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Show ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF FIRST INHABITANTS 45 canyons, in Colorado and Utah, and in Canyon de Chelly and its branches in northeastern Arizona. Although there are local differences in style of building, construction, plan, and finish, the chief characteristics are much the same everywhere. Corresponding differences with general likeness are observed in implements, utensils, and ornaments associated with the ruins, facts which go to show that in early periods, as now, numerous tribal groups were represented in the region, and that then, as now, there was a general community of culture, if not kinship in blood. Owing to differences in the composition of the rocky strata, the natural shelters occupied by the cliff-dwellings are greatly varied in character. While many are mere horizontal crevices or isolated niches, large enough only for men to crawl into and build small stone lodges, there are extensive chambers, with comparatively level floors, and with roofs opening outward in great sweeps of solid rock surface, more imposing than any structure built by human hands. These latter are capable of accommodating not merely single households but communities of considerable size. The niches occur at all levels in cliffs rising to the height of nearly a thousand feet, and are often approached with great difficulty from below or, in rare cases, from above. Where the way is very steep, niche stairways were cut in the rock face, making approach possible. Ladders of notched logs were also used. In the typical cliff-dwellings of this class, the entire floor of the niche is occupied, the door-way giving entrance through the outer wall, which is built up vertically from the brink of the rocky shelf and rises one, two, or more stories in height, or to the rocky roof, when this is low and over-hanging. In the larger shelters the buildings are much diversified in plan and elevation, owing to irregularities in the conformation of the floor and walls. The first floor was the rock surface, or, if that was uneven, of clay or flag-stones, and upper floors were constructed of poles set in the masonry, often projecting through the walls and over-laid with smaller poles and willows, finished above with adobe mud. Some of the rooms in the larger buildings were round, corresponding in appearance and no doubt in purpose to the kivas, or ceremonial chambers, of the ordinary pueblos. The masonry is excellent, the rather small stones, gathered in many tant sites, being laid in mortar. cases from dis- The stones were rarely dressed, |