Note Back to Main Text — Chapter I · ANCIENT AMERICA.

The pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona are among the most interesting structures in the world. Several are still inhabited by the descendants of the people who were living in them at the time of the Spanish Discovery, and their primitive customs and habits of thought have been preserved to the present day with but little change. The long sojourn of Mr. Cushing, Mr. Cushing at Zuñi. of the Bureau of Ethnology, in the Zuñi pueblo, has already thrown a flood of light upon many points in American archæology.[89] As in the case of American aborigines generally, the social life of these people is closely connected with their architecture, and the pueblos which are still inhabited seem to furnish us with the key to the interpretation of those that we find deserted or in ruins, whether in Arizona or in Guatemala.