A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola Part 7

The first diagram ill.u.s.trates the supposed original cl.u.s.ter of the east court (Fig. 10), the lines of which can be traced on the larger plan, and it includes the long, nearly straight line that marks the western edge of the third story. This diagram shows also, in dotted lines, the general plan that may have guided the first additions to the west. The second diagram (Fig. 11) renders all the above material in full tint, again indicating further additions by dotted lines, and so on. (Fig.

12.) The portions of a terrace, which face westward in the newer courts of the pueblo, ill.u.s.trated in Pl. XXIX, were probably built after the western row, completing the inclosure, and were far enough advanced to indicate definitely an inclosed court, upon which the dwelling rooms faced.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate x.x.x. Plan of Shupaulovi.]

SHUPAULOVI.

This village, by far the smallest pueblo of the Tusayan group, ill.u.s.trates a simple and direct use of the principle of the inclosed court. The plan (Pl. x.x.x) shows that the outer walls are scarcely broken by terraces, and nearly all the dwelling apartments open inwards upon the inclosure, in this respect closely following the previously described ancient type, although widely differing from it in the irregular disposition of the rooms. (Pl. x.x.xI) A comparison with the first of the series of diagrams ill.u.s.trating the growth of Mashngnavi, will show how similar the villages may have been at one stage, and how suitable a nucleus for a large pueblo this village would prove did s.p.a.ce and character of the site permit. Most of the available summit of the rocky knoll has already been covered, as will be seen from the topographic sketch of the site (Fig. 13). The plan shows also that some efforts at extension of the pueblo have been made, but the houses outside of the main cl.u.s.ter have been abandoned, and are rapidly going to ruin. Several small rooms occur on the outer faces of the rows, but it can be readily seen that they do not form a part of the original plan but were added to an already complete structure.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 13. Topography of the site of Shupaulovi.]

In the inclosed court of this pueblo occurs a small box-like stone inclosure, covered with a large slab, which is used as a sort of shrine or depository for the sacred plume sticks and other ceremonial offerings. This feature is found at some of the other villages, notably at Mashongnavi, in the central court, and at Hano, where it is located at some distance outside of the village, near the main trail to the mesa.

The plan of this small village shows three covered pa.s.sageways similar to those noted in Walpi on the first mesa, though their presence here can not be ascribed to the same motives that impelled the Walpi to build in this way; for the densely crowded site occupied by the latter compelled them to resort to this expedient. One of these is ill.u.s.trated in Pl. x.x.xII. Its presence may be due in this instance to a determination to adhere to the protected court while seeking to secure convenient means of access to the inclosed area. It is remarkable that this, the smallest of the group, should contain this feature.

This village has but two kivas, one of which is on the rocky summit near the houses and the other on the lower ground near the foot of the trail that leads to the village. The upper kiva is nearly subterranean, the roof being but a little above the ground on the side toward the village, but as the rocky site slopes away a portion of side wall is exposed.

This was roughly built, with no attempt to impart finish to its outer face, either by careful laying of the masonry or by plastering. Pl.

x.x.xIII ill.u.s.trates this kiva in connection with the southeastern portion of the village. The plan shows how the prolongation of the side rows of the village forms a suggestion of a second court. Its development into any such feature as the secondary or additional courts of Mashngnavi was prohibited by the restricted site.

As in other villages of this group, the desire to adhere to the subterranean form of ceremonial chamber outweighed the inducement to place it within the village, or, in the case of the second kiva, even of placing it on the same level as the houses, which are 30 feet above it with an abrupt trail between them. It is curious and instructive to see a room, the use of which is so intimately connected with the inner life of the village, placed in such a comparatively remote and inaccessible position through an intensely conservative adherence to ancient practice requiring this chamber to be depressed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate x.x.xI. View of Shupaulovi.]

The general view of the village given in Pl. x.x.xI strikingly ill.u.s.trates the blending of the rectangular forms of the architecture with the angular and sharply defined fractures of the surrounding rock. This close correspondence in form between the architecture and its immediate surroundings is greatly heightened by the similarity in color. Mr.

Stephen has called attention to a similar effect on the western side of Walpi and its adjacent mesa edge, which he thought indicates a distinct effort at concealment on the part of the builders, by blending the architecture with the surroundings. This similarity of effect is often accidental, and due to the fact that the materials of the houses and of the mesas on which they are built are identical. Even in the case of Walpi, cited by Mr. Stephen, where the buildings come to the very mesa edge, and in their vertical lines appear to carry out the effect of the vertical fissures in the upper benches of sandstone, there was no intentional concealment. It is more likely that, through the necessity of building close to the limits of the crowded sites, a certain degree of correspondence was unintentionally produced between the jogs and angles of the houses and those of the mesa edge.

Such correspondence with the surroundings, which forms a striking feature of many primitive types of construction where intention of concealment had no part, is doubtless mainly due to the use of the most available material, although the expression of a type of construction that has prevailed for ages in one locality would perhaps be somewhat influenced by constantly recurring forms in its environment. In the system of building under consideration, such influence would, however, be a very minute fraction in the sum of factors producing the type and could never account for such examples of special and detailed correspondence as the cases cited, nor could it have any weight in developing a rectangular type of architecture.

In the development of primitive arts the advances are slow and laborious, and are produced by adding small increments to current knowledge. So vague and undefined an influence as that exerted by the larger forms of surrounding nature are seldom recognized and acknowledged by the artisan; on the contrary, experiments, resulting in improvement, are largely prompted by practical requirements.

Particularly is this the case in the art of house-building.

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. x.x.xIV). 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.

There is a general air of newness about the place, though it is questionable whether the architecture is more recent than that of the other villages of Tusayan. This effect is partly due to the custom of frequently renewing the coating of mud plaster. In most of the villages little care is taken to repair the houses until the owner feels that to postpone such action longer would endanger its stability. Many of the ill.u.s.trations in this chapter indicate the proportion of rough masonry usually exposed in the walls. At Shumopavi (Pl. x.x.xV), however, most of the walls are smoothly plastered. In this respect they resemble Zui and the eastern pueblos, where but little naked masonry can be seen. Another feature that adds to the effect of neatness and finish in this village is the frequent use of a whitewash of gypsum on the outer face of the walls. This wash is used partly as an ornament and partly as protection against the rain. The material, called by the Mexicans yeso, is very commonly used in the interior of their houses throughout this region, both by Mexicans and Indians. More rarely it is used among the pueblos as an external wash. Here, however, its external use forms quite a distinctive feature of the village. The same custom in several of the cliff houses of Canyon de Ch.e.l.ly attests the comparative antiquity of the practice, though not necessarily its pre-Columbian origin.

Shumopavi, compared with the other villages, shows less evidence of having been built on the open court idea, as the partial inclosures a.s.sume such elongated forms in the direction of the long, straight rows of the rooms; yet examination shows that the idea was present to a slight extent.

At the southeast corner of the pueblo there is a very marked approach to the open court, though it is quite evident that the easternmost row has its back to the court, and that the few rooms that face the other way are later additions. In fact, the plan of the village and the distribution of the terraces seem to indicate that the first construction consisted only of a single row facing nearly east, and was not an inclosed court, and that a further addition to the pueblo a.s.sumed nearly the same form, with its face or terraced side toward the back of the first row only partly adapting itself by the addition of a few small rooms later, to the court arrangement, the same operation being continued, but in a form not so clearly defined, still farther toward the west.

The second court is not defined on the west by such a distinct row as the others, and the smaller cl.u.s.ters that to some extent break the long, straight arrangement bring about an approximation to a court, though here again the terraces only partly face it, the eastern side being bounded by the long exterior wall of the middle row, two and three stories high, and almost unbroken throughout its entire length of 400 feet. The broken character of the small western row, in conjunction with the cl.u.s.ters near it, imparts a distinct effect to the plan of this portion, differentiating it in character from the ma.s.ses of houses formed by the other two rows. The latter are connected at their southern end by a short cross row which converts this portion of the village practically into a single large house. Two covered pa.s.sageways, however, which are designated on the plan, give access to the southeast portion of the court. This portion is partly separated from the north half of the inclosure by encroaching groups of rooms. This partial division of the original narrow and long court appears to be of later date.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate x.x.xII. A covered pa.s.sageway of Shupaulovi.]

The kivas are four in number, of which but one is within the village.

The latter occupies a partly inclosed position in the southwest portion, and probably owes its place to some local facility for building a kiva on this spot in the nature of a depression in the mesa summit; but even with such aid the ceremonial chamber was built only partly under ground, as may be seen in Fig. 14. The remaining three kivas are more distinctly subterranean, and in order to obtain a suitable site one of these was located at a distance of more than 200 feet from the village, toward the mesa edge on the east. The other two are built very close together, apparently in contact, just beyond the northern extremity of the village. One of these is about 3 feet above the surface at one corner, but nearly on a level with the ground at its western side where it adjoins its neighbor. These two kivas are ill.u.s.trated in Pl. Lx.x.xVIII and Fig. 21.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 14. Court kiva of Shumopavi.]

Here again we find that the ceremonial chamber that forms so important a feature among these people, occupies no fixed relation to the dwellings, and its location is largely a matter of accident, a site that would admit of the partial excavation or sinking of the chamber below the surface being the main requisite. The northwest court contains another of the small inclosed shrines already described as occurring at Shupaulovi and elsewhere.

The stonework of this village also possesses a somewhat distinctive character. Exposed masonry, though comparatively rare in this well-plastered pueblo, shows that stones of suitable fracture were selected and that they were more carefully laid than in the other villages. In places the masonry bears a close resemblance to some of the ancient work, where the s.p.a.ces between the longer tablets of stone were carefully c.h.i.n.ked with small bits of stone, bringing the whole wall to a uniform face, and is much in advance of the ordinary slovenly methods of construction followed in Tusayan.

Shumopavi is the successor of an older village of that name, one of the cities of the ancient Tusayan visited by a detachment of Coronados expedition in 1540. The ruins of that village still exist, and they formerly contained vestiges of the old church and mission buildings established by the monks. The squared beams from, these buildings were considered valuable enough to be incorporated in the construction of ceremonial kivas in some of the Tusayan villages. This old site was not visited by the party.

ORAIBI.

This is one of the largest modern pueblos, and contains nearly half the population of Tusayan; yet its great size has not materially affected the arrangement of the dwellings. The general plan (see Pl. x.x.xVI), simply shows an unusually large collection of typical Tusayan house-rows, with the general tendency to face eastward displayed in the other villages of the group. There is a remarkable uniformity in the direction of the rows, but there are no indications of the order in which the successive additions to the village were made, such as were found at Mashngnavi.

The cl.u.s.ters of rooms do not surpa.s.s the average dimensions of those in the smaller villages. In five of the cl.u.s.ters in Oraibi a height of four stories is reached by a few rooms; a height seen also in Walpi.

At several points in Oraibi, notably on the west side of cl.u.s.ter No. 7, may be seen what appears to be low terraces faced with rough masonry.

The same thing is also seen at Walpi, on the west side of the northernmost cl.u.s.ter. This effect is produced by the gradual filling in of abandoned and broken-down marginal houses, with fallen masonry and drifted sand. The appearance is that of intentional construction, as may be seen in Pl. x.x.xIX.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate x.x.xIII. The chief kiva of Shupaulovi.]

The rarity of covered pa.s.sageways in this village is noteworthy, and emphasizes the marked difference in the character of the Tusayan and Zui ground plans. The close crowding of rooms in the latter has made a feature of the covered way, which in the scattered plan of Oraibi is rarely called for. When found it does not seem an outgrowth of the same conditions that led to its adoption in Zui. A glance at the plans will show how different has been the effect of the immediate environment in the two cases. In Zui, built on a very slight knoll in the open plain, the absence of a defensive site has produced unusual development of the defensive features of the architecture, and the result is a remarkably dense cl.u.s.tering of the dwellings. At Tusayan, on the other hand, the largest village of the group does not differ in character from the smallest. Occupation of a defensive site has there, in a measure taken the place of a special defensive arrangement, or close cl.u.s.tering of rooms. Oraibi is laid out quite as openly as any other of the group, and as additions to its size have from time to time been made the builders have, in the absence of the defensive motive for crowding the rows or groups into large cl.u.s.ters, simply followed the usual arrangement. The crowding that brought about the use of the covered way was due in Walpi to restricted site, as nearly all the available summit of its rocky promontory has been covered with buildings. In Zui, on the other hand, it was the necessity for defense that led to the close cl.u.s.tering of the dwellings and the consequent employment of the covered way.

A further contrast between the general plans of Oraibi and Zui is afforded in the different manner in which the roof openings have been employed in the two cases. The plan of Zui, Pl. LXXVI, shows great numbers of small openings, nearly all of which are intended exclusively for the admission of light, a few only being provided with ladders. In Oraibi, on the other hand, there are only seventeen roof openings above the first terrace, and of these not more than half are intended for the admission of light. The device is correspondingly rare in other villages of the group, particularly in those west of the first mesa. In Mashngnavi the restricted use of the roof openings is particularly noticeable; they all are of the same type as those used for access to first terrace rooms. There is but one roof opening in a second story. An examination of the plan, Pl. x.x.x, will show that in Shupalovi but two such openings occur above the first terrace, and in the large village of Shumopavi, Pl. x.x.xIV, only about eight. None of the smaller villages can be fairly compared with Zui in the employment of this feature, but in Oraibi we should expect to find its use much more general, were it not for the fact that the defensive site has taken the place of the close cl.u.s.tering of rooms seen in the exposed village of Zui, and, in consequence, the devices for the admission of light still adhere to the more primitive arrangement (Pls. XL and XLI).

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 subst.i.tute 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.

The builders of large valley pueblos must frequently have been forced to resort hastily to defensive sites on finding that the valley towns were unfitted to withstand attack. This seems to have been the case with the Tusayan; but that the Zui have adhered to their valley pueblo through great difficulties is clearly attested by the internal evidence of the architecture itself, even were other testimony altogether wanting.

MOEN-KOPI.

About 50 miles west from Oraibi is a small settlement used by a few families from Oraibi during the farming season, known as Moen-kopi. (Pl.

XLIII). The present village is comparatively recent, but, as is the case with many others, it has been built over the remains of an older settlement. It is said to have been founded within the memory of some of the Mormon pioneers at the neighboring town of Tuba City, named after an old Oraibi chief, recently deceased.

The site would probably have attracted a much larger number of settlers, had it not been so remote from the main pueblos of the province, as in many respects it far surpa.s.ses any of the present village sites. A large area of fertile soil can be conveniently irrigated from copious springs in the side of a small branch of the Moen-kopi wash. The village occupies a low, rounded knoll at the junction of this branch with the main wash, which on the opposite or southern side is quite precipitous.

The gradual encroachments of the Mormons for the last twenty years have had some effect in keeping the Tusayan from more fully utilizing the advantages of this site (Pl. XLII).

Moen-kopi is built in two irregular rows of one-story houses. There are also two detached single rooms in the village--one of them built for a kiva, though apparently not in use at the time of our survey, and the other a small room with its princ.i.p.al door facing an adjoining row. The arrangement is about the same that prevails in the other villages, the rows having distinct back walls of rude masonry.

Rough stone work predominates also in the fronts of the houses, though it is occasionally brought to a fair degree of finish. Some adobe work is incorporated in the masonry, and at one point a new and still unroofed room was seen built of adobe bricks on a stone foundation about a foot high. There is but little adobe masonry, however, in Tusayan. Its use in this case is probably due to Mormon influence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate x.x.xIV. Plan of Shumopavi.]

Moen-kopi was the headquarters of a large business enterprise of the Mormons a number of years ago. They attempted to concentrate the product of the Navajo wool trade at this point and to establish here a completely appointed woolen mill. Water was brought from a series of reservoirs built in a small valley several miles away, and was conducted to a point on the Moen-kopi knoll, near the end of the south row of houses, where the ditch terminated in a solidly constructed box of masonry. From this in turn the water was delivered through a large pipe to a turbine wheel, which furnished the motive power for the works. The ditch and masonry are shown on the ground plan of the village (Pl.

XLIII). This mill was a large stone building, and no expense was spared in fitting it up with the most complete machinery. At the time of our visit the whole establishment had been abandoned for some years and was rapidly going to decay. The frames had been torn from the windows, and both the floor of the building and the ground in its vicinity were strewn with fragments of expensive machinery, broken cog-wheels, shafts, etc. This building is shown in Pl. XLV, and may serve as an ill.u.s.tration of the contrast between Tusayan masonry and modern stonemasons work carried out with the same material. The comparison, however, is not entirely fair, as applied to the pueblo builders in general, as the Tusayan mason is unusually careless in his work. Many old examples are seen in which the finish of the walls compares very favorably with the American masons work, though the result is attained in a wholly different manner, viz, by close and careful c.h.i.n.king with numberless small tablets of stone. This process brings the wall to a remarkably smooth and even surface, the joints almost disappearing in the mosaic-like effect of the wall ma.s.s. The masonry of Moen-kopi is more than ordinarily rough, as the small village was probably built hastily and used for temporary occupation as a farming center. In the winter the place is usually abandoned, the few families occupying it during the farming months returning to Oraibi for the season of festivities and ceremonials.

CHAPTER III.

RUINS AND INHABITED VILLAGES OF CIBOLA.

PHYSICAL FEATURES OF THE PROVINCE.