IV. _Jeditoh valley ruins_--(1) Bat-house; (2) Jeditoh,
Kawaika; (3) Horn-house; (4) Awatobi; Smaller Awatobi.
This method of classification is purely geographical, and is adopted
simply for convenience; but there are one or two facts worthy of
mention in regard to the distribution of ruins in these four sections.
The inhabited pueblos, like the ruins, are, as a rule, situated on the
eastern side of their respective mesas, or on the cliffs or hills
which border the adjacent plains on the west. This uniformity is
thought to have resulted from a desire to occupy a sunny site for
warmth and for other reasons.
The pueblos at or nearest the southern ends of the mesas were found to
be best suited for habitation, consequently the present towns occupy
those sites, or, as in the case of the Jeditoh series, the pueblo at
that point was the last abandoned. The reason for this is thought to
be an attempt to concentrate on the most inaccessible sites available,
which implies inroads of hostile peoples. For the same reason,
likewise, the tendency was to move from the foothills to the mesa tops
when these invasions began.
Early settlers near East Mesa appeared to have chosen exposed sites
for their pueblos. This would imply that they feared no invasion, and
legendary history indicates that the first pueblos were erected before
the hostile Ute, Apache, and Navaho appeared. The early settlements on
Middle Mesa were also apparently not made with an absorbing idea of
inaccessibility. All the Jeditoh villages, however, were on the mesa
tops, these sites having been selected evidently with a view to
protection, since they were not convenient to the farms.
For many reasons it would seem that the people who occupied the now
ruined Jeditoh villages were later arrivals in Tusayan than those of
East and Middle Mesas, and that, as a rule, they came from the
eastward, while those of Middle Mesa arrived from the south. The first
colonists of all, however, appear to have been the East Mesa clans,
the Bear and Snake families. If this conjecture be true, we may
believe that the oldest pueblos in Tusayan were probably the house
groups of the Snake clan of East Mesa, for whom their traditionists
claim a northern origin.