Soon it was found that by picking up small stones and packing them into the soft mud as temper the walls would stand longer. Larger rocks and less mud made better walls and saved a lot of toil and unnecessary labor. There were many rocks to be picked up at random. Walls were raised high enough for the Indian to stand upright inside the rooms. Sharp stone axes of basalt were used to fell small trees which were laid over the tops of walls for the support of the roofs. The blunt ends of the timbers were inserted in holes gouged out of the cliff. Brush and grass were placed over them; thick mud coats were smeared over the top. Holes were cut in the roofs. Fires were built and the smoke could escape through these holes. How much better this than a cave! These tiny rooms were stuffy and smoky inside but not as unpleasant as a cave room. An Indian would soon suffocate inside a cave. During the rainy seasons the roofs leaked and great quantities of mud were stirred up and spread over the top and smoothed down flat. The women could always find more when that washed off. In time weeds and wild grasses took root in these dirt roofs. But somewhere, somehow, not at Tyuonyi perhaps, but in some nearby valley or on some high mesa top at one of a hundred colony sites, Indian neighbors found that still larger chunks of tuff could be used for building blocks. This would save much labor. So much mud in a wall would not be necessary. It is possible that this use of larger building stones was not a matter of independent origin at any one of many primitive villages on the high mesas and in the deep canyons of the Pajarito. Indians, after years and years of living, simply came into the use of larger building blocks by the trial and error method. They served the purpose better. A dry spell or so, when it did not rain, might have made it necessary to transport more and more water in urns from water holes or nearby streams. This was women’s work and hard work too. And more stone and less mud made stronger walls for houses anyway. Some of the stone was so soft that it could be shaped into blocks to fit into the walls. These blocks did not lay absolutely flat because their surfaces were irregular. Small stones were forced between the cracks and when the mud mortar dried the walls were solid. This practice went on for years and years. Indians experimented with all the materials at their disposal. They could not send an order to the Gods for building materials. Everywhere on the Pajarito are seen the remains of homes belonging to this period of occupation. There are hundreds of them—small family houses, in deep canyons or in a forest on high mesa tops. Debris has filled them up and today they look like piles of rock. Building blocks are strewn all over the surface. Most of the blocks had been picked up at random after they had been carved by nature. Others were square or rectangular, showing that they had been fashioned by Indian hands.