“ 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. ”

“ Navajo prayers for rain and snow are addressed to Hasjelti and Hostjoghon. These gods stand upon the mountain tops and call the clouds to gather around them. Hasjelti is the mediator between the Navajo and the sun. He prays to the sun, “Father, give me the light of your mind, that my mind may be strong; give me some of your strength, that my arm may be strong, and give me your rays that corn and other vegetation may grow.” It is to this deity that the most important prayers of the Navajo are addressed. The lesser deities have shorter prayers and less valuable offerings made to them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just before the stamping of the feet in the beginning of the dance, a rattle was shaken by all the male dancers, which was the signal for a peculiar back motion of the right arm and body and one which preceded the actual dancing. The six males lean their bodies to the right side extending the right hand backward, and then bringing it forward in a circular under sweep around to the mouth with a hoot. They then turn and face the east, and bending their bodies toward the south perform the same motion as before, when they turn to the west and repeat it in that direction. ”

“ It is quite common to find a series of metates, as in the present instance, filling the entire available width of a recess or bay, and leaving only so much of its depth behind the stones as will afford floor space for the kneeling women who grind the corn. In larger open apartments undivided by buttress or pier, the metates are usually built in or near one corner. They are always so arranged that those who operate them face the middle of the room. The floor is simply a smoothly plastered dressing of clay of the same character as the usual external roof covering. ”

“ The couple then made four poles, two of turquoise and two of white-shell beads, and each was put under the sun, and with these poles the twelve men at each of the cardinal points raised it. They could not get it high enough to prevent the people and grass from burning. The people then said, “Let us stretch the world;” so the twelve men at each point expanded the world. The sun continued to rise as the world expanded, and began to shine with less heat, but when it reached the meridian the heat became great and the people suffered much. ”

“ A singular feature of pueblo masonry as observed at Tusayan is the very sparing use of mud in the construction of the walls; in fact, in some instances when walls are built during the dry season, the larger stones are laid up in the walls without the use of mud at all, and are allowed to stand in this condition until the rains come; then the mud mortar is mixed, the interstices of the walls filled in with it and with chinking stones, and the inside walls are plastered. But the usual practice is to complete the house at once, finishing it inside and out with the requisite mortar. ”

“ The traditions of the Zuñis, as well as those of the Tusayan, frequently refer to such migrations. At times tribes split up and separate, and again phratries or distant groups meet and band together. It is remarkable that the substantial character of the architecture should persist through such long series of compulsory removals, but while the builders were held together by the necessity for defense against their wilder neighbors or against each other, this strong defensive motive would perpetuate the laborious type of construction. ”

“ SHUMOPAVI.
This village, although not so isolated as Oraibi, has no near neighbors and is little visited by whites or Indians. The inhabitants are rarely seen at the trading post to which the others resort, and they seem to be pretty well off and independent as compared with their neighbors of the other villages (Pl. XXXIV) . The houses and courts are in keeping with the general character of the people and exhibit a degree of neatness and thrift that contrasts sharply with the tumble-down appearance of some of the other villages, especially those of the Middle Mesa and Oraibi. ”

“ The personation of the various gods and their attendants and the acted drama of their mythical adventures and displayed powers exhibit features of peculiar interest, while the details of the action day after day show all imaginable and generally incomprehensible changes and multiplication of costume and motions and postures and manipulations of feathers and meal and sticks and paint and water and sand and innumerable other stage properties in astounding complexity and seeming confusion. ”

“ There is a very noticeable scarcity of roof-holes, aside from those of the first terrace. As a rule the first terrace has no external openings on the ground and is entered from its roof through large trap-doors, as shown on the plans. The lower rooms within this first terrace are not inhabited, but are used as storerooms.
At several points ruined walls are seen, remains of abandoned rooms that have fallen into decay. Occasionally a rough, buttress-like projection from a wall is the only vestige of a room or a cluster of rooms, all traces on the ground having been obliterated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the small roof holes methods of construction are seen which would not be so practicable on the larger scale of the ladder holes after which they have been modeled. In these latter the sides are built up of masonry or adobe, but the framing around them is more like the usual coping over walls. The stone that, set on edge in the small openings built for the admission of light, forms a raised end never occurs in these. The ladder for access rests against the coping. ”

“ In the case of the modern pueblos, such as Zuñi, 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 classes 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. ”

“ Before departing the sun asked them what they wished; they said, “We want bows and arrows, knives, and good leggings. There are people around the world eating our people (the Navajo) . Some of these people are great giants and some are as small as flies; we wish to kill them with lightning.” ”

“ The highest type of pueblo construction, embodied in the large communal fortress houses of the valleys, could have developed only as the builders learned to rely for protection more upon their architecture and less upon the sites occupied. So long as the sites furnished a large proportion of the defensive efficiency of a village, the invention of the builders was not stimulated to substitute artificial for natural advantages. Change of location and consequent development must frequently have taken place owing to the extreme inconvenience of defensive sites to the sources of subsistence. ”

“ In such a sedentary tribe as the present Zuñi, 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 Zuñi a new room has been recently built, in which the second series of the roof, that applied over the principal beams, consisted of pine shakes or shingles, and these supported the final earth covering without any intervening material. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All people let them see their dances and learn their songs. Then all the number excepting the youth talked together and they said, “There is no use keeping him with us longer (referring to the youth) ; he has learned everything; he may as well go now and tell his people and have them do as we do.” The youth was instructed to have twelve in the dance, six gods and six goddesses, with Hasjelti to lead them. He was told to have his people make masks to represent them. It would not do to have twelve Naaskiddi represented among the Navajo, for they would not believe it and there would be trouble. ”

“ Cushing’s study of the Zuñi social, political, and religious systems has clearly established their essential identity in grade of culture with those of other tribes. In many of the arts, too, such as weaving, ceramics, etc., these people in no degree surpass many tribes who build ruder dwellings.
In architecture, though, they have progressed far beyond their neighbors; many of the devices employed attest the essentially primitive character of the art, and demonstrate that the apparent distinction in grade of culture is mainly due to the exceptional condition of the environment.
Footnotes
1. ”

“ The general outlines of the development of architecture, wherein the ancient builders were stimulated to the best use of the exceptional materials about them both by the difficult conditions of their semidesert environment and by constant necessity for protection against their neighbors, can be traced in its various stages of growth from the primitive conical lodge to its culmination in the large communal village of many-storied terraced buildings which were in use at the time of the Spanish discovery, and which still survive in Zuñi. ”

“ The adobe walls are built only as thick as is absolutely necessary, few of them being more than a foot in thickness. The walls are thus, in proportion, to height and weight, sustained, thinner than the crude brick construction of other peoples, and require protection and constant repairs to insure durability. As to thickness, they are evidently modeled directly after the walls of stone masonry, which had already, in both Tusayan and Cibola, been pushed to the limit of thinness. ”

“ It is often the practice in the modern pueblos to seal up the windows of a house with masonry, and sometimes the doors also during the temporary absence of the occupant, which absence often takes place at the seasons of planting and harvesting. At such times many Zuñi families occupy outlying farming pueblos, such as Nutria and Pescado, and the Tusayans, in a like manner, live in rude summer shelters close to their fields. Such absence from the home pueblo often lasts for a month or more at a time. ”

“ The apparently bolder construction of the present day, shown in the prevailing use of horizontal openings, is not due to greater constructive skill, but rather to the markedly greater carelessness of modern construction.
The same contrast between modern and ancient practice is seen in the disposition of openings in walls. In the modern pueblos there does not seem to be any regularity or system in their introduction, while in some of the older pueblos, such as Pueblo Bonito on the Chaco, and others of the same group, the arrangement of the outer openings exhibits a certain degree of symmetry. ”

“ In Cibola particularly, a marked tendency in this direction has shown itself within a score of years; Ojo Caliente, the newest of the farming pueblos, is perhaps the most striking example within the two provinces. The greater security of the pueblos as the country comes more fully into the hands of Americans, has also resulted in the more careless construction in modern examples as compared with the ancient.
There is no doubt that, as time shall go on, the system of building many-storied clusters of rectangular rooms will gradually be abandoned by these people. ”

“ There is no means of preventing access to the exposed trap doors, which are nearly on a level with the ground. As a matter of convenience and to facilitate the entrance into the kiva of costumed and masked dancers, often encumbered with clumsy paraphernalia, steps are permanently built into the outside wall of the kiva in direct contradiction to the ancient principles of construction; that is, in having no permanent or fixed means of access from the ground to the first roof. ”

“ The entire surface of the hill is covered with scattered débris of fallen walls, which must at one time have formed a village of considerable size. Over most of this area the walls can not be traced; the few rooms which can be distinctly outlined, occurring in a group on the highest part of the hill. Standing walls are here seen, but they are apparently recent, one room showing traces of a chimney (Pl. LIV) . Some of the more distinct inclosures, built from fallen masonry of the old village, seem to have been intended for corrals. ”