Cosmos Mindeleff

“ A strong independent race of people, who had to fear no invasion by stronger foes, would necessarily have been influenced more by the physical environment and would have progressed further in the art of building, but the motive for building rectangular rooms—the initial point of departure in the development of pueblo architecture—would not have been brought into action. The crowding of many habitations upon a small cliff ledge or other restricted site, resulting in the rectangular form of rooms, was most likely due to the conditions imposed by this necessity for defense. ”

“ When he ascends to the higher plateaus he views a wide landscape of undulating plain studded with wooded hills, while from the mountain summits he looks down upon a land which appears to be everywhere cut into a network of jagged canyons—a confused tangle of cliffs and gorges without system. ”

“ There are hundreds of square miles of territory here which are never visited by white men, except by “cow-boys” during the spring and autumn round-ups.
Scattered at irregular intervals along both sides of the river are many benches and terraces of alluvium, varying in width from a few feet to several miles, and comprising all the cultivable land in the valley of the river. Since the Verde is a mountain stream with a great fall, its power of erosion is very great, and its channel changes frequently; in some places several times in a single winter season. ”

“ It must not be forgotten that the unit of pueblo construction is the single room, even in the large, many-storied villages. This unit is often quite as rude in modern work as in ancient, and both modern and ancient examples are very close to the result which would be produced by any Indian tribe who came into the country and were left free to work out their own ideas. Starting with this unit the whole system of pueblo architecture is a natural product of the country in which it is found and the conditions of life known to have affected the people by whom it was practiced. ”

“ After a rain the ground, and that portion of the walls at present below its surface, retains moisture much longer than the part of the walls which stands clear; the moisture rises by capillary attraction a foot or two above the ground surface, rendering the walls at this level softer than elsewhere, and as this portion is more exposed to the flying sand which the wind sweeps over the ground it is here that erosion attains its maximum. The wall is gradually cut away at and just above the ground surface until finally the base becomes too small to support it and it falls en masse. ”

“ The mesa summit, that forms the site of this village, is nearly level, with very little earth on its surface. A thin accumulation of soil and rubbish lightly covers the inner court, but outside, along the face of the long row, the bare rock is exposed continuously. Where the rooms have been abandoned and the walls have fallen, the stones have all been utilized in later constructions, leaving no vestige of the former wall on the rocky site, as the stones of the masonry have always been set upon the surface of the rock, with no excavation or preparation of footings of any kind. ”

“ The intimate relation between the savage and his physical environment has already been alluded to. Nature, or that part of nature which we term physical environment, enters into and becomes part of the life of the savage in a way and to an extent that we can hardly conceive. A change of physical environment does not produce an immediate change in the man or in his arts, but in time such must inevitably result. Twenty-five years ago the savage of the plains and the savage of the pueblo country were regarded as distinct races, "as different from each other as light is from darkness;" ”

“ As already stated, long occupancy of a village, even without increase of population, produces a certain effect on the ground plan. This effect, so strongly marked in all the ruins already described, is conspicuous in this ruin by its almost entire absence. The ground plan is just such as would be produced if a small band of pueblo builders, consisting of ten or twelve related families, should migrate en masse to a site like the one under discussion and, after occupying that site for a few years—less than five—should pass on to some other location. ”

“ The direct dependence of the savage on nature as he finds it is nowhere better illustrated than on the Navaho reservation. In the three essentials of land, water, and vegetation, his country is not an ideal one. The hard conditions under which he lives have acted directly on his arts and industries, on his habits and customs, and also on his mind and his mythology. In one respect only has he an advantage: he is blessed with a climate which acts in a measure as an offset 481 to the other conditions and enables him to lead a life which is on the whole not onerous. ”

“ In some of the ancient examples the labor required to so prepare the sites would not have exceeded that expended on the massive masonry composed of numberless small stones. Many of the older works testify to the remarkable patience and industry of the builders in amassing and carefully adjusting vast quantities of building materials, and the modern Indians of Tusayan and Cibola have inherited much of this ancient spirit; yet this industry was rarely diverted to the excavation of room or village sites, except in the case of the kivas, in which special motives led to the practice. ”

“ Half a mile northwestward, in a saddle similar to that last described, and east of the crown of a hill, are the remains of a single room, nearly square and perhaps 10 feet long. These single rooms and small cluster remains are unusual in this region, and seem to replace the bowlder-marked ruins so common south of the East Verde (to be described more fully later) . Although the walls of this single-room structure were built of river bowlders, they are well marked by débris and are of the same type as those in the ruins at the mouths of the East Verde and Fossil creek. ”

“ The rise in the height of the walls is so gradual that when the canyon is entered at its mouth the mental scale by which we estimate distances and magnitudes is lost and the wildest conjectures result. We fail at first to realize the stupendous scale on which the work was done, and when we do finally realize it we swing to the opposite side and exaggerate. At the junction of Monument canyon there is a beautiful rock pinnacle or needle standing out clear from the cliff and not more than 165 feet on the ground. ”

“ No trace of the numerous constructive details that interest the student of pueblo architecture in the modern villages can be seen in the low mounds of broken down masonry that remain in most of the ancient villages of Tusayan. But little masonry remains standing in even the best preserved of these ruins, and villages known to have been occupied within two centuries are not distinguishable from the remains to which distinct tradition (save that they were in the same condition when the first people of the narrators’ gens came to this region) no longer clings. ”

“ Every mesa had at least one ancient pueblo up off it, evidently far more ancient than the cavate dwellings found in the face of the cliffs. It is, then, very plain that the cavate dwellings are not of great age; that they have been occupied since the advent of the white man, and that on the summit of the cliffs there are ruins of more ancient pueblos.
Major Powell obtained a tradition of the Santa Clara Indians, reciting three successive periods of occupancy of the cavate lodges by them, the last occurring after the Spanish conquest of New Mexico in the seventeenth century. ”

“ Steps, either constructed of masonry or cut in the rock, such as those found in the Mancos canyon and the Mesa Verde region, are never seen here. The cavities in which the ruins occur are always natural; they are never enlarged or curtailed or altered in the slightest degree, and very rarely is the cavity itself treated as a room, although there are some excellent sites for such treatment. The back wall of a cove is often the back wall of a village, but aside from this the natural advantages of the sites were seldom realized. ”

“ Although no attempt at decoration is ever made, either of the inside or the outside of the houses, it is not uncommon to hear the term beautiful applied to them. Strong forked timbers of the proper length and bend, thrust together with their ends properly interlocking to form a cone-like frame, stout poles leaned against the apex to form the sides, the whole well covered with bark and heaped thickly with earth, forming a roomy warm interior with a level floor—these are sufficient to constitute a “qoġán nĭjóni,” house beautiful. ”

“ 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 space 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 circular kiva is a survival of an ancient type—a survival supported by all the power of religious feeling and the conservatism in religious matters characteristic of savage and barbarous life; and while most of the modern pueblos have at the present time rectangular kivas, such, for example, as those at Tusayan, at Zuñi, and at Acoma, there is no doubt that the circular form is the more primitive and was formerly used by some tribes which now have only the rectangular form. ”

“ As the architecture of a primitive people is influenced largely by the character of the country in which they live, a brief description of the Navaho reservation is deemed necessary. Similarly, the habits of life of the people, what a naturalist would term their life history, which in combination with the physical environment practically dictates their arts, is worthy of notice, for without some knowledge of the conditions under which a people live it is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain an adequate conception of their art products. ”

“ Stephen observed, at the New Year festivals, that animal fetiches were set in groups upon this platform. It is also to be noted that the ladder leading to the surface is invariably made of pine, and always rests upon the platform, never upon the lower floor, and in their traditional genesis it is stated that the people climbed up from the third house (stage) by a ladder of pine, and through such an opening as the kiva hatchway; only most of the stories indicate that the opening was round. The outer air is the fourth world, or that now occupied. ”

“ In the western end of the cave there is a single room placed on the cliff edge, and between this and the end of a wall to the right a small stick has been embedded in the masonry at a height of about 2 feet from the rock. The cliff here is vertical and affords no footing, but by throwing a rope over the stick a man can ascend hand over hand. During the period when the houses were occupied, access was had in another and much easier way, through a doorway or passageway nearly in the center of the ruin and directly over the point where the lower village was four stories high. ”

“ The term migration, however, must not be taken in the sense in which it has been applied to European stocks, a movement of people en masse or in several large groups. Migration as used here, and as it generally applies to the Pueblo Indians, means a slow gradual movement, generally without any definite and ultimate end in view. A small section of a village, generally a gens or a subgens, moves away from the parent village, perhaps only a few miles. At another time another section moves to another site, at still another time another section moves, and so on. ”

“ The kind of house which a man builds depends almost entirely on the purposes which it is to serve and very little on the man or his circumstances. The houses of the richest man in the tribe and of the poorest would be identical unless, as often happens in modern times, the former has a desire to imitate the whites and builds a regular house of stone or logs. If, however, a man builds a summer place to which he intends to return year after year, and such is the usual custom, he usually erects a fairly substantial structure, a kind of half hogán, or house with the front part omitted. ”

“ Walls were sometimes built on loose debris; even refuse which had been covered and formed an artificial soil was considered sufficient. There are many instances in the canyon where lack of foresight or lack of knowledge in this respect has brought about the destruction of walls. Walls resting on foreign material occur throughout the region; they are not confined to anyone class of ruins or to any part of the canyon, but are found as much or more in the most recent as in the most ancient examples. Mummy Cave ruin and Casa Blanca are good examples. ”

“ Across the poles, covering the rest of the roof, willows and straight twigs of any kind are laid close together, and over these is placed a layer of dry grass arranged in regular rows. Mud is then carefully spread over the grass to a depth of about 3 inches, and after it has nearly dried it is again gone over so as to fill up all the cracks. A layer of dry earth is then spread over all and firmly trodden down, to render the roof water-tight and bring its surface level with the surrounding ground, following the same method and order of construction that prevails in dwelling-house buildings. ”

“ The ruins of the second subclass, or stone villages located on defensive sites, are found throughout the whole of this region, although the type reaches its best development in the northern portion, in the vicinity of Verde. The separation of this type from the preceding one is to a certain extent arbitrary, as the location of a ruin is sometimes determined solely by convenience, and convenience may dictate the selection of a high and defensible site, when the tillable land on which the village depends is of small area, or when it is divided into a number of small and scattered areas ”

“ The cliff ruins are a striking feature, and the ordinary traveler is apt to overlook the more important ruins which sometimes, if not generally, are associated with them. The study of the ruins in Canyon de Chelly has led to the conclusion that the cliff ruins there are generally subordinate structures, connected with and inhabited at the same time as a number of larger home villages located on the canyon bottom, and occupying much the same relation to the latter that Moen-kapi does to Oraibi, or that Nutria, Pescado, and Ojo Caliente do to Zuñi ”

“ The Navajo reservation is better suited for the raising of sheep than for anything else, and the step from the life of a warrior and hunter to that of a shepherd is not a long one, nor a hard one to take. Under the stress of necessity the Navajo became a peaceable pastoral tribe, living by their flocks and herds, and practicing horticulture only in an extremely limited and precarious way. Under modern conditions they are slowly developing into an agricultural tribe, and this development has already progressed far enough to materially affect their house structures ”

“ Before the invention of a chimney hood, and while the primitive fireplace occupied a central position in the floor of the room, the smoke probably escaped through the door and window openings. Later a hole in the roof provided an exit, as in the kivas of to-day, where ceremonial use has perpetuated an arrangement long since superseded in dwelling-house construction. The comfort of a dwelling room provided with this feature is sufficiently attested by the popularity of the modern kivas as a resort for the men. ”

“ This has occurred in many of the pueblos and in the ruins, and in a general way a ruin consisting of large rooms is apt to be more modern than one consisting of small rooms; and where large and small rooms occur together there is a fair presumption that the occupancy of the village extended over a period when hostile pressure was pronounced and when it became less strong. It has already been shown that, owing to the social system of the pueblo-builders, there is almost always growth in a village, although the population may remain stationary in numbers or even decrease ”

“ In the cliff ruins of De Chelly we have an interesting and most instructive example of the influence of a peculiar and sometimes adverse environment on a primitive people, who entered the region with preconceived and, as it were, fully developed ideas of house construction, and who left it before those ideas were brought fully in accord with the environment, but not before they were influenced by it. ”

“ In a few rods the traveler passes from the comparatively fertile mountain region into the flat, extremely arid valley country, and in 50 or 60 miles’ travel after leaving the mountains he will not find wood enough to make his camp fire, nor, unless he moves rapidly, water enough to carry his horses over the intervening distance.
Throughout the whole region great scarcity of water prevails; in the large valleys during most of the year there is none, and it is only in the mountain districts that there is a permanent supply; but there life is almost impossible during the winter. ”