Some of the dwellers carved and painted pictures on the back walls of their houses or even in the caves which had barely enough room for three or four people to occupy. Call it writing if you like. It likely was “doodling.” They had no written language. They were forced to record what they thought and what they believed or had seen on the walls of their houses or in the designs of their pottery. Birds were the most common design. A mountain sheep was occasionally drawn, or a squirrel, or a rabbit; perhaps a bear or a katsina—a supernatural being. They might have tried to depict their ancestors emerging from the darkness and climbing up a high pole from the underworld of Sipapu. The awanyu or “plumed serpent” was quite common. It was the guardian spirit of springs. In one cave there was a drawing of a horse and certainly this was not an ancient drawing for the Spanish brought the horse to New Mexico. Some wandering Tewa could have seen the Spanish on horseback—on creatures which Indians thought devoured people. It might have been that other Tewa-speaking people from around the pueblo of San Juan, far to the north, described a horse by pictograph, when they hurried into the mountain homes of their kin after seeing the Spanish in 1540. Or it might have been drawn by some visitor after the evacuation of the Indians. It could even have been someone’s joke. About a quarter-mile from the cliff dwellings, and where the Canyon becomes narrow, is a deep natural cave. It is eighty feet across and its opening faces the valley one hundred fifty feet above the waters of the Rito. One prehistoric group lived here for a time. They were certainly secluded. Hand holds were gouged from the soft cliffs with sharp pointed rocks and here in this, now called “Ceremonial Cave,” Indians built seventeen first-story rooms and several second-story rooms around the back. They excavated a kiva or ceremonial chamber to the front of the cave. Think of the task these Indians had when they carted water and poles and sticks and perhaps stones up the side of the cliff. Tons of rock were required to build these houses and the ceremonial chamber. This little group built their kiva twelve feet in diameter. It was a circular affair dug to a depth of nine feet and lined with a wall of stone which was plastered on the inside. The floor was of a special kind. It was hard, black and shiny. It had been polished with a smooth stone like the ones the Indian women use today to polish their black pottery. Only this floor was made of blood—animal blood. The Indians carefully saved the blood from animals which they killed and then mixed it with fine silt and soot from the fire and smeared it over their kiva floor in thin layers. When the blood coagulated the plaster hardened and then it was polished by rubbing a smooth stone over it in backward and forward motion. This must have been an important room to have had such an elaborately made floor. But kivas in prehistoric times may have been