that a single misstep made it fatal.

It is almost impossible to conceive of any condition in life, or
combination of circumstances in the affairs of men, that should
drive any people to the rash act of living in the houses of the
cliff dwellers. Men will sometimes do from choice what they
cannot be made to do by compulsion. It is easier to believe that
the cliff dwellers, being free people, chose of their own accord
the site of their habitation rather than that from any cause they
were compelled to make the choice. Their preference was to live
upon the cliffs, as they were fitted by nature for such an
environment.

For no other reason, apparently, do the Moquis live upon their
rocky and barren mesas away from everything which the civilized
white man deems desirable, yet, in seeming contentment. The
Supais, likewise, choose to live alone at the bottom of Cataract
Canon where they are completely shut in by high cliffs. 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.