Jesse Walter Fewkes

“ The tall and better built towers of the San Juan (pl. 14, a) and its tributaries are sometimes single rooms without connections with other buildings, but are more often surrounded at their bases by rooms not unlike those of pueblo ruins. Thus at Cannon Ball ruin the towers rise from the midst of secular rooms and the same is true of the tower in Cliff Palace and elsewhere. This leads to the supposition that these buildings were constructed for some purpose other than as lookouts: they bear all the outward appearance of sacred rooms called kivas of pueblos and cliff dwellers. ”

“ The geographical position of the country about Gallup renders it a very important area in the study of the migration of aboriginal peoples in the Southwest. It lies midway between the Rio Grande on the east and the Little Colorado on the west, and between the San Juan on the north and the Zuñi on the south. In their intercommunication, the trails of migration in prehistoric times must have crossed this region, and as this migration was marked by successive stages where buildings were constructed we should expect here to find remains of former migratory peoples. ”

“ The Hyde Expedition made an extraordinary collection of artifacts from Pueblo Bonito, the largest and formerly the best preserved ruin of the group, but the excavations there have yielded little information on the kinship of its inhabitants. Until we know more about the Chaco Canyon ruins we are justified in the belief that there still remains a most important problem for the archeologist to solve.
In seeking the prehistoric migration trail of the Hopi before they came to Fire House, the author examined ruins near Crown Point identical with those of the Chaco Canyon. ”

“ The expansion of these two nuclei of culture, and the products of their contact is the prehistoric, unwritten, evolution of primitive people in the Southwest upon which documentary accounts throw no light, and the function of archeology is to read this history through the remains left by this prehistoric people, as interpreted by surviving folklore, ceremonials, legends, and artifacts. Both types of culture reached their highest development before the arrival of the white man ”

“ The black and white pottery, found about Gallup, is identical with that of the latter ruin, and very similar to that generally found in the earliest epoch of pueblo occupancy. As pointed out in an article on Zuñi pottery, in the “Putnam Anniversary Volume,” modern Zuñi pottery is so different from the ancient that we can hardly regard it as evolved from it. The same is true among the Hopi; the modern pottery decoration is not like the old, but is Tewa. Hopi-Tewa pottery is largely the work of Nampeo, who once decorated her pottery solely with Tewa symbols instead of old Hopi. ”

“ In all the region north of the high ridge of eroded Wingate sandstone there are several other groups of ruins with most of the walls very much broken down. It would probably be conservative to state that there were over 200 ruins, large and small, in this region, showing evidence of a considerable population, if they were inhabited simultaneously. Fragments of pottery occur on almost every ridge overlooking the trails, especially along the road from Gallup to Crown Point. The forms of these ruins vary and can be made out only by systematic excavation. ”

“ On the dizzy top of a cliff overlooking the canyon, near the second ruin, artificial walls were observed but not visited. An Indian guide claimed that they were towers; they are certainly so situated as to permit a wide view up and down the canyon. These walls are mentioned by Dr. Prudden.
On the walls of the canyon not far from the first ruin there is an instructive group of pictographs (fig. 3) representing human beings, some painted red, others white, standing in three lines. The majority have triangular bodies with shoulders prolonged into arms at right angles to the body ”

“ Their masonry is composed of natural slabs of rock, rudely fashioned by fracture, but rarely dressed in cubical blocks, as in the towers on the McElmo Canyon. Their exposure to the elements has led to considerable destruction, the adobe in which the walls were laid having been washed out of the joints. The lower courses of stone, as seen in the view of the large ruin perched high above the ranch house, were of larger stones than the upper, and showed more evidences of having been dressed than the flat stones piled one on the other, which form the upper courses. ”

“ The partition walls of the rooms end on the vertical wall of the precipice, the face of the precipice serving as their rear wall. It thus happens that there is no recess between the back of the rooms and the rear of the cave, as commonly found in cliff dwellings. Circular rooms are absent in the upper part of this ruin, and kivas, if any, must be sought buried under the accumulated débris of the lower part. The front wall of the upper house measures 64 feet, and can be traced throughout its whole extent. ”

“ The fine spring at the base of the cliff below Fire House was evidently used by the inhabitants for drinking water, and the trail from here to a gateway in the outer wall is still well marked. As one climbs from the spring to the top of the plateau the way passes between the cliff and a flat stone set on edge and pierced with a hole about 5 feet above the pathway. ”

“ The tower kiva may be regarded as the nucleus of the clan, or the building erected for ceremonies of that clan, the earliest and best36 constructed stone structures in the region where the pueblo originated. Where there were several clans there were several towers; when one clan, a single tower. In course of time rooms for habitation or possibly for other purposes, clustered about these towers; these units consolidated with rooms and kivas of another type forming a composite pueblo. In this form we find the towers rising above a mass of secular rooms. ”

“ Fire House is circular, Sikyatki is rectangular. If the descendants of the inhabitants of Fire House later 5constructed Sikyatki, why did they make this radical change in the form of their dwellings? They may have constructed a habitation en route before they reached Sikyatki, and this village may have had a form like Fire House. On the Hopi plateau above Sikyatki there are two conical mounds visible for a long distance as one approaches East Mesa from the mouth of Keam’s Canyon, which should be considered in this connection. ”

“ As archeological work in the Southwest progresses, it becomes more and more evident that we can not solve the many problems it presents until we know more about the general distribution of ruins, and the characteristic forms peculiar to different geographical localities. ”

“ Whatever explanation of this exceptional condition may be suggested, we cannot question the fact that here we have remains of a kiva below one or more other rooms. [10]
A well blazed trail passes the ruin and is lost in the distant hills. This trail was at first mistaken for an irrigation ditch, but an examination of its course shows that it runs up a steep hill, which precludes such a theory. It is a section of an old Indian trail, indications of which occur elsewhere in the State, a pathway over which the rocks used in the construction of the ruins were transported. ”

“ The basal courses of the masonry are constructed of massive, almost megalithic, rocks. The walls of the rectangular building are particularly well made, and enclose a room filled to the top with clay mixed with fallen rubble. The longest side of this room extends north and south. The whole cluster is approximately 70 feet in length. The diameter of the circular rooms varies, the outside measurement of the larger ones being about 20 feet, while the smallest is barely large enough for a man to stand in with comfort. The semi-circular room is 14 feet in diameter. ”

“ Unlike a true cliff dwelling the rooms occupy the whole of a natural cave the top of which is its roof. It is not possible to determine from the illustration here shown whether or not the recess has been enlarged by artificial means, and as the author has not visited the ruin he has no idea of the arrangement of rooms. ”

“ One of the best of these has also peripheral lines like conventional symbols of feathers. An obscure legend of the Hopi recounts that the ancestral kivas of the Snake clan, when it lived at Tokonabi, or along the San Juan were circular in form. While at present only a suggestion, it is not improbable that towers and round kivas may have been associated with Snake ceremonials, especially as this cult is known to have survived among Keresan pueblos like Sia and Acoma. The Snake clan of the Hopi according to traditions came from the north or the region of circular kivas. ”

“ Not far from the tower (pl. 10, a) , there was picked up a mealing stone similar to those used by pueblo Indians in grinding corn, but no accompanying metate was found. No excavations were attempted.
Mushroom Rock Ruins
The structure of the ruins of the mushroom rock type is not radically different from that of the towers above described, they being exceptional only in their unusual sites. They occur on top of eroded pillars of rock, often enlarged on top, reminding one of mushrooms, like the so-called Snake rock at Walpi. ”

“ Legends mention by name several habitations of the Sikyatki people during their migration from the Jemez region, before they built their Hopi pueblo, but lack of time prevented the author from tracing their trail throughout the entire distance back to their original home. The object of the present investigation was to examine one of their halting places, a ruined pueblo called Tebungki, or Fire House, [2] on the prehistoric trail about 25 miles east of Walpi. ”

“ On the second ledge, or outcrop of hard rock below the summit of the cliff, on which ruin A stands, there is a fine example of the dug-out type of habitation, several of which occur in the sides of this canyon. The roof of this type of dug-out is formed by a flat slab of rock projecting horizontally from the cliff and forming the protection for a chamber excavated in the soft rock below. In some instances these dugouts have rudely constructed lateral and front walls but none of them has more than one room. They appear26 to have been inhabited rooms but may at times have served for shelter. ”

“ The tops of the walls for several feet have fallen, exposing interiors which are almost completely filled with stones and rubble.
Fig. 14.—Ground plan of Eight Mile Ruin. Eight Mile Ruin
Eight Mile Ruin (pl. 10) is the largest and most conspicuous of the Hill Creek remains. It consists of a cluster of towers on a cliff overlooking the right side of the canyon below Taylor’s ranch and from the bottom of the canyon resembles a single large building. It is made up of several circular towers, with passageways between which preserve all the typical features of this style of ruins. ”

“ Geologically speaking it is a very rugged region, composed of eroded cliffs and deep canyons which up to within a few years has been so difficult of access that white men have rarely ventured into it. ”

“ This modification is widely distributed in ruins south of the San Juan, still persisting in several modern pueblos.
The above observations have an important bearing on the author’s differentiation of the village Indians of the Southwest, into two 38groups, which are culturally distinct and widely distributed geographically. The western group originated in the Gila Valley, and extending across Arizona spread northward making its influence felt as far as the Hopi villages; the eastern culture was born in Colorado and Utah and extended to the south along a parallel zone. ”

“ The members of the group are numerous, but each mound is comparatively small. In no case were walls found rising above the mounds, but as nearly as could be judged from their shape, the buildings covered had rectangular outlines and were accompanied by circular depressions. ”

“ Two of the largest of the wall stones are 5 feet long and 3 feet wide, with an estimated thickness of 2 feet. As it would take4 several men to carry one of these stones from the quarry to its place in the wall, they might be called megaliths. ”