Referring now to the inhabitants of the two houses, whose ruins are situated on the mesilla, north of the church, it is a thoroughly well-authenticated fact that they spoke the same language as the Indians of the pueblo of Jemez. Jemez lies 80 miles N.W. of Pecos, beyond the Rio Grande. It is possible that the Pecos Indians came to the valley from that direction. But it is singular that, while there are no other settlements speaking this same idiom but Jemez and Pecos, these two pueblos should be separated, as early as at Coronado's time (1540), by three distinct linguistical stocks, different from theirs and lying across, intervening between them. Directly W. of Pecos the Queres, S.W. the Tanos, N.W. the Tehuas--all at war with the Jemez and the Pecos, and often with each other--lay like a barrier between the latter two. The point is an interesting one, as the pueblo of Pecos defines (together with Taos at the north) the utmost easterly limit to which the pueblo Indians seem to have penetrated. Who were first in the valley of the Rio Grande? Did the Queres, Tanos, Tehuas, etc., drive out the Pecos, then already settled to the S.W., into the Sierra, or did the Pecos, migrating from Jemez, force their passage through the other tribes? I conjecture that the Jemez, etc., were the first; that they migrated down the Rio Grande, and on the same area, between Sandía to the S. and Santa Fé, were gradually displaced by the others successively coming in,--one branch, the Jemez, recoiling into the mountains towards San Diego;[137] the other, the Pecos, driven up the cañon of San Cristóbal,[138] and finally, when the Tanos moved up into that valley, crossing over to the valley of Pecos. This is to a great extent conjecture; still there are other singular indications. I give them with due reserve, however, formally protesting against any imputation that they are intended for anything else than to suggest problems for future study. According to my friend Mr. A. S. Gatchet, of Washington, D. C., an excellent linguist, the Tanos and the inhabitants of Isleta, the most southerly pueblo on the Rio Grande still occupied, speak the same language.[139] The same is asserted here, as a known fact, to be the case with the Taos and the Picuries in the north, and the Isletas at the south. If this be true, then the supposition that the Queres and Tehuas are the latest intrusive stock would become a certainty. More than that: the Tanos prior to 1680, had their chief pueblo at San Cristóbal, N. E. of Galisteo, on the slope of the mesa of Pecos. They also had become dispossessed of the Rio Grande valley, and divided into (originally) two branches,--the Picuries and Taos north, and the Tanos, of Galisteo, east. Isleta itself is a later agglomeration.[140] There being no pueblo E. and S. E. of Pecos, then it appears that the Jemez, or rather Emmes, were the first migration, the Tanos the second, and the Queres and Tehuas the last.