e innumerable
pueblos which were crowded with busy occupants, hundreds of pueblos
which had been deserted by their builders, some of them for centuries,
and which lay even then in ruins.

The desertion of so many pueblos with abundant pottery and other
evidences of active living is one of the mysteries of this prehistoric
civilization. No doubt, with the failure of water-supplies and other
changing physical conditions, occasionally communities sought better
living in other localities, but it is certain that many of these
desertions resulted from the raids of the wandering predatory tribes of
the plains, the Querechos of Bandelier's records, but usually mentioned
by him and others by the modern name of Apaches. These fierce bands
continually sought to possess themselves of the stores of food and
clothing to be found in the prosperous pueblos. The utmost cruelties of
the Spanish invaders who, after all, were ruthless only in pursuit of
gold, and, when this was lacking, tolerant and even kindly in their
treatment of the natives, were nothing compared to the atrocities of
these Apache Indians, who gloried in conquest.

Of the ruins of pueblos which were not identified with Spanish
occupation, six have been conserved as national monuments.

THE BANDELIER NATIONAL MONUMENT

Many centuries before the coming of the Spaniards, a deep gorge on the
eastern slope of the Sierra de los Valles, eighteen miles west of Santa
Fe, New Mexico, was the home of a people living in caves which they
hollowed by enlarging erosional openings in the soft volcanic sides of
nearly perpendicular cliffs. The work was done with pains and skill. A
small entrance, sometimes from the valley floor, sometimes reached by
ladder, opened into a roomy apartment which in many cases consisted of
several connecting rooms. These apartments were set in tiers or stories,
as in a modern flat-house. There were often two, sometimes three,
floors. They occurred in groups, probably representing families or
clans, and some of these groups numbered hundreds. Seen to-day, the
cliff-side suggests not so much the modern apartment-house, of which it
was in a way the prehistoric prototype, as a gigantic pigeon-house.

In time these Indians emerged from the cliff and built a great
semi-circular pueblo up the valley, surrounded by smaller habitations.
Other pueblos, probably still later in origin, were built upon
surrounding mesas. All these habitations were abandoned perha