Part 8

The method of roofing a kiva of the subtype may be clearly observed in the kiva of Scaffold House in the Navaho National Monument.[61] The rafters here are parallel, and extend across the top of the kiva, their ends resting on the wall. The middle beam, which is the largest, is flanked on each side by another. Upon these supporting beams are laid others at right angles, and on these were placed the brush, bark, and clay that covered the roof. Entrance was gained by means of a hatchway on one side of the roof near the large banquette, which occupies a position, as respects the entrance and the place supposedly occupied by the ladder and the fire-pit, similar to the spectator's platform of a modern rectangular Hopi kiva, except that it is higher above the floor and is relatively smaller. If the banquettes were depressed and enlarged into a platform, the form of the kiva being changed from circular to rectangular, thus modified the banquette would form a structure like the spectator's platform of a typical modern Hopi kiva.[62]

[Footnote 61: See _Bulletin 50, Bureau of American Ethnology_.]

[Footnote 62: The two circular kivas of Kukuchomo, near Sikyatki, have this large banquette and in other respects resemble the ruins of Canyon de Chelly. Kukuchomo marks the site of a settlement, of the Coyote clan of the Hopi in prehistoric times.]

Perhaps of all the ceremonial rooms repaired the walls of kiva M were in the most dangerous condition. The front of the northern wall of room 39 had been undermined and was without foundation, hanging without basal support except at the ends. A support was constructed under this hanging wall, and to give additional strength the foundations were rebuilt a little broader at the base than formerly, causing the wall to bulge almost imperceptibly into the kiva. Although no pilasters were seen, the deep banquette on the northwestern side places it among the kivas of the first type.

KIVAS OF THE SECOND TYPE

The architecture of the two kivas O and R are so different from those already considered that they are set apart from the others in a second type. The form and structure of kiva W indicate that this room also may be classed as of the same type. In the side canyon north of that in which Cliff Palace is situated, where water was obtained throughout the summer, there is another kiva, also supposed to belong to the second type.[63]

[Footnote 63: As a huge rock had fallen from the roof of the cave in which this kiva lies, since it was first occupied, it would appear that the place was abandoned on that account.]

The main difference in construction between the two types of kivas is the absence of pilasters, which implies the absence of a roof in the second type. The suggestion that a kiva of the second type is simply an unfinished form of the first type has little to support it, but whether the architectural difference in the two types has any functional importance or meaning is unknown. It has been suggested that one type was used by the Winter, the other by the Summer people.[64]

[Footnote 64: Nordenskiöld's description of this kiva has been quoted earlier in this paper. In the description of a ceremonial room of a somewhat similar or of the same type in Spruce-tree House the term "warrior room" is used; there is nothing to warrant this designation, however, and it would be better to consider it simply as a kiva of the second type.]

KIVA O

Kiva O is rounded below and square above, with a north-south diameter of 11 feet 10 inches, and an east-west diameter of 10 feet 6 inches. The ventilator opens in the western wall. There are 2 mural niches.

Both the plastered floor and the deflector are lacking, and there is no fire-hole nor sipapû. No roof or pilasters to support it were detected. It is difficult to measure the surrounding wall on account of its varying height. The masonry is good, but there are no signs on the walls that a fire had ever burned within the chamber. It would appear that this kiva was roofless, and that it had broad banquettes at the northern and southern sides.

KIVA R

In shape this kiva is oval below and square above, without pilasters or other evidences of a roof. There are no signs of a floor, a deflector, or a fire-hole. The surrounding wall of the kiva is high; apparently there was an entrance at the eastern side. Banquettes are present on the northern and southern ends, and a narrow ledge skirts the other two sides.

There are 4 mural niches: (1) south by east, measuring 15 by 11 by 13 inches; (1) north by east, measuring 11½ by 8 by 15 inches; (2) in the north wall, measuring 13 by 8 by 12 inches, and 12 by 8 by 13 inches; the latter three being placed in a row and separated by slabs of stone. In the south wall there is a tunnel terminating bluntly and bifurcated at the end.

Although kiva R was regarded by Nordenskiöld as furnishing evidence of a transition form connecting circular and rectangular kivas, it seems to the author a new type rather than a modification of the circular or the rectangular kivas.

KIVA W

Kiva W is not generally included among the Cliff Palace ceremonial rooms on account of its isolation from the houses, but there is no doubt that it should be so enumerated. It lies about 50 feet west of the end of the last room in the cliff-dwelling, and is not accompanied with secular rooms. Although situated on the same level as the houses, its walls rise two tiers high, but no part of the inclosure is subterranean.

From the height of the walls it at first seemed as if in kiva W there were evidences of a room above. This condition would be contrary to the rule and, to the Hopi mind, ceremonially impossible; but if its upper walls are regarded as homogeneous with the high walls that surround kivas O and R, and we interpret this as an example of the second type of kiva, the anomaly is explained.

Although this kiva is placed provisionally in the second type mainly because of these lofty side walls, on account of its isolation at the end of Cliff Palace several observers have not regarded it as belonging to the ruin. Neither Nordenskiöld nor Morley and Kidder included it in their ground plans, nor does Nordenskiöld mention it in his enumeration of Cliff Palace kivas.

As kiva W is almost wholly unprotected by the cave roof, its walls have greatly suffered from the downpour of rains to which they are exposed. The masonry is fairly good. Evidently it was an important building, and was isolated from other rooms possibly for some special purpose. As there are few or no walls of secular rooms near it, one may believe that it was resorted to by the villagers on special occasions and did not belong to any one clan.

MINOR ANTIQUITIES

In the preceding pages have been described the major antiquities, such as walls and those permanent objects which could not be removed from the places where they were constructed without more or less harm. There remain to be considered the minor antiquities, or the smaller objects which are movable and of a more perishable nature, especially if left in the places where they were found. It was mainly in search of such objects that much of the mutilation of Cliff Palace was done.

It was not expected that excavations would yield any considerable number of specimens, since for years Cliff Palace had been dug over in search of them, and many hundreds of objects had already been found and carried away to be sold either to museums or to individuals. Notwithstanding these unfavorable conditions, the collection of objects, now deposited in the National Museum, is sufficient to afford some idea of the culture of the Cliff Palace people.

Among the objects that may be mentioned in the category of minor antiquities are pottery, basketry, implements of stone, bone, and wood, fabrics of various kinds, ornaments, fetishes, and the like--all those objects commonly called artifacts that make up collections from cliff-dwellings generally.

The excavations at Cliff Palace have revealed no specimens strikingly different from those already described as from Spruce-tree House. We would expect some variation in the symbols on pottery from the two ruins, but the differences are not conspicuous in the few specimens that have been compared. Nor is there any peculiarity in the form of the pottery, as the ceramic objects from Cliff Palace practically duplicate those from Spruce-tree House, already described, and probably are not much unlike those still buried in Long House, Balcony House, and the House with the Square Tower.

As many ceremonial objects, being highly prized, may have been removed from Cliff Palace when the place was deserted by its inhabitants, the few that remained present scant material from which to add to our knowledge of the ceremonial life of the people. The existence of so many kivas would point to many rites, although a large number of sacred rooms does not necessarily indicate more complex or elaborate rites than a smaller number: multiplicity of kivas does not necessarily mean multiplicity of ceremonies, nor few kivas a limited ritual. In no pueblo are there more complicated ceremonies than at Walpi, where there are only five of these sacred rooms; but it must be remembered that many of the religious rites of Walpi are performed in kihus, or secular rooms. The same may have been true of Cliff Palace.

The writer's belief is that in historic times, by which is meant since the advent of missionaries, altars have become more elaborate and rites more complex at Walpi than in prehistoric times, and that through the same influence the use of images or idols has also increased. This increase in the complexity of rites may be traced to the amalgamation of clans or to a substitution of the fraternities of priesthoods for simple clan ancestor worship. The elaborate character of ceremonial paraphernalia may likewise be due to acculturation,[65] which increases in complication with the lapse of time.

[Footnote 65: For instance, the complicated reredos of many of the modern Hopi altars is made of flat wooden slabs, the manufacture of which would be very difficult for a people ignorant of iron. These probably replaced painted stone slabs of simpler character, examples of which have been found in ruins and indeed still survive in some of the oldest rites.]

STONE IMPLEMENTS

The stone implements from Cliff Palace consist of axes, mauls, paint grinders, pecking stones, metates, balls, flakes, spear and arrow points, and various other articles (pls. 20-22). There is great uniformity in these implements, the axes, for instance, being generally single edged, although a good specimen of double-edged hatchet is in the collection. A fragment of the peculiar stone implement called _tcamahia_[66] by the Hopi was found.

[Footnote 66: This object probably came from near Tokónabi, the ancient home of the Snake people of Walpi, on San Juan river. Fourteen of these tcamahias form part of the Antelope altar in the Snake Dance at Walpi.]

While as a rule the hatchets are without handles, one specimen (pl. 20) is exceptional in this particular. The handle of this hatchet from Cliff Palace, like that from Spruce-tree House, elsewhere described, is a stick bent in a loop around the stone head.

POUNDING STONES

Anyone who will examine the amount of stone-cutting necessary to lower the floor of kiva V, for instance, to its present depth, or to peck away the projecting rock in some of the other kivas, will realize at once that the Cliff Palace people were industrious stone workers. A number of the pounding stones (pl. 22, _a_) with which this work was done have been found. These stones are cubical in form, or rounded or pointed at one end or both ends, and provided with two or more pits on the sides. They were evidently held directly in the hand and used without handles. Although generally small, they sometimes are of considerable size. The stone of which they are made is foreign to the vicinity; it is hard, as would be absolutely necessary to be effectual in the use to which they were put.

GRINDING STONES

The most common variety of grinding stones is, of course, the metate, or mill-stone, used in grinding corn. These implements have a variety of forms. They may be flat above and rounded below, or flat on both sides, triangular on each face, or simply convex on each side. None of them have feet like the Mexican metates. The stone with which the grinding was done, or the one held in the hand, also varies in shape, size, and evidences of use.[67] Stones with a depression in one face served as mortars. A stone in the form of a pestle, flat on the end, served as a paint grinder. Several flat stones with smooth surface, showing the effect of grinding, and others with slight concavities, undoubtedly served the same purpose. Smooth stones showing grinding on one or more faces were evidently the implements with which the builders smoothed the walls of the houses after the masonry had been laid; others were used in polishing pottery.

[Footnote 67: At several places on the surfaces of projecting rocks forming the foundations of buildings may be noticed grooves where metates were sharpened. One or more of these occur at the entrance to the "street" in front of room 51. The foundation of a wall in one room was built directly upon one of these grooves, part of the groove being in sight, the rest covered with masonry. Near room 92 there are many of these grooves as well as small pits.]

MISCELLANEOUS STONES

Many stone balls, large or small, were found. Some of these show chipping, others are ground smooth. Certain of these balls were evidently used in a game popular at Cliff Palace, in which they were rolled or dropped into deep pits and grooves. It appears that this game was played by occupants of the sacred rooms, as the pits are common in the kiva floors. Other stone balls were formerly tied to the end of a handle with a thong of hide and used as a weapon.

A half oval stone, smooth and flat at one pole, is supposed to have been an idol, possibly the earth goddess, who is repeatedly represented by the Hopi in a similar way. It was left near where it was found at the northwest corner of kiva H. Our masons used rectangular slabs of soft stone, which were doubtless door-closes, as mortar boards. They were held in place in the door opening by jambs made of mortar laid on sticks, and by a horizontal rod which passed between two osier eyelets set in the uprights of the door-frame and projecting from it. These stone doors were sometimes held in place by a groove cut in the threshold or by a ledge of adobe.

Two thin, flat, circular stone disks (pl. 22, _c_), with smooth surfaces and square edges, accompanied the calcined human bones in the inclosure at the northern end of the large refuse heap. It is probable that some of these disks were used as covers for mortuary vases. Irregularly shaped flat stones with pits and incised figures pecked in their surface were used in a game, and a slab covered with incised figures but without the pits (pl. 23, _c_) probably served a similar purpose.

Several large stones, which the builders of Cliff Palace had begun to dress and had later rejected, show the method adopted by them in cutting stones the required size. When stones were found to be too large to be laid, or had projections that interfered with the required shape, a groove was pecked where the fracture was desired and the stone broken along the groove.

POTTERY

No ruin in the Mesa Verde National Park has yielded more specimens of pottery than Cliff Palace, many pieces of which are preserved in various museums in Colorado and elsewhere. The collection gathered by the writer was small compared with some of these, and although only a few whole pieces were found, by restoration from fragments a fair number of specimens, ample perhaps for generalization, were procured. In the following mention of the pottery obtained from the ruin a very comprehensive idea of the perfection in the ceramic art attained in Cliff Palace can hardly be hoped.

Southwestern pottery may be divided into two types, so far as superficial appearance goes: (1) coiled or indented undecorated ware; (2) smooth polished ware. Of the latter there are two sub-types: (_a_) pottery with a surface slip, generally white, on which designs are painted, and (_b_) decorated pottery without a superficial slip, and generally reddish in color. Cliff Palace pottery, when decorated, belongs to the last two divisions, but some of the best made specimens belong to the coiled or indented type. Although there are several fragments of red pottery ornamented with designs painted in black, and one or two specimens in which the basal color is orange, the majority of the specimens belong to the so-called black-and-white ware, which may therefore be called a type of this region.

The whole pieces of pottery collected were chiefly mortuary vessels, and probably contained food offerings, indicating, like the sipapûs in the kivas, that the cliff-dwellers had a distinct conception of a future life. In addition to the limited number of pieces of unbroken pottery, many of the fragments were decorated with novel patterns. Fragments of corrugated and indented ware are by far the most numerous, but although many of these were obtained, not a whole piece was found, with the exception of a single specimen plastered in a fire-hole and three others similarly fixed in the banquettes of kivas. These were left as they were found.

The same forms of pottery, as dippers, ladles, vases, canteens, jars, and similar objects, occur at Cliff Palace as at Spruce-tree House (pl. 23-27). All varieties were repeatedly found, some with old cracks that had been mended, and one is still tied with the yucca cord with which it had been repaired. It is evident from the frequency with which the Cliff Palace people mended their old pottery that they prized the old vessels and were very careful to preserve them, being loth to abandon even a cracked jar (pl. 23, _d_). None of the Cliff Palace pottery is glazed.[68] Some specimens of smooth pottery are coarse in texture and without decoration; others have elaborate geometrical figures; but animate objects are confined almost entirely to a few pictures of birds or other animals and rudely drawn human figures. The pictography of the pottery affords scant data bearing on the interpretation of the ancient symbolism of the inhabitants, as compared with that of Sikyatki, for example, in the Hopi country.

[Footnote 68: The first description of "glazed" pottery in the Pueblo region is given by Castañeda (1540), who says: "Throughout this province [Tiguex] are found glazed pottery and vessels truly remarkable both in shape and execution." This has sometimes been interpreted to mean the glossy but unglazed pottery of Santa Clara. Glazed pottery was found by the writer in 1896 in ruins on the Little Colorado. It appears to be intrusive in the Arizona ruins.]

_Food bowls._--In form the food bowls[69] from Cliff Palace (pls. 23-25) are the same as those from other prehistoric sites of the Southwest, but as a rule the Cliff Palace bowls are smaller than those of Sikyatki and the ruins on the Little Colorado. They have, as a rule, a thicker lip, which is square across instead of tapering to a thin edge or flaring, as is sometimes the case elsewhere. The surface, inside and out, is commonly very smooth, even glossy. The pottery was built up by coiling the clay, and the colors were made permanent by the firing.

[Footnote 69: Food bowls with handles, so common to the ruins of northern Arizona, were not found at Cliff Palace.]

The basis of the study of symbolism was of course the pottery decoration. As a rule the center of the inside of the food bowls is plain, but several have this portion ornamented with squares, triangles, and other figures. The outside of several bowls from Cliff Palace and Spruce-tree House is decorated, notwithstanding Nordenskiöld speaks of exterior decoration as rare in his collections from the Mesa Verde. The geometric ornaments consist of rectangular figures.[70]

[Footnote 70: No curved lines are present in the many examples of decoration on the outside of food bowls from Sikyatki.]

_Mugs._--Some authors have questioned whether the prehistoric people of the Southwest were familiar with this form of pottery. The collections from Cliff Palace (pl. 24-26) and Spruce-tree House set at rest any reasonable doubt on this point. There are, however, peculiarities in the form of mugs from Mesa Verde. The diameter of the base is generally larger, tapering gently toward the mouth, and one end of the handle is rarely affixed to the rim. The inside of the mug is not usually decorated, but the exterior bears geometrical designs in which terraces, triangles, and parallel lines predominate. Curved lines are rare, and spirals are absent. Mugs with two handles are unrepresented. There are no ladles in the collection, but several broken handles of ladles were found in the refuse. One of these is decorated with a series of parallel, longitudinal, and transverse lines, a design as widely spread as Pueblo pottery, extending across the boundary into Mexico.

_Globular Vessels._--The globular form of pottery was used for carrying water and seems to have been common at Cliff Palace. One of these vessels (pl. 25, _b_) has a small neck, and attached to it are two eyelets for insertion of the thong by which it was carried. Some of the globular vessels (pl. 25, _a_) have the neck small, the orifice wide, and the lip perforated with holes for strings. Double-lipped globular vessels, having a groove like that of a teapot, have been found in Cliff Palace as well as in other ruins of Mesa Verde and Montezuma canyon. The rims of these are generally perforated, as if for the insertion of thongs to facilitate carrying. The bottoms of these vessels are rarely concave. They are sometimes decorated on the outside, but never on the interior.

_Vases._--Small vases with contracted neck and lip slightly curved, and larger vases with the same characters, occur sparingly. These (pls. 26, 27, _b_) are decorated on the exterior in geometrical designs; the interior is plain. The bases are rounded, sometimes flat, and in rare instances concave.

_Disks._--Among pottery objects should be mentioned certain disks, some large, others small, some perforated in the middle, others imperforate. Several are decorated. These disks served as covers for bowls, and similar disks were employed as counters in games or as spindle whorls. None of the clay disks from Cliff Palace has a central knob or handle like those from Spruce-tree House.

RELATIONS AS DETERMINED BY POTTERY

In the report on Spruce-tree House, using pottery as a basis, the prehistoric culture of the Southwest, including the Gila-Salt area, which can not strictly be designated Pueblo, has been provisionally divided into several subcultural areas. Among these are the Hopi, a specialized modification of the Little Colorado, the Little Colorado proper, the San Juan, and the Gila-Salt areas.