Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines Part 14

The houses were circular in external form, the walls being about five feet high, and sloping inward and upward from the ground, upon which rested an inclined roof, both the exterior wall and the roof being plastered over with earth a foot and a half thick. For this reason they have usually been called "dirt lodges."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 17.--Ground-plan of a Mandan House.]

These houses are about forty feet in diameter, with the floor sunk a foot or more below the surface of the ground, six feet high on the inside at the line of the wall and from twelve to fifteen feet high at the center. Twelve posts, six or eight inches in diameter, are set in the ground, at equal distances, in the circ.u.mference of a circle, and rising about six feet above the level of the floor.

String-pieces resting in forks cut in the ends of these posts, form a polygon at the base and also upon the ground floor. Against these an equal number of braces are sunk in the ground about four feet distant, which slanting upward, are adjusted by means of depressions cut in the ends, so as to hold both the posts and the stringers firmly in their places. Slabs of wood are then set in the s.p.a.ces between the braces at the same inclination, and resting against the stringers, which when completed surrounded the lodge with a wooden wall. Four round posts, each six or eight inches in diameter, are set in the ground near the center of the floor, in the angles of a square, ten feet apart, and rising from ten to fifteen feet above the ground floor. These again are connected by stringers resting in forks at their tops, upon which and the external wall the rafters rest.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 18.--Cross-section of House.]

The engraving exhibits a cross-section, as described. Poles three or four inches in diameter are placed as rafters from the external wall to the string-pieces above the central parts, and near enough together to give the requisite strength to support thee earth covering placed upon the roof. These poles were first covered over with willow matting, upon which prairie gra.s.s was overspread, and over all a deep covering of earth. An opening was left in the center, about four feet in diameter, for the exit of the smoke and for the admission of light. The interior was s.p.a.cious and tolerably well lighted, although the opening in the roof and a single doorway were the only apertures through which light could penetrate. There was but one entrance, protected by what has been called the Eskimo doorway; that is, by a pa.s.sage some five feet wide, ten or twelve feet long, and about six feet high, constructed with split timbers, roofed with poles, and covered with earth. Buffalo-robes suspended at the outer and inner entrances supplied the place of doors. Each house was comparted by screens of willow matting or unhaired skins suspended from the rafters, with s.p.a.ces between for storage. These slightly-constructed apartments opened towards the central fire like stalls, thus defining an open central area around the fire-pit, which was the gathering place of the inmates of the lodge. This fire-pit was about five feet in diameter, a foot deep, and encircled with flat stones set up edgewise. A hard, smooth, earthen floor completed the interior. Such a lodge would accommodate five or six families, embracing thirty or forty persons. It was a communal house, in accordance with the usages and inst.i.tutions of the American aborigines, and growing naturally out of their mode of life. I counted forty-eight houses, winch would average forty feet in diameter, all constructed upon this plan besides several rectangular log houses of later erection and of the American type.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 19.--Mandan house.]

These houses, of which a representation is given in Fig. 19, were thickly studded together to economize the s.p.a.ce within the stockade, so that in walking through the village you pa.s.sed along some circular foot-paths. There was no street, and it was impossible to see in any direction except for short distances. In the center there was an open s.p.a.ce, where their religious rites and festivals were observed. [Footnote: The war post, which stood in the center, and a number of stone and bone implements I brought away with me, as mementoes of the place. They are now in my collection.]

Not the least interesting fact connected with these creditable structures was the quant.i.ty of materials required for their erection and the amount of labor required for their transportation for long distances down the river, and to fas.h.i.+on them, with the aid of fire and stone implements, into such comfortable dwellings. The trees are here confined to the bottom lands between the banks of the river, the river being bordered for miles by open prairies, and the trees growing in patches at long distances apart. To cut the timber without metallic implements, and to transport it without animal power, indicate a degree of persevering industry highly creditable to a people who, at this stage of progress, are averse to labor on the part of the males. Habitual male industry makes its first appearance in the next or the Middle Status of barbarism. The men here did the heavy work.

In the s.p.a.ces between the lodges were their drying-scaffolds (Fig. 20), one for each lodge, which were nearly as conspicuous in the distance as the houses themselves. They were about twenty feet long, twelve feet wide, and seven feet high to the flooring, made of posts set upright, with cross-pieces resting in forks. Other poles were then placed longitudinally, upon which was a flooring of willow mats.

These scaffolds, mounted with ladders (Fig. 21), were used for drying their skins, and also their maize, meat, and vegetables.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 20.--Drying scaffold.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 21.--Mandan ladder.]

The Indians knew the use of the ladder, and some of them made an excellent article before the discovery of America. When Coronado visited and captured the seven so-called cities of Cibola in 1540-1542, he found the people living in seven or eight large joint-tenement houses, each capable of holding about a thousand persons. These houses were without entrances from the ground, but they mounted to the first terrace by means of ladders, and so to each successive story above. "The ladders which they have for their houses," Coronado says in his relation, "are all in a manner movable and portable as ours be." [Footnote: Hakluyt, Coll. of Voyages, London ed., 1812, vol. 5, p. 498.]

The ladders at the Mandan village were made of two limbs growing nearly parallel and severed below the junction, as shown in the figure, and set with the forked end upon the ground, and the ends against the scaffold. Depressions were sunk in the rails to receive the rounds, which were secured by rawhide strings. They were usually from ten to twelve feet long, and one or two at each scaffold.

Situated thus picturesquely on a bluff, at an angle of the river, with houses of this peculiar model and with such an array of scaffolds rising up among them, the village was strikingly conspicuous for some distance both above and below on the river, and presented a remarkable appearance.

Afterwards, at the present Minnetaree and Mandan village about sixty-five miles above on the east side of the Missouri, and also at the new Arickaree village on the west side, and quite near it, I had an opportunity to see houses precisely similar to those described in actual occupation by the Indians, with their interior arrangements and their mode of life.

A reference, at least, should be made to the Maricopas and Mohaves of the Lower Colorado River, who, although village Indians of the pueblo type, still live in ordinary communal houses of the northern type, which are thus described by General Emory: "They (the Maricopas) occupy thatched cottages thirty or forty feet in diameter, made of twigs of cottonwood trees, interwoven with straw of wheat, cornstalks, and cane." [Footnote: Notes, &c., New Mexico, p. 132. See also Bartlet's Personal Narrative, p. 230.]

Those occupied by the Mohaves, as described by Captain Sitgreave, are similar in character. [Footnote: Expedition, &c., Zunyi and Colorado, p. 19.]

The Pimas of the Gila River, on the contrary, claim that their ancestors erected houses of adobe brick, and cultivated by irrigation.

They point to the remains of ancient structures and of old acequias in the valley of the Gila, as Captain Crossman informs us, as the works of their forefathers. But now their condition is very similar to that of the Mohaves. The last-named writer remarks that "generally several married couples with their children live in one hut."

[Footnote: Smithsonian Report for 1871, p. 415.]

The first two tribes, although their antecedent history is little known, seem to be in a transitional stage from the Lower to the Middle Status of barbarism, having pa.s.sed into the horticultural and sedentary condition without being far enough advanced to imitate their near neighbors in the use of adobe brick and of stone in their houses. They seem to be existing examples of that ever-recurring advancement of ruder tribes in past ages, through which the Village Indians of the pueblo type were constantly replenished from the more barbarous tribes. The present Taos Indians are another example.

It is made reasonably plain, I think, from the facts stated, that in the Upper Status of savagery, and also in the Lower Status of barbarism, the Indian household was formed of a number of families of gentile kin; that they practiced communism in living in the household, and that this principle found expression in their house architecture and predetermined its character.

CHAPTER VI.

HOUSES OF THE SEDENTARY INDIANS OF NEW MEXICO.

We are next to consider the houses and mode of life of the Sedentary Village Indians, among whom architecture exhibits a higher development, with the use of durable materials, and with the defensive principle superadded to that of adaptation to communism in living. It will not be difficult to discover and follow this latter principle, as one of the chief characteristics of this architecture in the pueblo houses in New Mexico, and in the region of the San Juan River, and afterwards in those of Mexico and Central America.

Throughout all these regions there was one connected system of house architecture, as there was substantially one mode of life.

In New Mexico, going southward, the Indians, at the epoch of discovery, were not in a new dress and in an improved condition.

They had advanced out of the Lower and into the Middle Status of barbarism; the houses in which they dwelt were of adobe brick or of stone, two, three, four, and sometimes five and six stories in height, and containing from fifty to five hundred apartments. They cultivated maize and plants by means of irrigating ca.n.a.ls. The water was drawn from a running stream, taken at a point above the pueblo and carried down and through a series of garden beds. They wore mantles of cotton, as well as garments of skin.

[Footnote: "They have no cotton-wool growing, because the country is cold, yet they wear mantles thereof, as your honor may see by the show thereof; and true it is, that there was found in their houses certain yarn made of cotton-wool."--Coronado's Relation, Hakluyt's Coll. of Voyages, London ed., 1600, iii, p. 377.]

[Footnote: "Their garments were of cotton and deer skins, and the attire, both of men and women, was after the manner of Indians of Mexico.... Both men and women wore shoes and boots, with good soles of neat's leather--a thing never seen in any part of the Indies."-- Voyages to New Mexico, by Friar Augustin Rueyz, a Franciscan, in 1581, and Antonio de Espejo in 1583. Explorations for Railroad Route, &c., Report Indian Tribes, vol. iii, p. 114.]

The present Pueblo Indians of New Mexico are in the main their descendants. They live, some of them, in the same identical houses their forefathers occupied at the time of Coronado's expedition to New Mexico in 1541-1542, as at Acoma, Jemez, and Taos, and although their plan and mode of life have changed in some respects in the interval, it is not unlikely that they remain to this day a fair sample of the life of the Village Indians from Zunyi to Cuzco as it existed in the sixteenth century.

The Indians north of New Mexico did not construct their houses more than one story high, or of more durable materials than a frame of poles or of timber covered with matting or bark, or coated over with earth. A stockade around their houses was their princ.i.p.al protection.

In New Mexico, going southward, are met for the first time houses constructed with several stories. Sun-dried brick must have come into use earlier than stone. The practice of the ceramic art would suggest the brick sooner or later. At all events, what are supposed to be the oldest remains of architecture in New Mexico, such as the Casas Grandes of the Gila and Salinas rivers, are of adobe brick.

They also used cobble-stone with adobe mortar, and finally thin pieces of tabular sandstone, prepared by fracture, which made a solid and durable stone wall. Some of the existing pueblo houses in New Mexico are as old as the expedition of Coronado (1540-1542).

Others, constructed since that event, and now occupied, are of the aboriginal model. There are at present about twenty of these pueblos in New Mexico, inhabited by about 7, 000 Village Indians, the descendants of those found there by Coronado. They are still living substantially under their ancient organization and usages. Besides these, there are seven pueblos of the Mokis, near the Little Colorado, occupied by about 3,000 Indians, who have remained undisturbed to the present time, except by Roman Catholic missionaries, and among whom the entire theory of life of the Sedentary Village Indians may yet be obtained. These Village Indians represent at the present moment the type of life found from Zunyi to Cuzco at the epoch of the Discovery, and, while they are not the highest, they are no unfit representatives of the entire cla.s.s.

The Yucatan and Central American Indians were, in their architecture, in advance of the remaining aborigines of North America. Next to them, probably, were the Aztecs, and some few tribes southward. Holding the third position, though not far behind, were the Village Indians of New Mexico. All alike they depended upon horticulture for subsistence, and cultivated by irrigation; cotton being superadded to the maize, beans, squashes, and tobacco, cultivated by the northern tribes. Their houses, with those previously described, represent together an original indigenous architecture, which, with its diversities, sprang out of their necessities. Its fundamental communal type, I repeat, is found not less clearly in the houses about to be described, and in the so-called palace at Palenque, than in the long-house of the Iroquois. An examination of the plan of the structures in Mexico, New Mexico, and Central America will tend to establish the truth of this proposition.

New Mexico is a poor country for civilized man, but quite well adapted to Sedentary Indians, who cultivate about one acre out of every hundred thousand. This region, and the San Juan, immediately north of it, possessed a number of narrow fertile valleys, containing together, possibly, 50,000 inhabitants, and it is occupied now by their descendants (excepting the San Juan) in manner and form as it was then. Each pueblo consisted either of a single great house, or of three or four such houses grouped together; and what is more significant, the New Mexican pueblo is a fair type of those now found in ruins in Yucatan, Chiapas, Guatemala, and Honduras, in general plan and in situation. All the people lived together in these great houses on terms of equality, for their inst.i.tutions were essentially democratical. Common tenements for common Indians around these structures were not found there by Coronado in 1541, neither have any been found there since. There is not the slightest ground for supposing that any such tenements ever existed around those in Yucatan and Central America. Every structure was in the nature of a fortress, showing the insecurity in which they lived.

Since the year 1846, the date of the conquest of New Mexico, a number of military reconnaissances, under the direction of the War Department, have been made in various parts of the Territory. The army officers in change devoted their chief attention to the physical geography and resources of the regions traversed; but, incidentally, they investigated the pueblos in ruins, and the present condition of the Pueblo Indians. The admirable manner in which they have executed the work is shown by the series of reports issued from time to time by the government. More recently, the Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, under Prof. F.

V. Hayden, geologist in charge, and also the Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, Maj. J. W. Powell, geologist in charge, have furnished a large amount of additional information concerning the ruins on the San Juan and its tributaries, the Cliff Houses on the Mancos River and elsewhere, and the Moki Pueblos. Valuable as this information is to us, it falls short of a full exposition of these several subjects.

At the time of Coronado's expedition to capture the Seven Cities of Cibola, so called in the relations of the period, the aborigines of New Mexico manufactured earthen vessels of large size and excellent workmans.h.i.+p, wove cotton fabrics with spun thread, cultivated irrigated gardens, were armed with the bow, arrow, and s.h.i.+eld, wore deer-skins and buffalo robes and also cotton mantles as external garments, and had domesticated the wild turkey.

[Footnote: "We found here Guinea c.o.c.ks [turkeys], but few. The Indians tell me in all these seven cities that they eat them not, but that they keep them only for their feathers. I believe them not, for they are excellent good, and greater than those of Mexico."-- Coronado Rel., Hakluyt, iii, 377.]

"They had hardly provisions enough for themselves," remarks Jaramillo of the Cibolans, "and what they had consisted of maize, beans, and squashes." [Footnote: Relation of Capt. Juan Jaramillo, Coll. Terneaux-Compans, ix, 369.]

"What was true of the Cibolans in this respect was doubtless true of the Sedentary Indians in general. Each pueblo was an independent organization under a council of chiefs, except as several contiguous pueblos, speaking dialects of the same language, were confederated for mutual protection, of which the seven Cibolan pueblos, situated probably in the valley of the Rio Chaco, within an extent of twelve miles, afford a fair example." The degree of their advancement is more conspicuously shown in their house architecture.

The present Village Indians of New Mexico, or at least some of them, still manufacture earthen vessels, and spin and weave cotton fabrics in the aboriginal manner, and live in houses of the ancient model.

Some of them, as the Mokis and Lagunas, are organized in gentes, and governed by a council of chiefs, each village being independent and self-governing. They observe the same law of hospitality universally practiced by the Northern Indians. Upon this subject, Mr. David J.

Miller, of Santa Fe, writes as follows to the author: "A visitor to one of their houses is invariably tendered its hospitality in the form of food placed before him. A failure to tender it is deemed a grave breach of hospitality and an insult; and a declension to partake of it would be regarded as a breach of etiquette. As among us, they have their rich and their poor, and the former give to the latter cheerfully and in due plenty." Here we find a nearly exact repet.i.tion of the Iroquois and Mandan rules of hospitality before given. Whether or not they formerly practiced communism in household groups, I am not informed. Their houses are adapted to this mode of life, as will presently be shown; and upon that fact and their stage of social advancement, the deduction of the practice must for the present rest.

JOINT TENEMENT HOUSES OF VILLAGE INDIANS IN NEW MEXICO.

Santo Domingo is composed of several structures of adobe brick grouped together, as shown in the engraving, Fig 22. Each is about two hundred feet long, with two parallel rows of apartments on the ground, of which the front row is carried up one story, and the back two; the flat roof of the first story forming a terrace in front of the second. The first story is closed up solid for defensive reasons, with the exception of small window openings. The first terrace is reached by means of ladders from the ground; the rooms in the first story are entered through trap-doors in the floors, and in the second through doors opening upon the terrace, and also through trap-doors through the floors which form the roof. These structures are typical of all the aboriginal houses in New Mexico. They show two princ.i.p.al features: first, the terraced form of architecture, common also in Mexico, with the house tops as the social gathering places of the inmates; and, second, a closed ground story for safety.

Every house, therefore, is a fortress. Lieutenant Abert remarks upon one of the houses of this pueblo, of which he gives an elevation, that "the upper story is narrower than the one below, so that there is a platform or landing along the whole length of the building. To enter, you ascend to the platform by means of ladders that could easily be removed; and, as there is a parapet wall extending along the platform, these houses could be converted into formidable forts."

[Footnote: Ex. Doc. No. 41, 1st session 30th Congress, 1848, p. 462.]

The number of apartments in each house is not stated. The different houses at that time were inhabited by eight hundred Indians.

Chimneys now appear above the roofs, the fire-place being at the angle of the chamber in front. These were evidently of later introduction. The defensive element, so prominent in this architecture, was not so much to protect the Village Indians from each other, as from the attacks of migrating bands flowing down upon them from the North. The pueblos now in ruins throughout the original area of New Mexico, and for some distance north of it, testify to the perpetual struggle of the former to maintain their ground, as well as prove the insecurity in which they lived. It could be shown that the second and additional stories were suggested by the defensive principle.