As descriptions of these interesting ruins have often been introduced to support vague and extraordinary theories concerning ancient America, I would emphatically say there is nothing in any of the remains of the pueblos, or the cliff houses, or any other antiquities in that portion of our continent, which compels us to seek other constructors for them than the ancestors of the various tribes which were found on the spot by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, and by the armies of the United States in the middle of the nineteenth. This opinion is in accordance with history, with the traditions of the tribes themselves, and with the condition of culture in which they were found. When, in 1735, Pedro de Ainza made an expedition from Santa Fé against the Navajos, he discovered tribes dwelling in stone houses “built within the rocks,” and guarded by watchtowers of stone.[130] The Apaches still remember driving these cliff-dwellers from their homes, and one of the Apache gentes is yet named from them “stone-house people.”[131] As for the pueblos, seven or eight of them are occupied to-day by the same people who built them, and whose homes they have been for many centuries. It is a significant fact that these people do not all belong to the same stock. On the contrary, the “Pueblo Indians” are members of a number of wholly disconnected stems. This proves that the Pueblo civilization is not due to any one unusually gifted lineage, but was a local product, developed in independent tribes by the natural facilities offered by the locality. It is a spontaneous production of the soil, climate, and conditions, which were unusually favorable to agricultural and sedentary occupations, and prompted various tribes to adopt them. Of these different peoples, those of the Moqui Pueblo belonged to the Shoshonee branch of the Uto-Aztecan stock, and is the only existing Pueblo which is peopled by that widespread stem.[132] We have good reason to believe, however, that the Pimas of the Sonoran Group of the same stock once occupied a number of adobe Pueblos, and quite likely were the constructors of the Casas Grandes. The natives of the remaining Pueblos belong to three independent stocks, known as the Kera, the Tehua, and the Zuñi families. No relationship has been discovered between either of these and any tribe outside the territory I have referred to.