Susanne Nimmer, aged 11, of Spokane, Wash,, for her question:

Who were the Cliff Dwellers?

The Vikings reported visits to the New World as long as 1,000 years ago, However, they had no good reports of the people who lived here, They called these original Americans Skraelings. And Skraelings, said the Vikings, were nothing but savage hunters. If these bold Vikings had traveled overland to our Southwest, they would have changed their opinions,

For at that time the Cliff Dwellers were building and farming among the yuccas and the sunny hills. This was the period of their Golden Age. Long before the Spaniards came they had gone. Not until modern times did we become interested in their deserted buildings, The Navajo Indiana thereabouts tried to explain them. They were built by the Anasazi, the Ancient Ones, they said. But who were the Ancient Ones who built five story buildings upon the faces of steep cliffs?

Even the village‑dwelling Pueblos did not know. They should have known, For the ancient Cliff Dwellers were their own ancestors. But no one knew this until the experts studied the deserted buildings.

Near Mesa Verde is an ancient building called Cliff Palace. It is built along the face of a cliff wall. Four stories rise in terraces. Outside ladders wore used by the Cliff Dwellers to climb from floor to floor, There was a tall lookout tower. At one time, people inhabited 200 rooms and 20 large common rooms in Cliff Palace.

Not all the Cliff Dwellers built on cliff walls, Some of their largest buildings are out in the open. Twelve of these big apartment houses were discovered at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, At Pueblo Bonita was a house as big as a small town, It housed 1200 people, had 800 rooms and covered three acres. Until modern building went up in New York City, it was the largest apartment house in America.

The Cliff Dwellers were, of course, the Indians who made these fine houses. They were farmers. They grew corn, beans, squash and cotton. They wove cotton into cloth and made traps and sandals from the tough fibers of the handsome, native yucca plants, They kept wild and used turkeys and used their fine bones to make embroidery needles.

Why did they leave their beautiful homes, their fine way of life? The answer to this was found in the hearts of the giant redwood trees. These trees are thousands of years old, The rings give a record of the dry and rainy seasons, They tell of a terrible drought between the years 1277 and 1299. The Cliff Dwellers had built ditches and reservoirs to water their farmlands. But their irrigation could not save them when no rains fall, They were forced to become nomads and hunters. Their descendants never returned to farm life when the bitter drought was ended. In time they forgot the way their ancestors had lived in the deserted houses.

Had the Vikings met up with the Cliff Dwellers, they would surely have changed their ideas about Skraelings. For these particular Skraelings could have taught the friends of Lucky Leif Ericson some things about civilized living that even he did not know.