n New Mexico; a few of them, comprised within the
ancient provinces of Cibola and Tusayan, are located within the
drainage of the Little Colorado. From the time of the earliest Spanish
expeditions into the country to the present day, a period covering more
than three centuries, the former province has been often visited by
whites, but the remoteness of Tusayan and the arid and forbidding
character of its surroundings have caused its more complete isolation.
The architecture of this district exhibits a close adherence to
aboriginal practices, still bears the marked impress of its development
under the exacting conditions of an arid environment, and is but slowly
yielding to the influence of foreign ideas.

The present study of the architecture of Tusayan and Cibola embraces all
of the inhabited pueblos of those provinces, and includes a number of
the ruins traditionally connected with them. It will be observed by
reference to the map that the area embraced in these provinces comprises
but a small portion of the vast region over which pueblo culture once
extended.

This study is designed to be followed by a similar study of two typical
groups of ruins, viz, that of Canyon de Chelly, in northeastern Arizona,
and that of the Chaco Canyon, of New Mexico; but it has been necessary
for the writer to make occasional reference to these ruins in the
present paper, both in the discussion of general arrangement and
characteristic ground plans, embodied in Chapters II and III and in the
comparison by constructional details treated in Chapter IV, in order
to define clearly the relations of the various features of pueblo
architecture. They belong to the same pueblo system illustrated by the
villages of Tusayan and Cibola, and with the Canyon de Chelly group
there is even some trace of traditional connection, as is set forth by
Mr. Stephen in Chapter I. The more detailed studies of these ruins, to
be published later, together with the material embodied in the present
paper, will, it is thought, furnish a record of the principal
characteristics of an important type of primitive architecture, which,
under the influence of the arid environment of the southwestern
plateaus, has developed from the rude lodge into the many-storied
house of rectangular rooms. Indications of some of the steps of this
development are traceable even in the architecture of the present day.

The pueblo of Zuni was surveyed by the writer in the autumn of 1881
wi