A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola Part 22

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 106. An ancient pueblo form of metate.]

Perhaps the most important article of furniture in the home of the pueblo Indian is the mealing trough, containing the household milling apparatus. This trough usually contains a series of three metates of varying degrees of coa.r.s.eness firmly fixed in a slanting position most convenient for the workers. It consists of thin slabs of sandstone set into the floor on edge, similar slabs forming the separating part.i.tions between the compartments. This arrangement is shown in Fig. 105, ill.u.s.trating a Tusayan mealing trough. Those of Zui are of the same form, as maybe seen in the ill.u.s.tration of a Zui interior, Fig. 105.

Occasionally in recently constructed specimens the thin inclosing walls of the trough are made of planks. In the example ill.u.s.trated one end of the series is bounded by a board, all the other walls and divisions being made of the usual stone slabs. The metates themselves are not usually more than 3 inches in thickness. They are so adjusted in their setting of stones and mortar as to slope away from the operator at the proper angle. This arrangement of the mealing stones is characteristic of the more densely cl.u.s.tered communal houses of late date. In the more primitive house the mealing stone was usually a single large piece of cellular basalt, or similar rock, in which a broad, sloping depression was carved, and which could be transported from place to place. Fig. 106 ill.u.s.trates an example of this type from the vicinity of Globe, in southern Arizona. The stationary mealing trough of the present day is undoubtedly the successor of the earner moveable form, yet it was in use among the pueblos at the time of the first Spanish expedition, as the following extract from Castaedas account[9] of Cibola will show. He says a special room is designed to grind the grain: This last is apart, and contains a furnace and three stones made fast in masonry. Three women sit down before these stones; the first crushes the grain, the second brays it, and the third reduces it entirely to powder. It will be seen how exactly this description fits both the arrangement and the use of this mill at the present time. The perfection of mechanical devices and the refinement of methods here exhibited would seem to be in advance of the achievement of this people in other directions.

[Footnote 9: Given by W. W. H. Davis in El Gringo, p. 119.]

The grinding stones of the mealing apparatus are of correspondingly varying degrees of roughness; those of basalt or lava are used for the first crushing of the corn, and sandstone is used for the final grinding on the last metate of the series. By means of these primitive appliances the corn meal is as finely ground as our wheaten flour. The grinding stones now used are always flat, as shown in Fig. 105, and differ from those that were used with the early ma.s.sive type of metate in being of cylindrical form.

One end of the series of milling troughs is usually built against the wall near the corner of the room. In some cases, where the room is quite narrow, the series extends across from wall to wall. Series comprising four mealing stones, sometimes seen in Zui, are very generally arranged in this manner. In all cases sufficient floor s.p.a.ce is left behind the mills to accommodate the women who kneel at their work. Pl. Lx.x.xVI ill.u.s.trates an unusual arrangement, in which the fourth mealing stone is set at right angles to the other stones of the series.

Mortars are in general use in Zui and Tusayan households. As a rule they are of considerable size, and made of the same material as the rougher mealing stones. They are employed for crushing and grinding the chile or red pepper that enters so largely into the food of the Zui, and whose use has extended to the Mexicans of the same region. These mortars have the ordinary circular depressions and are used with a round pestle or crusher, often of somewhat long, cylindrical form for convenience in handling.

Parts of the apparatus for indoor blanket weaving seen in some of the pueblo houses may be included under the heading of furniture. These consist of devices for the attachment of the movable parts of the loom, which need not be described in this connection. In some of the Tusayan houses may be seen examples of posts sunk in the floor provided with holes for the insertion of cords for attaching and tightening the warp, similar to those built into the kiva floors, ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 31.

No device of this kind was seen in Zui. A more primitive appliance for such work is seen in both groups of pueblos in an occasional stump of a beam or short pole projecting from the wall at varying heights. Ceiling beams are also used for stretching the warp both in blanket and belt weaving.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate CIV. A covered pa.s.sageway in Mashongnavi.]

The furnishings of a pueblo house do not include tables and chairs. The meals are eaten directly from the stone-paved floor, the partic.i.p.ants rarely having any other seat than the blanket that they wear, rolled up or folded into convenient form. Small stools are sometimes seen, but the need of such appliances does not seem to be keenly felt by these Indians, who can, for hours, sit in a peculiar squatting position on their haunches, without any apparent discomfort. Though moveable chairs or stools are rare, nearly all of the dwellings are provided with the low ledge or bench around the rooms, which in earlier times seems to have been confined to the kivas. A slight advance on this fixed form of seat was the stone block used in the Tusayan kivas, described on p. 132, which at the same time served a useful purpose in the adjustment of the warp threads for blanket weaving.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 107. Zui stools.]

The few wooden stools observed show very primitive workmanship, and are usually made of a single piece of wood. Fig. 107 ill.u.s.trates two forms of wooden stool from Zui. The small three-legged stool on the left has been cut from the trunk of a pion tree in such a manner as to utilize as legs the three branches into which the main stem separated. The other stool ill.u.s.trated is also cut from a single piece of tree trunk, which has been reduced in weight by cutting out one side, leaving the two ends for support.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 108. A Zui chair.]

A curiously worked chair of modern form seen in Zui is ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 108. It was difficult to determine the antiquity of this specimen, as its rickety condition may have been due to the clumsy workmanship quite as much as to the effects of age. Rude as is the workmanship, however, it was far beyond the unaided skill of the native craftsman to join and mortise the various pieces that go to make up this chair. Some decorative effect has been sought here, the ornamentation, made up of notches and sunken grooves, closely resembling that on the window sash ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 88, and somewhat similar in effect to the carving on the Spanish beams seen in the Tusayan kivas. The whole construction strongly suggests Spanish influence.

Even the influence of Americans has as yet failed to bring about the use of tables or bedsteads among the pueblo Indians. The floor answers all the purposes of both these useful articles of furniture. The food dishes are placed directly upon it at meal times, and at night the blankets, rugs, and sheep skins that form the bed are spread directly upon it.

These latter, during the day, are suspended upon the clothes pole previously described and ill.u.s.trated.

CORRALS AND GARDENS.

The introduction of domestic sheep among the pueblos has added a new and important element to their mode of living, but they seem never to have reached a clear understanding as to how these animals should be cared for. No forethought is exercised to separate the rams so that the lambs will be born at a favorable season. The flocks consist of sheep and goats which are allowed to run together at all tunes. Black sheep and some with a grayish color of wool are often seen among them. No attempt is made to eliminate these dark-fleeced members of the flock, since the black and gray wool is utilized in its natural color in producing many of the designs and patterns of the blankets woven by these people. The flocks are usually driven up into the corrals or inclosures every evening, and are taken out again in the morning, frequently at quite a late hour. This, together with the time consumed in driving them to and from pasture, gives them much less chance to thrive than those of the nomadic Navajo. In Tusayan the corrals are usually of small size and inclosed by thin walls of rude stone work. This may be seen in the foreground of Pl. XXI. Pl. CIX ill.u.s.trates several corrals just outside the village of Mashongnavi similarly constructed, but of somewhat larger size. Some of the corrals of Oraibi are of still larger size, approaching in this respect the corrals of Cibola. The Oraibi pens are rudely rectangular in form, with more or less rounded angles, and are also built of rude masonry.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate CV. Small square openings in Pueblo Bonito.]

In the less important villages of Cibola stone is occasionally used for inclosing the corrals, as in Tusayan, as may be seen in Pl. LXX, ill.u.s.trating an inclosure of this character in the court of the farming pueblo of Pescado. Pl. CX ill.u.s.trates in detail the manner in which stone work is combined with the use of rude stakes in the construction of this inclosure. On the rugged sites of the Tusayan villages corrals are placed wherever favorable nooks happen to be found in the rocks, but at Zui, built in the comparatively open plain, they form a nearly continuous belt around the pueblo. Here they are made of stakes and brush held in place by horizontal poles tied on with strips of rawhide.

The rudely contrived gateways are supported in natural forks at the top and sides of posts. Often one or two small inclosures used for burros or horses occur near these sheep corrals. The construction is identical with those above described and is very rude. It is ill.u.s.trated in Fig.

109, which shows the manner in which the stakes are arranged, and also the method of attaching the horizontal tie-pieces. The construction of these inclosures is frail, and the danger of pushing the stakes over by pressure from within is guarded against by employing forked braces that abut against horizontal pieces tied on 4 or 5 feet from the ground.

Reference to Pl. LXXIV will ill.u.s.trate this construction.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 109. Construction of a Zui corral.]

Within the village of Zui inclosures resembling miniature corrals are sometimes seen built against the houses; these are used as cages for eagles. A number of these birds are kept in Zui for the sake of their plumage, which is highly valued for ceremonial purposes. Pl. CXI ill.u.s.trates one of these coops, constructed partly with a thin adobe wall and partly with stakes arranged like those of the corrals.

In both of the pueblo groups under discussion, small gardens contiguous to the villages are frequent. Those of Tusayan are walled in with stone.

Within the pueblo of Zui a small group of garden patches is inclosed by stake fences, but the majority of the gardens in the vicinity of the princ.i.p.al villages are provided with low walls of mud masonry. The small terraced gardens here are near the river bank on the southwest and southeast sides of the village. The inclosed s.p.a.ces, averaging in size about 10 feet square, are used for the cultivation of red peppers, beans, etc., which, during the dry season, are watered by hand. These inclosures, situated close to the dwellings, suggest a probable explanation for similar inclosures found in many of the ruins in the southern and eastern portions of the ancient pueblo region. Mr.

Bandelier was informed by the Pimas[10] that these inclosures were ancient gardens. He concluded that since acequias were frequent in the immediate vicinity these gardens must have been used as reserves in case of war, when the larger fields were not available, but the manner of their occurrence in Zui suggests rather that they were intended for cultivation of special crops, such as pepper, beans, cotton, and perhaps also of a variety of tobacco--corn, melons, squashes, etc., being cultivated elsewhere in larger tracts. There is a large group of gardens on the bank of the stream at the southeastern corner of Zui, and here there are slight indications of terracing. A second group on the steeper slope at the southwestern corner is distinctly terraced. Small walled gardens of the same type as these Zui examples occur in the vicinity of some of the Tusayan villages on the middle mesa. They are located near the springs or water pockets, apparently to facilitate watering by hand.

Some of them contain a few small peach trees in addition to the vegetable crops ordinarily met with. The cl.u.s.ters here are, as a rule, smaller than those of Zui, as there is much less s.p.a.ce available in the vicinity of the springs. At one point on the west side of the first mesa, a few miles above Walpi, a copious spring serves to irrigate quite an extensive series of small garden patches distributed over lower slopes.

[Footnote 10: Fifth Ann. Rept. Arch. Inst. Am., p. 92.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 110. Gardens of Zui.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate CVI. Sealed openings in a detached house of Nutria.]

At several points around Zui, usually at a greater distance than the terrace gardens, are fields of much larger area inclosed in a similar manner. Their inclosure was simply to secure them against the depredations of stray burros, so numerous about the village. When the crops are gathered in the autumn, several breaches are made in the low wall and the burros are allowed to luxuriate on the remains. Pl. LIX indicates the position of the large cl.u.s.ter of garden patches on the southeastern side of Zui. Fig. 110, taken from photographs made in 1873, shows several of these small gardens with their growing crops and a large field of corn beyond. The workmanship of the garden walls as contrasted with that of the house masonry has been already described and is ill.u.s.trated in Pl. XC.

KISI CONSTRUCTION.

Lightly constructed shelters for the use of those in charge of fields were probably a constant accompaniment of pueblo horticulture. Such shelters were built of stone or of brush, according to which material was most available.

In very precipitous localities, as the Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly, these outlooks naturally became the so-called cliff-dwellings or isolated shelters.

In Cibola single stone houses are in common use, not to the exclusion, however, of the lighter structures of brush, while in Tusayan these lighter forms, of which there are a number of well defined varieties, are almost exclusively used. A detailed study of the methods of construction employed in these rude shelters would be of great interest as affording a comparison both with the building methods of the ruder neighboring tribes and with those adopted in constructing some of the details of the terraced house; the writer, however, did not have an opportunity of making an examination of all the field shelters used in these pueblos. Two of the simpler types are the tuwahlki, or watch house, and the kishoni, or uncovered shade. The former is constructed by first planting a short forked stick in the ground, which supports one end of a pole, the other end resting on the ground. The interval between this ridge pole and the ground is roughly filled in with slanting sticks and brush, the inclosed s.p.a.ce being not more than 3 feet in height, with a maximum width of four or five feet. These shelters are for the accommodation of the children who watch the melon patches until the fruit is harvested.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 111. Kishoni, or uncovered shade, of Tusayan.]

The kishoni, or uncovered shade, ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 111, is perhaps the simplest form of shelter employed. Ten or a dozen cottonwood saplings are set firmly into the ground, so as to form a slightly curved inclosure with convex side toward the south. Cottonwood and willow boughs in foliage, grease-wood, sage brush, and rabbit brush are laid with stems upward in even rows against these saplings to a height of 6 or 7 feet. This light material is held in place by bands of small cottonwood branches laid in continuous horizontal lines around the outside of the shelter and these are attached to the upright saplings with cottonwood and willow twigs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate CVII. Partial filling-in of a large opening in Oraibi, converting it into a doorway.]

Figs. 112 and 113 ill.u.s.trate a much more elaborate field shelter in Tusayan. As may readily be seen from the figures this shelter covers a considerable area; it will be seen too that the upright branches that inclose two of its sides are of sufficient height to considerably shade the level roof of poles and brush, converting it into a comfortable retreat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 112. A Tusayan field shelter, from southwest.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 113. A Tusayan field shelter, from northeast.]

ARCHITECTURAL NOMENCLATURE.

The following nomenclature, collected by Mr. Stephen, comprises the terms commonly used in designating the constructional details of Tusayan houses and kivas:

Kikoli The ground floor rooms forming the first terrace.

Tupubi The roofed recess at the end of the first terrace.

Ahpabi } A terrace roof.

Ihpobi } Tupatca ihpobi The third terrace, used in common as a loitering place.

Tumtc.o.kobi The place of the flat stone; small rooms in which piki, or paper-bread, is baked. Tuma, the piki stone, and tc.o.k describing its flat position.

Tupatca Where you sit overhead; the third story.

Omi Ahpabi The second story; a doorway always opens from it upon the roof of the kikoli.

Kitcobi The highest place; the fourth story.

Tuhkwa A wall.

Puce An outer corner.

Apaphucua An inside corner.

Lestabi The main roof timbers.

Winakwapi Smaller cross poles. Winahoya, a small pole, and Kwapi, in place.

Kahab kwapi The willow covering.

Sibi kwapi The brush covering.

Sih kwapi The gra.s.s covering.

Kiam balawi The mud plaster of roof covering, Balatlelewini, to spread.