Therefore the northern sides of these secluded gorges are perforated in
many places by openings similar in appearance to pigeon-holes. These
openings are the points of exit and entrance of artificial caves, dug
out by sedentary aborigines in times long past. They are met with in
clusters of as many as several hundred; more frequently, however, the
groups are small. Sometimes two or more tiers of caves are superimposed.
From the objects scattered about and in the cells, and from the size and
disposition of the latter, it becomes evident that the people who
excavated and inhabited them were on the same level of culture as the
so-called Pueblo Indians of New Mexico.

It is not surprising, therefore, that some traditions and myths are
preserved to-day among the Pueblos concerning these cave-villages. Thus
the Tehua Indians of the pueblo of Santa Clara assert that the
artificial grottos of what they call the Puiye and the Shufinne, west of
their present abodes, were the homes of their ancestors at one time. The
Queres of Cochiti in turn declare that the tribe to which they belong,
occupied, many centuries before the first coming of Europeans to New
Mexico, the cluster of cave-dwellings, visible at this day although
abandoned and in ruins, in that romantic and picturesquely secluded
gorge called in the Queres dialect Tyuonyi, and in Spanish "El Rito de
los Frijoles."

The Rito is a beautiful spot. Situated in a direct line not over twenty
miles west of Santa Fé, it can still be reached only after a long day's
tedious travel. It is a narrow valley, nowhere broader than half a mile;
and from where it begins in the west to where it closes in a dark and
gloomy entrance, scarcely wide enough for two men to pass abreast, in
the east, its length does not exceed six miles. Its southern rim is
formed by the slope of a timbered mesa, and that slope is partly