第72章 CHAPTER XXIII(4)

Tracing the Indian Races. Now here were numbers of facts to work upon. Then the myths, legends and traditions of the Indians living near by were carefully collected and studied, and light began to dawn in the minds of our archaeologists. The Hopis in Northern Arizona, the Zunis in New Mexico, the Acomas who live on the massive cliff twenty miles south of the Santa Fe Railway at Laguna Station, the score of pueblos on the banks of the Rio Grande, even to far-away Taos,--all contributed their share to the elucidation of the mystery. Even the semi-nomadic Navaho had something to say which helped. Cushing found among the Zuni stories galore of their struggles with the fierce and warlike wandering tribes, who constantly harassed the home-loving people who built their rude villages. Fewkes not only unearthed whole cities of the past, but, gained from the nearby Hopis their traditions, which told in reasonable and intelligible form what was most probably their history. He listened while their old men and women recited the stories and legends of their migration from the south northwards, and how certain families or clans came from this or that direction, building and inhabiting certain now ruined dwellings in ages long past. Others heard similar stories, which they investigated as far as possible, compared with the ruins named, and then recorded, with such discovered facts as helped in the elucidation of the problems involved.

Ancestors of the Pueblo People. All these investigations pointed to one great fact, and that was that the cliff and cave dwellers of the Grand Canyon region and all the contiguous country were none other than the ancestors of the present pueblo people,--those who live in the Hopi villages, the Zuni villages, Acoma, Laguna, Santo Domingo, Isleta, Teseque, Jemez, Taos, San Ildefonso, Zia and the rest.

With this luminous fact before them, a greater study began of these pueblo people, and it was then found that, to this day, they use the same utensils, make the same implements, wear the same ornaments, follow the same burial customs, and generally live the same life that these ancient cliff-dwellers did. The conclusions, therefore, are obvious and inevitable.

The cliff-dwellers were none other than the ancestors of the pueblo people, a little less advanced, doubtless, in the march of civilization, yet already far progressed from the rude civilization of the nomad. They were driven to occupy the inaccessible cliffs by the constant attacks of the warlike nomads.

Sedentary and Home-loving Indians. Thus the cliff dwellings become interesting memorials of the great fight for existence, where one race has striven to the very death with other races, and the weaker have either given way or been swept out of existence. The picture is easy to draw. The country was peopled with these sedentary and home-loving Indians. They had come largely from the south, had settled down, had built their humble villages, tilled their fields and cultivated their crops. The women made baskets and pottery, and the men hunted game, while the women prepared it for food, and gathered seeds, nuts and roots to eke out their not overextensive dietary. Young men and women grew up, felt the dawnings of love and the final awakenings of the great passion, and then married, settled down in a house the community helped them to build, and began to work a piece of land selected for them, or at least approved, by the town council. For, even in those early days, there is every evidence that these people had a definite and distinct form of democratic government, to the elected officials of which they yielded an almost perfect reverence and obedience. In due time, happy and healthy children were born to them.