Such villages as did not stand upon buttes inaccessible to horsemen, and such as did not possess fertile lands immediately under the shelter of their walls, were either abandoned or depopulated by slow starvation.
It is thus that we may account for many of the desolate cities which are now found in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.

Not of course for all; some, we know, were destroyed by the early Spaniards; others may have been forsaken because their tillable lands became exhausted; others doubtless fell during wars between different tribes of the brown race.

But the cavalry of the desert must necessarily have been a potent instrument of destruction.
It is a pathetic spectacle, this civilization which has perished, or is perishing, without the poor consolation of a history to record its sufferings.

It comes near to being a repetition of the silent death of the flint and bronze races, the mound-raisers, and cave-diggers, and cromlech-builders of Europe.
Captain Phineas Glover, rising at an early hour in the morning, and having had his nosebag of medicament refilled and refitted, set off on an appetizer around the ramparts of the pueblo, and came back marvelling.
"Been out to shake hands with these clever critters," he said.

"Best behavin' 'n' meekest lookin' Injuns I ever see.