OCR Text |
Show ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF FIRST INHABITANTS 9g The descendants of five great families, into which the more recent populations since the Spanish conqu est are divided, are found in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. These families consist of the Shoshonean, Zuiian, Keresan, Tanonan, and the Athapascan stocks. The Moquis and Pueblos belong to the first four ; the remaining two compose the Apache and Navaj o tribes. It is certainly possible that branches of the Mongolian race may have crossed Behring’s Strait. Such a movement was of easy accomplishment. Thence, through the passing years, they could have migrated southward along the Pacific coast and later across the table-lands of New Mexico, where were builded the great communal houses, the ruins of which are found from the north forty degre es latitude to the thirty-second parall el ; they have thence been traced through southern New Mexico to latitude thirty degrees, in north ern Chihuahua, thence along the Pacifi c slope to Sonora. Likewise, they may have come from northern Asia by way of Greenland. The compact architecture typifi ed in the communal, many-stori ed building, made up of hundreds of smal] rooms, reached its south ern limit along the Rio Grande at San Marcial. There the Spaniards found the first villages in 1580, 1582, and 1598. Below that point the detached house type, in clusters, occupies the river banks at intervals, as far south as Dofia Ana probably, certainly to old Fort Selden, or latitude thirty-two degrees, thirty minutes north. Historians all agree that the aboriginal history of our count ry is properly divided into three distin ct periods. The farthest removed is that which fixes the human race with Species of animals long extinct. The period following is that of the mound-builders, and the most recent is that during which America was discovered by the Spanish explorers, The last mentioned epoch is the only one of which any historical] data are available, other than the weapons, domestic utensils, pottery, and other relics of the mound-buil ders and their contemporaries in other portions of the contin ent, The first peoples inhabiting the table-lands and valleys of New Mexico may have belonged to the same epoch as did the mound builders. When the Spanish explorers first ventured upon the Atlantic coast, the Cherokees were still burying their dead in mounds. the north-west coast Yucatan.’? denote an advance in art not behind that of aboriginal |