An examination and survey of the cliff ruins of Canyon de Chelly, made some years ago by the writer, revealed the fact that they were always located with reference to some area of adjacent tillable land and that the defensive motive exercised so small an influence on the selection of the site and the character of the buildings that it could be ignored. It was found that the cliff-dwellings were merely farming outlooks, and that the villages proper were almost always located on the canyon bottom. With slight modifications these conclusions may be extended over the Verde region and applied to the cavate lodges there. The relation of these lodges to the village ruins and the character of the sites occupied by them support the conclusion that they were farming outlooks, probably occupied only during the farming season, according to the methods followed by many of the Pueblos today, and that the defensive motive had little or no influence on the selection of the site or the character of the structures. The bowlder-marked sites and the small single-room remains illustrate other phases of the same horticultural methods, methods somewhat resembling the “intensive culture,” of modern agriculture, but requiring further a close supervision or watching of the crop during the period of ripening. As the area of tillable land in the pueblo region, especially in its western part, is limited, these requirements have developed a class of temporary structures, occupied only during the farming season. In Tusayan, where the most primitive architecture of the pueblo type is found, these structures are generally of brush; in Canyon de Chelly they are cliff-dwellings; on the Rio Verde they are cavate lodges, bowlder-marked sites and single house remains; but at Zuñi they have reached their highest development in the three summer villages of Ojo Caliente, Nutria, and Pescado. [Illustration: Plate L. DOORWAY TO CAVATE LODGE.] Since the American occupancy of the country and the consequent removal of the hostile pressure which has kept the Pueblo tribes in check, development has been rapid and now threatens a speedy extinction of pueblo life. The old Laguna has been abandoned, Acoma is being depopulated, the summer pueblos of Zuñi are now occupied all the year round by half a dozen or more families, and even in Tusayan, the most conservative of all the pueblo groups, the abandonment of the home village and location in more convenient single houses has commenced. It is the old process over again, but with the difference that formerly the cycle was completed by the reaggregation of the various families, and little bands into larger groups under hostile pressure from wilder tribes, but now that pressure has been permanently removed, and in a few years, or at most in a few generations, the old pueblo life will be known only by its records. INDEX