interrupted by the settlement of the 
country during the last century. Al¬ 
though the early Spaniards aided the 
Pueblos against their Indian enemies, 
the Pueblos have always felt toward 
the Spaniards as they felt toward the 
nomads, and even at the present day, 
although outwardly friendly to the 
“Mexicans” who live everywhere on 
farms or in hamlets near most of the 
Pueblo villages, the Indians really hold 
them in contempt. 
There is every reason to believe that 
the cliff-dwellings were inhabited at 
various times by various groups of 
Pueblo Indians for various purposes of 
defense, just as these dwellings differ 
widely in manner of construction. It 
appears, moreover, that most or all of 
the Pueblo Indians had abandoned the 
cliffs at the time of the coming of the 
Spaniards. Some of the cliff habita¬ 
tions may have been deserted gradu¬ 
ally, but the old Pueblo custom of 
moving a settlement was for the entire 
population to transfer themselves and 
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