Their
only road out is by a narrow and dangerous trail up the side of
the canon, which is little traveled as they seldom leave home and
are rarely visited.
To affirm that the cliff dwellers were driven from their
strongholds and dispersed by force is pure fiction, nor is there
any evidence to support such a theory. That they had enemies no
one doubts, but, being in possession of an impregnable position
where one man could successfully withstand a thousand, to
surrender would have been base cowardice, and weakness was not a
characteristic of the cliff dwellers.
The question of their subsistence is likewise a puzzle. They
evidently cultivated the soil where it was practicable to do so
as fragments of farm products have been found in their dwellings,
but in the vicinity of some of the houses there is no tillable
land and the inhabitants must have depended upon other means for
support. The wild game which was, doubtless, abundant furnished
them with meat and edible seeds, fruits and roots from native
plants like the pinon pine and mesquite which together with the
saguaro and mescal, supplied them with a variety of food
sufficient for their subsistence as they do, in a measure, the
wild Indian tribes of that region at the present day.
CHAPTER XII
THE MOQUI INDIANS
The Indians of Arizona are, perhaps, the most interesting of any
of the American aborigines.
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