Eighth Annual Report Part 19

The finish of pueblo masonry rarely went far beyond the two leading forms, to which attention has been called, the free use of adobe on the one hand and the banded arrangement of ancient masonry on the other.

These types appear to present development along divergent lines. The banded feature doubtless reached such a point of development in the Chaco pueblos that its decorative value began to be appreciated, for it is apparent that its elaboration has extended far beyond the requirements of mere utility. This point would never have been reached had the practice prevailed of covering the walls with a coating of mud.

The cruder examples of banded construction, however--those that still kept well within constructional expediency--were doubtless covered with a coating of plaster where they occurred inside of the rooms. At Tusayan and Cibola, on the other hand, the tendency has been rather to elaborate the plastic element of the masonry. The nearly universal use of adobe is undoubtedly largely responsible for the more slovenly methods of building now in vogue, as it effectually conceals careless construction.

It is not to be expected that walls would be carefully constructed of banded stonework when they were to be subsequently covered with mud. The elaboration of the use of adobe and its employment as a periodical coating for the dwellings, probably developed gradually into the use of a whitewash for the house walls, resulting finally in crude attempts at wall decoration.

Many of the interiors in Zui are washed with a coating of white, clayey gypsum, used in the form of a solution made by dissolving in hot water the lumps of the raw material, found in many localities. The mixture is applied to the walls while hot, and is spread by means of a rude glove-like sack, made of sheep or goat skin, with the hair side out.

With this primitive brush the Zui housewives succeed in laying on a smooth and uniform coating over the plaster. An example of this cla.s.s of work was observed in a room of house No. 2. It is difficult to determine to what extent this idea is aboriginal; as now employed it has doubtless been affected by the methods of the neighboring Spanish population, among whom the practice of white-coating the adobe houses inside and out is quite common. Several traces of whitewashing have been found among the cliff-dwellings of Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly, notably at the ruin known as Casa Blanca, but as some of these ruins contained evidences of post-Spanish occupation, the occurrence there of the whitewash does not necessarily imply any great antiquity for the practice.

External use of this material is much rarer, particularly in Zui, where only a few walls of upper stories are whitened. Where it is not protected from the rains by an overhanging coping or other feature, the finish is not durable. Occasionally where a doorway or other opening has been repaired the evidences of patchwork are obliterated by a surrounding band of fresh plastering, varying in width from 4 inches to a foot or more. Usually this band is laid on as a thick wash of adobe, but in some instances a decorative effect is attained by using white.

It is curious to find that at Tusayan the decorative treatment of the finishing wash has been carried farther than at Zui. The use of a darker band of color about the base of a whitewashed room has already been noticed in the description of a Tusayan interior. On many of the outer walls of upper stories the whitewash has been stopped within a foot of the coping, the unwhitened portion of the walls at the top having the effect of a frieze. In a second story house of Mashongnavi, that had been carefully whitewashed, additional decorative effect was produced by tinting a broad band about the base of the wall with an application of bright pinkish clay, which was also carried around the doorway as an enframing band, as in the case of the Zui door above described. The angles on each side, at the junction of the broad base band with the narrower doorway border, were filled in with a design of alternating pink and white squares. This doorway is ill.u.s.trated in Fig.

36. Farther north, on the same terrace, the jamb of a whitewashed doorway was decorated with the design shown on the right hand side of Fig. 36, executed also in pink clay. This design closely resembles a pattern that is commonly embroidered upon the large white kachina, or ceremonial blankets. It is not known whether the device is here regarded as having any special significance. The pink clay in which these designs have been executed has in Sichumovi been used for the coating of an entire house front.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 36. Wall decorations in Mashongnavi executed in pink on a white ground].

In addition to the above-mentioned uses of stone and earth in the masonry of house walls, the pueblo builders have employed both these materials in a more primitive manner in building the walls of corrals and gardens, and for other purposes. The small terraced gardens of Zui, located on the borders of the village on the southwest and southeast sides, close to the river bank, are each surrounded by walls 2 or 3 feet high, of very light construction, the average thickness not exceeding 6 or 8 inches. These rude walls are built of small, irregularly rounded lumps of adobe, formed by hand, and coa.r.s.ely plastered with mud. When the crops are gathered in the fall the walls are broken down in places to facilitate access to the inclosures, so that they require repairing at each planting season. Aside from this they are so frail as to require frequent repairs throughout the period of their use. This method of building walls was adopted because it was the readiest and least laborious means of inclosing the required s.p.a.ce.

The character of these garden walls is ill.u.s.trated in Pl. XC, and their construction with rough lumps of crude adobe shows also the contrast between the weak appearance of this work and the more substantial effect of the masonry of the adjoining unfinished house. At the Cibolan farming pueblos inclosing walls were usually made of stone, as were also those of Tusayan. Pl. LXX indicates the manner in which the material has been used in the corrals of Pescado, located within the village. The stone walls are used in combination with stakes, such as are employed at the main pueblo.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate LXIX. Pescado, plan.]

Small inclosed gardens, like those of Zui, occur at several points in Tusayan. The thin walls are made of dry masonry, quite as rude in character as those inclosing the Zui gardens. The smaller cl.u.s.ters are usually located in the midst of large areas of broken stone that has fallen from the mesa above. In the foreground of Pl. XXII may be seen a number of examples of such work. Pl. XCI ill.u.s.trates a group of corrals at Oraibi whose walls are laid up without the use of mud mortar.

Where exceptionally large blocks of stone are available they have been utilized in an upright position, and occur at greater or less intervals along the thin walls of dry masonry. An example of this use was seen in a garden wall on the west side of Walpi, where the stones had been set on end in the yielding surface of a sandy slope among the foothills.

A similar arrangement, occurring close to the houses at Ojo Caliente, is ill.u.s.trated in Pl. XCII. Large, upright slabs of stone have been used by the pueblo builders in many ways, sometimes incorporated into the architecture of the houses, and again in detached positions at some distance from the villages. Pls. XCIII and XCIV, drawn from the photographs of Mr. W. H. Jackson, afford ill.u.s.trations of this usage in the ancient ruins of Montezuma Canyon. In the first of these cases the stones were utilized, apparently, in house masonry. Among the ruins in the valley of the San Juan and its tributaries, as described by Messrs.

W. H. Holmes and W. H. Jackson, varied arrangements of upright slabs of stone are of frequent occurrence. The rows of stones are sometimes arranged in squares, sometimes in circles, and occasionally are incorporated into the walls of ordinary masonry, as in the example ill.u.s.trated. Isolated slabs are also met with among the ruins. At Kiakima, at a point near the margin of the ruin, occurs a series of very large, upright slabs, which occupy the positions of headstones to a number of small inclosures, thought to be mortuary, outlined upon the ground. These have been already described in connection with the ground plan of this village.

The employment of upright slabs of stone to mark graves probably prevailed to some extent in ancient practice, but other uses suggest themselves. Occupying a conspicuous point in the village of Kin-tiel (Pl. LXIII) is an upright slab of sandstone which seems to stand in its original position undisturbed, though the walls of the adjoining rooms are in ruins. A similar feature was seen at Peas...o...b..anco, on the east side of the village and a short distance without the inclosing wall.

Both these rude pillars are, in character and in position, very similar to an upright stone of known use at Zui. A hundred and fifty feet from this pueblo is a large upright block of sandstone, which is said to be used as a datum point in the observations of the sun made by a priest of Zui for the regulation of the time for planting and harvesting, for determining the new year, and for fixing the dates of certain other ceremonial observances. By the aid of such devices as the native priests have at their command they are enabled to fix the date of the winter solstice with a fair degree of accuracy. Such rude determination of time was probably an aboriginal invention, and may have furnished the motive in other cases for placing stone pillars in such unusual positions. The explanation of the governor of Zui for a sun symbol seen on an upright stone at Matsaki has been given in the description of that place. Single slabs are also used, as seen in the easternmost room group of Taaiyalana, and in the southwestern cl.u.s.ter on the same mesa, in the building of shrines for the deposit of plume sticks and other ceremonial objects.

An unusual employment of small stones in an upright position occurs at Zui. The inclosing wall of the church yard, still used as a burial place, is provided at intervals along its top with upright pieces of stone set into the joints of a regular coping course that caps the wall.

This feature may have some connection with the idea of vertical grave stones, noted at Kiakima. It is difficult to surmise what practical purpose could have been subserved by these small upright stones.

Notwithstanding the use of large stones for special purposes the pueblo builders rarely appreciated the advantages that might be obtained by the proper use of such material. Pueblo masonry is essentially made up of small, often minute, constructional units. This restriction doubtless resulted in a higher degree of mural finish than would otherwise have been attained, but it also imposes certain limitations upon their architectural achievement. Some of these are noted in the discussion of openings and of other details of construction.

Pl. XLV, an ill.u.s.tration of a Mormon mill building at Moen-kopi, already referred to in the description of that village, is introduced for the purpose of comparing the methods adopted by the natives and by the whites in the treatment of the same cla.s.s of material. Perhaps the most noteworthy contrast is seen in the sills and lintels of the openings.

ROOFS AND FLOORS.

In the pueblo system of building, roof and floor is one; for all the floors, except such as are formed immediately on the surface of the ground, are at the same time the roofs and ceilings of lower rooms. The pueblo plan of to-day readily admits of additions at any time and almost at any point of the basal construction. The addition of rooms above converts a roof into the floor of the new room, so that there can be no distinction in method of construction between floors and roofs, except the floors are occasionally covered with a complete paving of thin stone slabs, a device that in external roofs is confined to the copings that cap the walls and enframe openings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate LXX. Court view of Pescado, showing corrals.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 37. Diagram of Zui roof construction.]

The methods of roofing their houses practiced by the pueblo builders varied but little, and followed the general order of construction that has been outlined in describing Tusayan house building. The diagram, shown in Fig. 37, an isometric projection ill.u.s.trating roof construction, is taken from a Zui example, the building of which was observed by the writer. The roof is built by first a series of princ.i.p.al beams or rafters. These are usually straight, round poles of 6 or 8 inches in diameter, with all bark and projecting knots removed. Squared beams are of very rare occurrence; the only ones seen were those of the Tusayan kivas, of Spanish manufacture. In recently constructed houses the princ.i.p.al beams are often of large size and are very neatly squared off at the ends. Similar square ended beams of large size are met with in the ancient work of the Chaco pueblos, but there the enormous labor involved in producing the result with only the aid of stone implements is in keeping with the highly finished character of the masonry and the general ma.s.siveness of the construction. The same treatment was adopted in Kin-tiel, as may be seen in Pl. XCV, which ill.u.s.trates a beam resting upon a ledge or offset of the inner walls. The recent introduction of improved mechanical aids has exerted a strong influence on the character of the construction in greatly facilitating execution. The use of the American ax made it a much easier task to cut large timbers, and the introduction of the burro and ox greatly facilitated their transportation. In the case of the modern pueblos, such as Zui, the dwelling rooms that were built by families so poor as not to have these aids would to some extent indicate the fact by their more primitive construction, and particularly by their small size, in this respect more closely resembling the rooms of the ancient pueblos. As a result the poorer cla.s.ses would be more likely to perpetuate primitive devices, through the necessity for practicing methods that to the wealthier members of the tribe were becoming a matter of tradition only. In such a sedentary tribe as the present Zui, these differences of wealth and station are more marked than one would expect to find among a people practicing a style of architecture so evidently influenced by the communal principle, and the architecture of to-day shows the effect of such distinctions. In the house of the governor of Zui a new room has been recently built, in which the second series of the roof, that applied over the princ.i.p.al beams, consisted of pine shakes or shingles, and these supported the final earth covering without any intervening material. In the typical arrangement, however, ill.u.s.trated in the figure, the first series, or princ.i.p.al beams, are covered by another series of small poles, about an inch and a half or two inches in diameter, at right angles to the first, and usually laid quite close together. The ends of these small poles are partially embedded in the masonry of the walls. In an example of the more careful and laborious work of the ancient builders seen at Peas...o...b..anco, on the Chaco, the princ.i.p.al beams were covered with narrow boards, from 2 to 4 inches wide and about 1 inch thick, over which was put the usual covering of earth.

The boards had the appearance of having been split out with wedges, the edges and faces having the characteristic fibrous appearance of torn or split wood. At Zui an instance occurs where split poles have been used for the second series of a roof extending through the whole thickness of the wall and projecting outside, as is commonly the case with the first series. A similar arrangement was seen in a ruined tower in the vicinity of Fort Wingate, New Mexico. In the typical roof construction ill.u.s.trated the second series is covered with small twigs or brush, laid in close contact and at right angles to the underlying series, or parallel with the main beams. Pl. XCVI, ill.u.s.trating an unroofed adobe house in Zui, shows several bundles of this material on an adjoining roof. This series is in turn covered with a layer of gra.s.s and small brush, again at right angles, which prepares the frame for the reception of the final earth covering, this latter being the fifth application to the roof. In the example ill.u.s.trated the entire earth covering of the roof was finished in a single application of the material. It has been seen that at Tusayan a layer of moistened earth is applied, followed by a thicker layer of the dry soil.

In ancient construction, the method of arranging the material varied somewhat. In some cases series 3 was very carefully constructed of straight willow wands laid side by side in contact. This gave a very neat appearance to the ceiling within the room. Examples were seen in Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly, at Mummy Cave, and at Hungo Pavie and Pueblo Bonito on the Chaco.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate LXXI. Pescado houses.]

Again examples occur where series 2 is composed of 2-inch poles in contact and the joints are c.h.i.n.ked on the upper side with small stones to prevent the earth from sifting through. This arrangement was seen in a small cl.u.s.ter on the canyon bottom on the de Ch.e.l.ly.

The small size of available roofing rafters has at Tusayan brought about a construction of clumsy piers of masonry in a few of the larger rooms, which support the ends of two sets of main girders, and these in turn carry series 1, or the main ceiling beams of the roof. The girders are generally double, an arrangement that has been often employed in ancient times, as many examples occur among the ruins. The purpose of such arrangement may have been to admit of the abutment of the ends of series 1, when the members of the latter were laid in contact. In the absence of squared beams, which seem never to have been used in the old work, this abutment could only be securely accomplished by the use of double girders, as suggested in the following diagram, Fig. 38.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 38. Showing abutment of smaller roof beams over round girders.]

The final roof covering, composed of clay, is usually laid on very carefully and firmly, and, when the surface is unbroken, answers fairly well as a watershed. A slight slope or fall is given to the roof. This roof subserves every purpose of a front yard to the rooms that open upon it, and seems to be used exactly like the ground itself. Sheepskins are stretched and pegged out upon it for tanning or drying, and the characteristic Zui dome-shaped oven is frequently built upon it. In Zui generally upper rooms are provided only with a mud floor, although occasionally the method of paving with large thin slabs of stone is adopted. These are often somewhat irregular in form, the object being to have them as large as possible, so that considerable ingenuity is often displayed in selecting the pieces and in joining the irregular edges.

This arrangement, similar to that of the kiva floors of Tusayan, is occasionally met with in the kivas.

In making excavations at Kin-tiel, the floor of the ground room in which the circular door ill.u.s.trated in Pl. C, was found was paved with large, irregular fragments of stone, the thickness of which did not average more than an inch. Its floor, whose paving was all in place, was strewn with broken, irregular fragments similar in character, which must have been used as the flooring of an upper chamber.

WALL COPINGS AND ROOF DRAINS.

In the construction of the typical pueblo house the walls are carried up to the height of the roof surface, and are then capped with a continuous protecting coping of thin flat stones, laid in close contact, their outer edges flush with the face of the wall. This arrangement is still the prevailing one at Tusayan, though there is an occasional example of the projecting coping that practically forms a cornice. This latter is the more usual form at Zui, though in the farming pueblos of Cibola it does not occur with any greater frequency than at Tusayan. The flush coping is in Tusayan made of the thinnest and most uniform specimens of building stone available, but these are not nearly so well adapted to the purpose as those found in the vicinity of Zui.

Here the projecting stones are of singularly regular and symmetrical form, and receive very little artificial treatment. Their extreme thinness makes it easy to trim off the projecting corners and angles, reducing them to such a form that they can be laid in close contact.

Thus laid they furnish an admirable protection against the destructive action of the violent rains. The stones are usually trimmed to a width corresponding to the thickness of the walls. Of course where a projecting cornice is built, it can be made, to some extent, to conform to the width of available coping stones. These can usually be procured, however, of nearly uniform width. In the case of the overhanging cornices the necessary projection is attained by continuing either the main roof beams, or sometimes the smaller poles of the second series, according to the position of the required cornice, for a foot or more beyond the outer face of the wall. Over these poles the roofing is continued as in ordinary roof construction with the exception that the edge of the earth covering is built of masonry, an additional precaution against its destruction by the rains. In many places the adobe plastering originally applied to the faces of these cornices, as well as to the walls, has been washed away, exposing the whole construction. In some of these instances the face of the cornice furnishes a complete section of the roof, in which all the series of its construction can be readily identified. The protective agency of these coping stones is well ill.u.s.trated in Pl. XCVII, which shows the destructive effect of rain at a point where an open joint has admitted enough water to bare the masonry of the cornice face, eating through its coating of adobe, while at the firmly closed joint toward the left there has been no erosive action. The much larger proportion of projecting copings or cornices in Zui, as compared with Tusayan, is undoubtedly attributable to the universal smoothing of the walls with adobe, and to the more general use of this perishable medium in this village, and the consequent necessity for protecting the walls. The efficiency of this means of protecting the wall against the wear of weather is seen in the preservation of external whitewashing for several feet below such a cornice on the face of the walls. At the pueblo of Acoma a similar extensive use of projecting cornices is met with, particularly on the third story walls. Here again it is due to the use of adobe, which has been more frequently employed in the finish of the higher and newer portions of the village than in the lower terraces. As a rule these overhanging copings occur princ.i.p.ally on the southern exposures of the buildings and on the terraced sides of house rows. When walls rise to the height of several stories directly from the ground, such as the back walls of house rows, they are not usually provided with this feature but are capped with flush copings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate LXXII. Fragments of ancient masonry in Pescado.]

The rapid and destructive erosion of the earthen roof covering must have early stimulated the pueblo architect to devise means for promptly distributing where it would do the least harm, the water which came upon his house. This necessity must have led to the early use of roof drains, for in no other way could the ancient builders have provided for the effectual removal of the water from the roofs and at the same time have preserved intact the masonry of the walls. Unfortunately we have no examples of such features in the ruined pueblos, for in the destruction or decay of the houses they are among the first details to be lost. The roof drain in the modern architecture becomes a very prominent feature, particularly at Zui.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 39. Single stone roof drains.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 40. Trough roof drains of stone.]

These drains are formed by piercing an opening through the thickness of the coping wall, at a point where the drainage from the roof would collect, the opening being made with a decided pitch and furnished with a spout or device of some kind to insure the discharge of the water beyond the face of the wall. These spouts a.s.sume a variety of forms.

Perhaps the most common is that of a single long, narrow slab of stone, set at a suitable angle and of sufficient projection to throw the discharge clear of the wall. Fig. 39 ill.u.s.trates drains of this type, No. 1 being a Tusayan example and No. 2 from Zui. It will be noted that the surrounding masonry of the former, as well as the stone itself, are much ruder than the Zui example. Another type of drain, not differing greatly from the preceding, is ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 40. This form is a slight improvement on the single stone drain, as it is provided with side pieces which convert the device into a trough-like spout, and more effectually direct the discharge. No. 1 is a Tusayan spout and No. 2 a Zui example. Wooden spouts are also commonly used for this purpose.

Fig. 41 ill.u.s.trates an example from each province of this form of drain.

These are usually made from small tree trunks, not exceeding 3 or 4 inches in diameter, and are gouged out from one side. No tubular specimens of wooden spouts were seen. At Tusayan the builders have utilized stone of a concretionary formation for roof drains. The workers in stone could not wish for material more suitably fashioned for the purpose than these specimens. Two of these curious stone channels are ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 42. Two more examples of Tusayan roof drains are ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 43. The first of the latter shows the use of a discarded metate, or mealing stone, and the second of a gourd that has been walled into the coping.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 41. Wooden roof drains.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 42. Curved roof drains of stone in Tusayan.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate LXXIV. General view of Ojo Caliente.]

It is said that tubes of clay were used at Awatubi in olden times for roof drains, but there remains no positive evidence of this. Three forms of this device are attributed to the people of that village. Some are said to have been made of wood, others of stone, and some again of sun-dried clay. The native explanation of the use in this connection of sun-dried clay, instead of the more durable baked product, was that the application of fire to any object that water pa.s.ses through would be likely to dry up the rains. It was stated in this connection that at the present day the cobs of the corn used for planting are not burned until rain has fallen on the crop. If the clay spout described really existed among the people at Awatubi, it was likely to have been an innovation introduced by the Spanish missionaries. Among the potsherds picked up at this ruin was a small piece of coa.r.s.ely made clay tube, which seemed to be too large and too roughly modeled to have been the handle of a ladle, which it roughly resembled, or to have belonged to any other known form of domestic pottery. As a roof drain its use would not accord with the restrictions referred to in the native account, as the piece had been burnt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 43. Tusayan roof drains; a discarded metate and a gourd.]

In some cases in Zui where drains discharge from the roofs of upper terraces directly upon those below, the lower roofs and also the adjoining vertical walls are protected by thin tablets of stone, as shown in Fig. 44. It will be seen that one of these is placed upon the lower roof in such a position that the drainage falls directly upon it.

Where the adobe roof covering is left unprotected its destruction by the rain is very rapid, as the showers of the rainy season in these regions, though usually of short duration, are often extremely violent. The force of the torrents is ill.u.s.trated in the neighboring country. Here small ruts in the surface of the ground are rapidly converted into large arroyos. Frequently ordinary wagon tracks along a bit of valley slope serve as an initial channel to the rapidly acc.u.mulating waters and are eaten away in a few weeks so that the road becomes wholly impa.s.sable, and must be abandoned for a new one alongside.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 44. Zui roof drain, with splash stones on roof below.]

The shiftlessness of the native builders in the use of the more convenient material brings its own penalty during this season in a necessity for constant watchfulness and frequent repairs to keep the houses habitable. One can often see in Zui where an inefficient drain or a broken coping has given the water free access to the face of a plastered wall, carrying away all its covering and exposing in a vertical s.p.a.ce the jagged stones of the underlying masonry. It is noticeable that much more attention has been paid to protective devices at Zui than at Tusayan. This is undoubtedly due to the prevalent use of adobe in the former. This friable material must be protected at all vulnerable points with slabs of stone in order quickly to divert the water and preserve the roofs and walls from destruction.

LADDERS AND STEPS.