The main occupation, it seems, lasted well up toward the close of the sixteenth century. Several generations of Indians had lived here either in cliff homes or pueblos on the floor of the Canyon. Any night might have witnessed hundreds of tiny smokes emerging from smoke holes in roofs. The glow from tiny fires inside the cliff rooms lighted the doorways in the front walls. A sentry, perhaps, with bow and sharp-pointed arrow was posted at the entrance to Puwige, the big community house, or on some nearby high point where he could comb the landscape with sharp eyes and would warn the pueblo dwellers that warriors were approaching. A summer day would suggest men basking in the sun or attempting to net out fish from the little river below. Women had jars on their heads. Others were gathering berries and greens. A hunter was greeted as he strolled forth triumphantly with wild game for a meal or two. A sudden summer cloudburst of rain or hail—delightful and refreshing and good for the corn too, interrupted the sameness of things. The tiny drops sent an Indian mother with baby on her back scampering for shelter. Children were running and laughing but ever alert. These are only a few of the incidents of six hundred years of living, primitive and insecure living, which went on in the Valley of the Tyuonyi. [Illustration: Welcome rain] Toward the close of the century the waters from the heavens stopped. Corn fields dried up and the waters of the little river were no more. The curse of the Southwest had hit again. The lands became drier and drier as the days passed. Cliff homes were like ovens as the hot sun beat down upon them. The same thing happened here as happened to their ancestors in the west centuries before. The Tewas, living in the big villages to the north, were experiencing the same thing. There was no water in the canyons. Water holes had gone dry. And there was no water from the heavens to be caught in great rock cisterns. Small groups began to move. Others hung on. Could it be that Hidden Valley was to go the way of all the rest? It was true. Moving was a necessity now. [Illustration: Abandoning the pueblo]