A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola Part 10

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate XLIV. Moen-kopi.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate (unnumbered key).]

At the time of the survey the occupation of this village throughout the year was proposed by several families, who wished to resort to the parent village only at stated ceremonials and important festivals.

The comparative security of recent times is thus tending to the disintegration of the huge central pueblo. This result must be inevitable, as the dying out of the defensive motive brings about a realization of the great inconvenience of the present centralized system.

ZUI.

The pueblo of Zui is built upon a small knoll on the north bank of the Zui River, about three miles west of the conspicuous mesa of Taaiyalana. It is the successor of all the original Seven Cities of Cibola of the Spaniards, and is the largest of the modern pueblos.

As before stated, the remains of Halona, one of the seven cities, as identified by Mr. Cus.h.i.+ng, have served as a nucleus for the construction of the modern pueblo, and have been incorporated into the most densely cl.u.s.tered portions, represented on the plan (Pl. LXXVI) by numbers 1 and 4.

Some of the Cibolan villages were valley pueblos, built at a distance from the rocky mesas and canyons that must have served as quarries for the stone used in building. The Halona site was of this type, the nearest supply of stone being 3 miles distant. At this point (Halona) the Zui River is perennial, and furnishes a plentiful supply of water at all seasons of the year. It disappears, however, a few miles west in a broad, sandy wash, to appear again 20 miles below the village, probably through the accession of small streams from springs farther down. The so-called river furnishes the sole water supply at Zui, with the exception of a single well or reservoir on the north side of the village.

Zui has been built at a point having no special advantages for defense; convenience to large areas of tillable soil has apparently led to the selection of the site. This has subjected it in part to the same influences that had at an earlier date produced the carefully walled fortress pueblos of the valleys, where the defensive efficiency was due to well planned and constructed buildings. The result is that Zui, while not comparable in symmetry to many of the ancient examples, displays a remarkably compact arrangement of dwellings in the portions of the pueblos first occupied, designated on the plan (Pl. LXXVI) as houses 1 and 4. Owing to this restriction of lateral expansion this portion of the pueblo has been carried to a great height.

Pl. LXXVIII gives a general view of these higher terraces of the village from the southeast. A height of five distinct terraces from the ground is attained on the south side of this cl.u.s.ter. The same point, however, owing to the irregularity of the site, is only three terraces above the ground on the north side. The summit of the knoll upon which the older portion of Zui has been built is so uneven, and the houses themselves vary so much in dimensions, that the greatest disparity prevails in the height of terraces. A three-terrace portion of a cl.u.s.ter may have but two terraces immediately alongside, and throughout the more closely built portions of the village the exposed height of terraces varies from 1 foot to 8 or 10 feet. Pl. LXXIX ill.u.s.trates this feature.

The growth of the village has apparently been far beyond the original expectation of the builders, and the crowded additions seem to have been joined to the cl.u.s.ters wherever the demand for more s.p.a.ce was most urgent, without following any definite plan in their arrangement. In such of the ancient pueblo ruins as afford evidence of having pa.s.sed through a similar experience, the crowding of additional cells seems to have been made to conform to some extent to a predetermined plan. At Kin-tiel we have seen how such additions to the number of habitable rooms could readily be made within the open court without affecting the symmetry and defensive efficiency of the pueblo; but here the nucleus of the large cl.u.s.ters was small and compact, so that enlargement has taken place only by the addition of rooms on the outside, both on the ground and on upper terraces.

The highest point of Zui, now showing five terraces, is said to have had a height of seven terraces as late as the middle of the present century, but at the time of the survey of the village no traces were seen of such additional stories. The top of the present fifth terrace, however, is more than 50 feet long, and affords sufficient s.p.a.ce for the addition of a sixth and seventh story.

The court or plaza in which the church (Pl. Lx.x.x) stands is so much larger than such inclosures usually are when incorporated in a pueblo plan that it seems unlikely to have formed part of the original village.

It probably resulted from locating the church prior to the construction of the eastern rows of the village. Certain features in the houses themselves indicate the later date of these rows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate XLV. The Mormon mill at Moen-kopi.]

The arrangement of dwellings about a court (Pl. Lx.x.xII), characteristic of the ancient pueblos, is likely to have prevailed in the small pueblo of Halona, about which cl.u.s.tered the many irregular houses that const.i.tute modern Zui. Occasional traces of such an arrangement are still met with in portions of Zui, although nearly all of the ancient pueblo has been covered with rooms of later date. In the arrangement of Zui houses a noticeable difference in the manner of cl.u.s.tering is found in different parts of the pueblo. That portion designated as house No. 1 on the plan, built over the remains of the original small pueblo, is unquestionably the oldest portion of the village. The cl.u.s.tering seems to have gone on around this center to an extraordinary and exceptional extent before any houses were built in other portions. House No. 4 is a portion of the same structure, for although a street or pa.s.sageway intervenes it is covered with two or three terraces, indicating that such connection was established at an early date. The rows on the lower ground to the east (Pl. Lx.x.xI), where the rooms are not so densely cl.u.s.tered, were built after the removal of the defensive motive that influenced the construction of the central pile. These portions, arranged approximately in rows, show a marked resemblance to pueblos of known recent date. That they were built subsequently to the main cl.u.s.ters is also indicated by the abundant use of oblique openings and roof holes, where there is very little necessity for such contrivances.

This feature was originally devised to meet the exceptional conditions of lighting imposed by dense crowding of the living rooms. It will be referred to again in examining the details of openings, and its wide departure from the arrangement found to prevail generally in pueblo constructions will there be noted. The habit of making such provisions for lighting inner rooms became fixed and was applied generally to many cl.u.s.ters much smaller in size than those of other pueblos where this feature was not developed and where the necessity for it was not felt.

These less crowded rooms of more recent construction form the eastern portion of the pueblo, and also include the governors house on the south side.

The old ceremonial rooms or kivas, and the rooms for the meeting of the various orders or secret societies were, during the Spanish occupancy, crowded into the innermost recesses of this ancient portion of Zui under house No. 1. But the kivas, in all likelihood, occupied a more marginal position before such foreign influence was brought to bear on them, as do some of the kivas at the present time, and as is the general practice in other modern pueblos.

CHAPTER IV.

ARCHITECTURE OF TUSAYAN AND CIBOLA COMPARED BY CONSTRUCTIONAL DETAILS.

INTRODUCTION.

In the two preceding chapters the more general features of form and distribution in the ruined and inhabited pueblos of Tusayan and Cibola have been described. In order to gain a full and definite idea of the architectural acquirements of the pueblo builders it will be necessary to examine closely the constructional details of their present houses, endeavoring, when practicable, to compare these details with the rather meager vestiges of similar features that have survived the destruction of the older villages, noting the extent to which these have departed from early types, and, where practicable, tracing the causes of such deviation. For convenience of comparison the various details of housebuilding for the two groups will be treated together.

The writer is indebted to Mr. A. M. Stephen, the collector of the traditionary data already given, for information concerning the rites connected with house building at Tusayan incorporated in the following pages, and also for the carefully collected and valuable nomenclature of architectural details appended hereto. Material of this cla.s.s pertaining to the Cibola group of pueblos unfortunately could not be procured.

HOUSE BUILDING.

RITES AND METHODS.

The ceremonials connected with house building in Tusayan are quite meager, but the various steps in the ritual, described in their proper connection in the following paragraphs, are well defined and definitely a.s.signed to those who partic.i.p.ate in the construction of the buildings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate XLVI. Hawikuh, plan.]

So far as could be ascertained there is no prearranged plan for an entire house of several stories, or for the arrangement of contiguous houses. Most of the ruins examined emphasize this absence of a clearly defined general plan governing the location of rooms added to the original cl.u.s.ter. Two notable exceptions to this want of definite plan occur among the ruins described. In Tusayan the Fire House (Fig. 7) is evidently the result of a clearly defined purpose to give a definite form to the entire cl.u.s.ter, just as, on a very much larger scale, does the ruin of Kin-tiel, belonging to the Cibola group (Pl. LXIII). In both these cases the fixing of the outer wall on a definite line seems to have been regarded as of more importance than the specific locations of individual rooms or dwellings within this outline. Throughout that part of Tusayan which has been examined, however, the single room seems now to be regarded as the pueblo unit, and is spoken of as a complete house.

It is the construction of such a house unit that is here to be described.

A suitable site having been selected, the builder considers what the dimensions of the house should be, and these he measures by paces, placing a stone or other mark at each corner. He then goes to the woods and cuts a sufficient number of timbers for the roof of a length corresponding to the width of his house. Stones are also gathered and roughly dressed, and in all these operations he is a.s.sisted by his friends, usually of his own gens. These a.s.sistants receive no compensation except their food, but that of itself entails considerable expense on the builder, and causes him to build his house with as few helpers as possible.

The material having been acc.u.mulated, the builder goes to the village chief, who prepares for him four small eagle feathers. The chief ties a short cotton string to the stem of each, sprinkles them with votive meal, and breathes upon them his prayers for the welfare of the proposed house and its occupants. These feathers are called Nakwa kwoci, a term meaning a breathed prayer, and the prayers are addressed to Msauwu, the Sun, and to other deities concerned in house-life. These feathers are placed at the four corners of the house and a large stone is laid over each of them. The builder then decides where the door is to be located, and marks the place by setting some food on each side of it; he then pa.s.ses around the site from right to left, sprinkling piki crumbs and other particles of food, mixed with native tobacco, along the lines to be occupied by the walls. As he sprinkles this offering he sings to the Sun his Kitdauwi, house song: Si-ai, a-hai, si-ai, a-hai. The meaning of these words the people have now forgotten.

Mr. Stephen has been informed by the Indians that the man is a mason and the woman the plasterer, the house belonging to the woman when finished; but according to my own observation this is not the universal practice in modern Tusayan. In the case of the house in Oraibi, ill.u.s.trated in Pl. XL from a photograph, much, if not all, of the masonry was laid, as well as finished and plastered, by the woman of the house and her female relatives. There was but one man present at this house-building, whose grudgingly performed duty consisted of lifting the larger roof beams and lintels into place and of giving occasional a.s.sistance in the heavier work. The ground about this house was strewn with quant.i.ties of broken stone for masonry, which seemed to be all prepared and brought to the spot before building began; but often the various divisions of the work are carried on by both men and women simultaneously. While the men were dressing the stones, the women brought earth and water and mixed a mud plaster. Then the walls were laid in irregular courses, using the mortar very sparingly.

The house is always built in the form of a parallelogram, the walls being from 7 to 8 feet high, and of irregular thickness, sometimes varying from 15 to 22 inches in different parts of the same wall.

Pine, pion, juniper, cottonwood, willow, and indeed all the available trees of the region are used in house construction. The main beams for the roof are usually of pine or cottonwood, from which the bark has been stripped. The roof is always made nearly level, and the ends of the beams are placed across the side walls at intervals of about 2 feet.

Above these are laid smaller poles parallel with the side walls, and not more than a foot apart. Across these again are laid reeds or small willows, as close together as they can be placed, and above this series is crossed a layer of gra.s.s or small twigs and weeds. Over this framework a layer of mud is spread, which, after drying, is covered with earth and firmly trodden down. The making of the roof is the work of the women. When it is finished the women proceed to spread a thick coating of mud for a floor. After this follows the application of plaster to the walls. Formerly a custom prevailed of leaving a small s.p.a.ce on the wall unplastered, a belief then existing that a certain Katchina came and finished it, and although the s.p.a.ce remained bare it was considered to be covered with an invisible plaster.

The house being thus far completed, the builder prepares four feathers similar to those prepared by the chief, and ties them to a short piece of willow, the end of which is inserted over one of the central roof beams. These feathers are renewed every year at the feast of Soyalyina, celebrated in December, when the sun begins to return north ward. The builder also makes an offering to Msauwu (called feeding the house) by placing fragments of food among the rafters, beseeching him not to hasten the departure of any of the family to the under world.

A hole is left in one corner of the roof, and under this the woman builds a fireplace and chimney. The former is usually but a small cavity about a foot square in the corner of the floor. Over this a chimney hood is constructed, its lower rim being about 3 feet above the floor.

As a rule the house has no eaves, the roof being finished with a stone coping laid flush with the wall and standing a few inches higher than the roof to preserve the earth covering from being blown or washed away.

Roof-drains of various materials are also commonly inserted in the copings, as will be described later.

All the natives, as far as could be ascertained, regard this single-roomed house as being complete in itself, but they also consider it the nucleus of the larger structure. When more s.p.a.ce is desired, as when the daughters of the house marry and require room for themselves, another house is built in front of and adjoining the first one, and a second story is often added to the original house. The same ceremony is observed in building the ground story in front, but there is no ceremony for the second and additional stories.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate XLVII. Hawikuh, view.]

Anawita (war-chief of Sichumovi) describes the house in Walpi in which he was born as having had five rooms on the ground floor, and as being four stories high, but it was terraced both in front and rear, his sisters and their families occupying the rear portion. The fourth story consisted of a single room and had terraces on two opposite sides. This old house is now very dilapidated, and the greater portion of the walls have been carried away. There is no prescribed position for communicating doorways, but the outer doors are usually placed in the lee walls to avoid the prevailing southwest winds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 19. A Tusayan wood rack.]

Formerly on the approach of cold weather, and to some extent the custom still exists, people withdrew from the upper stories to the kikoli rooms, where they huddled together to keep warm. Economy in the consumption of fuel also prompted this expedient; but these ground-floor rooms forming the first terrace, as a rule having no external doorways, and entered from without by means of a roof hatchway provided with a ladder, are ordinarily used only for purposes of storage. Even their roofs are largely utilized for the temporary storage of many household articles, and in the autumn, after the harvests have been gathered, the terraces and copings are often covered with drying peaches, and the peculiar long strips into which pumpkins and squashes have been cut to facilitate their desiccation for winter use. Among other things the household supply of wood is sometimes piled up at one end of this terrace, but more commonly the natives have so many other uses for this s.p.a.ce that the sticks of fuel are piled up on a rude projecting skeleton of poles, supported on one side by two upright forked sticks set into the ground, and on the other resting upon the stone coping of the wall, as ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 19. At other times poles are laid across a re-entering angle of a house and used as a wood rack, without any support from the ground. At the autumn season not only is the available s.p.a.ce of the first terrace fully utilized, but every projecting beam or stick is covered with strings of drying meat or squashes, and many long poles are extended between convenient points to do temporary duty as additional drying racks. There was in all cases at least one fireplace on the inside in the upper stories, but the cooking was done on the terraces, usually at the end of the first or kikoli roof. This is still a general custom, and the end of the first terrace is usually walled up and roofed, and is called tupubi. Tuma is the name of the flat baking-stone used in the houses, but the flat stone used for baking at the kisi in the field is called tupubi.

Kikoli is the name of the ground story of the house, which has no opening in the outer wall.

The term for the terraced roofs is ihpobi, and is applied to all of them; but the tupatca ihpobi, or third terrace, is the place of general resort, and is regarded as a common loitering place, no one claiming distinct owners.h.i.+p. This is suggestive of an early communal dwelling, but nothing definite can now be ascertained on this point. In this connection it may also be noted that the eldest sisters house is regarded as their home by her younger brothers and her nieces and nephews.

Aside from the tupubi, there are numerous small rooms especially constructed for baking the thin, paper-like bread called piki. These are usually not more than from 5 to 7 feet high, with interior dimensions not larger than 7 feet by 10, and they are called tumc.o.kobi, the place of the flat stone, tuma being the name of the stone itself, and tc.o.k describing its flat position. Many of the ground-floor rooms in the dwelling houses are also devoted to this use.

The terms above are those more commonly used in referring to the houses and their leading features. A more exhaustive vocabulary of architectural terms, comprising those especially applied to the various constructional features of the kivas or ceremonial rooms, and to the kisis, or temporary brush shelters for field use, will be found near the end of this paper.

The only trace of a traditional village plan, or arrangement of contiguous houses, is found in a meager mention in some of the traditions, that rows of houses were built to inclose the kiva, and to form an appropriate place for the public dances and processions of masked dancers. No definite ground plan, however, is ascribed to these traditional court-inclosing houses, although at one period in the evolution of this defensive type of architecture they must have partaken somewhat of the symmetrical grouping found on the Rio Chaco and elsewhere.

LOCALIZATION OF GENTES.

In the older and more symmetrical examples there was doubtless some effort to distribute the various gentes, or at least the phratries, in definite quarters of the village, as stated traditionally. At the present day, however, there is but little trace of such localization. In the case of Oraibi, the largest of the Tusayan villages, Mr. Stephen has with great care and patience ascertained the distribution of the various gentes in the village, as recorded on the accompanying skeleton plan (Pl. x.x.xVII). An examination of the diagram in connection with the appended list of the families occupying Oraibi will at once show that, however clearly defined may have been the quarters of various gentes in the traditional village, the greatest confusion prevails at the present time. The families numerically most important, such as the Reed, Coyote, Lizard, and Badger, are represented in all of the larger house cl.u.s.ters.