Who were the cliff dwellers? It is probable that they were Indians. No one knows where they came from, how long they remained on the Mesa, nor why they left; how long since they went away, where they went to, nor what has become of them. Several hundred ruins of the structures they reared still remain. These are mysterious and thought-compelling, but they tell little more than is told by the Sphinx. The Mesa Verde National Park covers seventy-seven square miles in southwest Colorado, near the corners of four States. It is in the "Land of Little Rain." The table-like summit of this steep-walled Mesa is eight thousand feet above the sea, and nearly two thousand feet above the surrounding country. Looking from the summit, one sees strange "Ship Rock" far away in New Mexico. This appears to be an enormous ship in full sail upon the sea. It adds to the unreal and mysterious air of the region. Numerous cañons are countersunk deeply into this sunny sky plain. Many of the cañons are corniced with a heavy overhanging stratum of rock. Beneath this, in cavelike hollows in the cañon walls, the cliff houses are found. Here ages ago the cliff dwellers lived in large communities and probably under organized government--the oldest and most fully realized civic-center scheme in America. Long before their mesa country was invaded by the men of recorded history, these people of the Southwest vanished, leaving buildings, tools, clothing, and pottery to tell of their odd and interesting Indian civilization. When the name Indian is mentioned, the average individual usually thinks of a savage. But at the time Columbus discovered America, there were millions of civilized Indians in the Western world, living under organized government. It is true that their civilization was different from ours of to-day, and happily different from the European civilization of that time. These early civilized Indians lived chiefly in well-built houses. Many of them traveled good roads. They possessed a keen sense of right and wrong, and in ethics they may have averaged higher than the European. Among the tribes that were civilized were the Mayas, the Aztecs, and the Incas. The cliff dwellers were an agricultural people, and they cultivated corn, beans, cotton, and squash. They appear to have grown crops by means of irrigation. They wove cloth of cotton and of the century-plant fibers. Probably they domesticated the turkey. The finger-prints in their adobe mortar indicate that women built the stone walls. Among the Indian tribes of the Southwest, it was common for the men to quarry, dress, and carry the stones, while the women built them into walls. Women, too, appear to have made the pottery. The men probably were the weavers. The women ground the corn and most likely carried the water in jars from the springs. Were there more springs in the days of these people than now? Perhaps. Apparently they had numerous reservoirs.