From a photograph , copyright 1900, by E. S. Curtis. 
Returning from the field. 
INDIANS OF THE STONE HOUSES* 
By Edward S. Curtis 
Illustrations from Photographs by the Author 
IE average reader, when 
thinking of the American 
Indian, thinks only of the 
statuesque, picturesque, buf¬ 
falo-hunting Indians of the 
northern prairies, or, per¬ 
haps, the gayly dressed warrior in his bark 
canoe travelling the waters of the lakes and 
streams of the forests. These characteris¬ 
tic types do form a good portion of our 
Indian people, but far from the whole, and 
decidedly not the most interesting. 
When the mail-clothed Spanish soldiers 
* See former articles by Mr. Curtis in Scribner’s Maga¬ 
zine for May and June, 1906. 
Vol. XLV.—18 
of fortune forced their way into the desert 
lands of the South-west, the land that we 
now call Arizona and New Mexico, they 
found it dotted here and there with human 
habitations, habitations apparently as time¬ 
worn as those of old Spain. They were 
communal structures of stone, cliff-perched, 
their six stories or more towering high 
toward the blue dome, so high that when 
we look up to them from the plain they 
seem to be on the level with the high-soar¬ 
ing eagles. For miles across the outlying 
desert or along the valley stretched their 
farmlands. Peculiarly administered com¬ 
munities they were, with so advanced a 
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