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A large proportion of the cists found in De Chelly were burial places and of Navaho origin. As a rule they are far more difficult of access than the ruins. There is no evidence of the influence of the defensive motive. Defensive works on the approaches to sites are never found, nor can such influence be detected in the arrangement of openings, in the character of masonry, or in the ground plan.
Notwithstanding the possible division of the De Chelly ruins into four well defined types, there is no warrant for the assumption of a large population. The types are interrelated and to a large extent were inhabited not contemporaneously but conjointly. There are about 140 ruins in Canyon de Chelly and its branches, but few of them could accommodate more than a very small population.
From this place the original nucleus of Walpians moved to the present site about the close of the seventeenth century. Later the original population was joined by other phratries, some of which, as the Asa, had lived in the cliff-houses of Tségi, or Canyon de Chelly, as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Not all of the available land was utilized, and only a small percentage of the available sites were built upon. Between the mouth of De Chelly and the junction of Monument canyon, 13 miles above, there are seventy-one ruins. II. Home villages on bottom lands, located without reference to defense, occupy sites 3, 4, 17, 20, 28, 48, and 51; in all, seven sites.
At one point near its head it approaches so near to De Chelly that but a few feet of rock separate them. On the western side of the mountains there are a number of small perennial streams fed by springs on the upper slopes. Several of these meet in the upper part of De Chelly, others in Del Muerto, and in the upper parts of these canyons there is generally water.
Cliff houses are also found on the Dolores River. Other ruins are found in the canyon of the Rio de Chelly. The supposition is reasonable that the Village Indians north of Mexico had attained their highest culture and development where these stone structures are found.
The ruins of De Chelly show unmistakably several periods of occupancy, extending over considerable time and each fairly complete. They fall easily into the classification previously suggested, and exhibit various types, but the earliest and the latest forms are not found. In the descriptions which follow the classification below has been employed: I Old villages on open sites.
It is a very goot chelly in' places. You might like it if you took it in a sboon out of a storypook, or a folume of boedry; but a blay is a very different greation. Then he fell to a mortally technical criticism of Paul's work a practical stage-manager's criticism and enlightened his hearer's mind on many things.
This region, bordering on the great sand dunes lying beyond the Chelly River, was to be the beginning point of their arduous and momentous search.
There are no such instances in De Chelly, where sites were often irregular, and a small amount of work would have rendered them much more desirable. Plate LVII shows a type of masonry which is quite common in De Chelly. It is the west room of ruin 16, near the mouth of Del Muerto.
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