Outside of a natural cave or rock shelter, the wikiup of the Pai Ute exhibits about the lowest type of house used by man. It is said the chimpanzee makes a rude hut of boughs and branches, but even that could scarcely be less simple than the Arizona wikiup. This is composed merely of several branches arranged in a semi-circle, or rather more than a semi-circle, eight or ten feet in height, their tops together, and covered with boughs of cedar or pine or any other convenient brush. About one third of the circumference is open to the south, and opposite this side the fire is built a few feet away. The Pai Ute is surrounded by remains of excellent stone dwellings constructed long ago by Amerinds who are believed to be of the same general stock, but he has never tried to improve his wikiup of his own accord. The Utes, his kindred on the north, live in good tipis, but the Pai Ute appears never to have noticed the fact. The Mokis, also allied to him, live not far to southward in excellent houses, yet he has never attempted to emulate them. [Illustration: MOKI KISI CONSTRUCTION] In the kisi construction of the Mokis we may perhaps see the beginning of even the wikiup. The kisi is a sort of windbreak and sun-shelter lightly constructed of boughs and made in two ways, one called kishoni, being simply poles stuck in the ground in the arc of a circle with the concave side towards the north, and interlaced with twigs and branches to form a shade. The other kind is built by planting several posts with crotches at their tops in the ground in the form of a parallelogram and laying other posts or poles across from crotch to crotch and covering these with poles to form a platform or roof. Against the whole, on the south side, poles and branches are erected to form a shade. These affairs are put up in the fields to protect the crop tenders when there is no convenient cliff or ledge whereon to erect a better structure of stone. Doubtless out of these shelters, now seen in the field structures, originally grew the firm adobe and stone house, by one step or improvement after another, and probably all house construction had some such simple beginning. In a forested area, however, the easy construction of a comfortable house out of poles and bark would delay any development of a durable stone or adobe structure; the adobe, indeed, would not be durable in a humid climate. Protection and subsistence dictated the region a tribe or a stock should occupy, and the region usually determined the character of the house or shelter. House building, in its beginnings, is largely a result of environment, and was developed or modified accordingly. The tribes that were compelled to live in a sterile, dry country, where game and wood were both scarce, were forced to provide themselves with different food and different shelter from those which occupied a well-wooded country abounding in game. A few skins and poles, in the latter case, would quickly produce a house.