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.