In testimony to the traditions which endure in some human societies, a cache of bird feathers, undoubtedly saved to make a costume for such a ritual, was found in Big Cave in Canyon del Muerto. A carefully worked cylinder of wood was filled with packets of brightly colored feathers and bird skins. There were dozens of blue-green skins from mallard ducks, and even parrot feathers that must have come from Mexico. Skins of a red bird, still not identified, and bundles of hawk and eagle down were also found in the cylinder. [Illustration: The Anasazi Few regions in North America have such spectacular archeological sites as the Four Corners area of the Southwest. This semiarid high plateau country, drained by the San Juan River, saw the development and later the disappearance of an Indian culture that archeologists call the Anasazi. During the Great Pueblo period, the Anasazi developed three important regional centers: Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, and the Kayenta country. Their influence extended deep into the territories of neighboring Indian groups, who followed different agricultural traditions. By A.D. 1100, all three had become heavily populated, and the Anasazi were building their largest towns and fabled cliff dwellings. The fertile Chaco valley attracted aboriginals early in the 10th century. They first built on such sites as Pueblo Bonito, which expanded to a village of over 800 rooms. Their pueblos on the valley floor near the cliffs tended to be D-shaped, with central courts closed by walls often as high as four stories. A hundred miles to the north, on the steep-cliffed fingers of rock of southwest Colorado, the Mesa Verdians built pithouses, pueblos, and about 300 cliff dwellings, the largest of which is Cliff Palace. The decline of the Anasazi culture from its Great Pueblo period coincided with a concentration of population at Chaco, Mesa Verde, and Kayenta that made the people particularly dependent on a year-round flow of water. Long years of drought from 1270 to 1300 dried up the rivers and caused an exodus from the San Juan River region. First the Chaco residents dispersed southwestward to join their cousins in the Little Colorado River area. Then the Mesa Verdians moved to the northern Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. Finally, the Kayenta people, the last holdouts, gave up and joined the population in what is now the Hopi country.]