Occurring in the midst of the greater groups of northern cliff dwellings, no less than somewhat more scatteringly and widely distributed to at least as far south as the middle of Arizona, are remains of cave dwellings of an older type. They are usually lower down in the cliffs, although they once occurred also in the larger and more accessible of the caverns now occupied by later cliff-house remains, underneath or amid which remains they may still in places be traced. These rude and very ancient cave dwellings mark the beginnings of the cliff occupancy. In all essentials they correspond to the modern cave dwellings of the Sierra Madre in Sonora, Mexico, so admirably described by my friend, Dr. Carl Lumholtz, as built and still lived in by the Tarahumári and Tepehuani Indians, who survive either in the state of these first cliff dwellers of the north, or, as is more probable, have naturally and independently resorted to a similar mode of life through stress of similar circumstances. Like the Tarahumári, these ancient people of the north at first resorted to the caves during only portions of the year--during the inclement season after each harvest, as well as in times of great danger. At other times, and during the hunting, planting, and seed-gathering seasons particularly, they dwelt, as do the Tarahumári, in rancherias, the distinctive remains of which lie scattered near and far on the plateaus and plains or in the wide valleys. But the caves were their central abodes, and the rancherias, frequently shifted, were simply outlying stations such as are the farming hamlets of the modern pueblos. The earliest of these dwellings in the caves were at first simple huts disposed separately along the rear walls of these recesses in the cliffs. They usually had foundation walls, approximately circular in plan, of dry-laid stones, upon which rested upper converging courses of cross-laid logs and sticks, hexagonal and pen-like covers surmounted, as were the rancherias of the open plains, by more or less high-pitched roofs of thatch--here in the shelters added rather for protection from cold than from storms of rain and snow.