When the people left the Mesa Verde their troubles were not over. The drouth was felt all over the Southwest and life was possible only in the most favorable spots. Added to the misfortunes of the drifting people was the increased activity of the nomadic Indians for they, too, suffered from the drouth. It is possible that their increased activities hastened the flight from the Mesa Verde for they must have preyed upon the farming peoples during the troubled times. Although large numbers perished before and during the migration, many of the Mesa Verde Indians did survive. The major migration seems to have been to the southeast and finally the people settled in the Rio Grande Valley. One group crossed the river and for a time lived in the Gallisteo Basin, a short distance southeast of the present city of Santa Fe, New Mexico. After a time this area was deserted and the people mingled with other Pueblo Indians along the Rio Grande. As they merged with the others they gradually lost their identity as Mesa Verde people. During the great drouth the population of the Southwest was diminished and many regions were abandoned forever by the Pueblo Indians. When the drouth finally ended the survivors were concentrated in the most favorable spots where there were the best supplies of water, the finest farming lands or good natural defenses against the nomadic Indians. In some regions they prospered for a time but never again did they reach the high level they had attained before the great drouth. Perhaps the drouth caused a dry rot to set in and the fortunes of the Pueblo people waned. When Coronado came there were less than eighty pueblos: today there are less than thirty. The people of these present-day pueblos are the descendants of scores of thousands of Pueblo Indians who once lived in the Southwest. In their veins, greatly thinned by the centuries, flows the blood of the ancient people of the Mesa Verde. PART TWO The Archeological Background 9 ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN The story of the Mesa Verde really had its beginning many thousands of years ago in a distant land. It began when the first ancient Asiatic stepped across from Siberia and became the First American. Who he was and exactly when it happened we shall never know, but it was the important first step in a long chain of events which led to the occupation of the Mesa Verde by Pueblo Indians. There seems to be little doubt that the early inhabitants of North and South America came from Asia by that northern route. It is the only route by which men, traveling without artificial means of transportation, could have reached these western continents. Not a single insurmountable barrier, not a single impossibility lay in the path of those ancient men as they drifted with the line of least resistance. From the northwest, America was discovered and populated.