of which river _A' wat u i_
itself occurs), where the fallen walls betoken equal advancement in
the status of the ancient builders and indicate by their vast extent
many times the population of _A' wat u i_, the potsherds are coarse,
irregular in curvature, badly decayed, and exceptionally scarce. In
the immediate neighborhood of this ruin, I need not add, clay is of
rare occurrence and poor in quality.

A more reliable example is furnished by the farming pueblos of Zuni.
At _He sho ta tsi nan_ or Ojo del Pescado, fifteen miles east of Zuni,
clays of several varieties and color minerals are abundant. The finest
pottery of the tribe is made there in great quantity, while,
notwithstanding the facilities for transportation which the Zunis now
possess, at the opposite farming town of _K'iap kwai na kwin_, or Los
Ojos Calientes, where clay is scarce and of poor texture, the pottery,
although somewhat abundant, is of miserable quality and of bad shape.

In quality of art quite as much as in that of material this local
influence was great. In the neighborhood of ruined pueblos which occur
near mineral deposits furnishing a great variety of pigment-material,
the decoration of the ceramic remains is so surprisingly and
universally elaborate, beautiful, and varied as to lead the observer
to regard the people who dwelt there as different from the people who
had inhabited towns about the sites of which the sherds show not only
meager skill and less profuse decorative variety, but almost typical
dissimilarity. Yet tradition and analogy, even history in rare
instances, may declare that the inhabitants of both sections were of
common derivation, if not closely related and contemporaneous.
Probably, at no one point in the Southwest was ceramic decoration
carried to a higher degree of development than at _A' wat u i_, yet
the Oraibes, by descent the modern representatives of the _A' wat u i
ans_ are the poorest potters and painters among the Mokis. Near their
pueblo the clay and other mineral deposits mentioned as abundant at
_A' wat u i_ are meager and inaccessible. Still, it may be urged that
time may have introduced other than natural causes for change; this
could not be said of another example pertaining to one period and a
single tribe. I refer again to the Zunis. The manufactures of Pescado
probably surpass in decorative excellence all other modern Pueblo
pottery, while both in their lack of variety and in delicacy of
execution