, not knowing any of the useful metals;
built their homes and kept their flocks and herds in the fertile river
bottoms, and worshiped the sun. They were an eminently peaceful and
prosperous people, living by agriculture rather than by the chase. About
a thousand years ago, however, they were visited by savage strangers
from the north, whom they treated hospitably. Soon these visits became
more frequent and annoying. Then their troublesome neighbors, ancestors
of the present Utes, began to forage upon them, and at last to massacre
them and devastate their farms. So, to save their lives at least, they
built houses high up on the cliffs, where they could store food and hide
away until the raiders left.

"But one Summer the invaders did not go back to their mountains, as the
people expected, but brought their families with them and settled down.
So, driven from their homes and lands, starving in their little niches
on the high cites they could only steal away during the night and wander
across the cheerless uplands. To one who has traveled these steppes
such a flight seems terrible, and the mind hesitates to picture the
sufferings of the sad fugitives. At the 'Creston' (name of the ruin)
they halted, and probably found friends, for the rocks and caves
are full of the nests of these human wrens and swallows. Here they
collected, erected stone fortifications and watch-towers, dug reservoirs
in the rocks to hold a supply of water, which in all cases is precarious
in this latitude, and once more stood at bay. Their foes came, and for
one long month fought, and were beaten back, and returned day after day
to the attack as merciless and inevitable as the tide. Meanwhile the
families of the defenders were evacuating and moving south, and bravely
did their defenders shield them till they were all safely a hundred
miles away.

"The besiegers were beaten back and went away. But the narrative tells
us that the hollows of the rocks were filled to the brim with the
mingled blood of conquerors and, conquered, and red veins of it ran
down the canyon. It was such a victory as they could not afford to gain
again, and they were glad, when the long flight was over, to follow
their wives and little ones to the south. There, in the deserts of
Arizona, on well-nigh unapproachable, isolated bluffs, they built new
towns, and their few descendants, the Moquis, live in them to this day,
preserving more carefully and purely the history and veneratio