Excerpt from The Passing of the Indian and Buffalo
The present Pueblo Indians of Arizona and New Mexico living in the regions of these ruins are not a mysterious people nor a more ancient people than other tribes of North American Indians. Six of the Moqui towns are inhabited by Shosshone Indians. The people of the seventh Town Tewa originally from the Valley of the Rio Grande are probably also Shoshone as well as those of the 19 Pueblos of New Mexico. They are all probably a portion of the down drift of the Shoshone movement centuries ago which came from the North and went South down the Valleys on the Hast and West of the Rocky Mountains to the Rio Grande, thence to the Pacific Ocean.
The great variety of life among the various tribes of people on this continent when first noted by the whites is confusing on review and furnishes but little grounds for comparison.
The varying degrees of progress or of detail of daily tribal life are perplexing. Still climate of the several sections in which the Aborigines were found in these varying conditions will account for much of the difference in customs, forms and modes of life.
It is in evidence that many Indian tribes have become extinct from various causes especially war famine and disease since white man came to this continent. Others were described by the Indians as having become extinct long prior to the coming of the "paleface". So by observation and tradition as well as their own statements the thought is forced that the Indian Nation or tribes were on the decline at the date of the arrival of the whites under Columbus. Still with all this presumably a large Aboriginal population in what is now the United States, not a vestage remains to tell of the so called pre-Columbian men and women, except now and then a mound, a fort, a pueblo or grave and traditions and legends.
The Europeans found the Indians self sustaining and self reliant with tribal Governments, many forms of worship and many superstitutions with ample clothing of skins and furs and food fairly well supplied. They were wild men and women to whom the restrains of a foreign control became as bonds of steel. In 1832, George Catlin the eminent ethnologist from observation gave the rank and grades of men in the various Indian tribtes which with some slight modifications for local forms and necessities were general.
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