CHAPTER IV

Building in the Great Period

Time has a peculiar way of curing all ills. The Keres had been driven from the Tyuonyi by the “little strong people” and possibly did not make further attempt to re-occupy this Valley of the Frijoles. They were contented to stay in the broad Valley of the Rio Grande where the water supply was constant and where their enemies did not care to go. The boundary line was set. And even the hostile Tewas had probably experienced enough of war and trouble.

Tyuonyi, the Hidden Valley, might have been like an oasis in the desert. Who can say that there was sufficient water in the canyons and on the mesas to the north—that water holes did not go dry and that the Tewas did not have to depend upon waters from the heavens to make their corn grow? And who can say that the waters of El Rito de Los Frijoles dried up? One can only suppose. But judging by climatic conditions as they are today, Frijoles Canyon was one of the main sources of water on the Pajarito. Since water was a controlling factor in the lives of these people, what primitive group of Indians would not fight over the right to live in a well-watered valley—a green and beautiful valley—where adequate shelter was afforded by the vertical walls of a high north cliff? Certain things hint that little time passed before Tewa-speaking groups penetrated the Valley of the Frijoles again and in larger numbers than before. Slowly and surely they trickled in a few at a time. Over a period of years the infiltration was heavy. Deep trails were worn in the soft rock ledges by the passing over of thousands of moccasined feet going to and from the northern villages some ten miles distant. The steam of hatred between the jealous groups could have cooled off but probably never completely. Toward the close of the fifteenth century primitive Tewa farmers, it seems, had again settled in Frijoles Canyon.

They went to work in earnest this time, building houses; not with mud walls which would wash down when it rained, but with walls of stone, which type of construction their predecessors had begun. Some of the caves occupied by the earlier people could have eroded away while others could have been re-hewn by these later occupants. Who knows? Crumbling remains of old talus houses might have been leveled off at the base of the cliff and new homes built over them. Indian men carved the heavy stones into square and rectangular blocks with stone axes. The stones lay almost flat and the masons did not have to be too careful in their fashioning because small pieces of rock hammered tight in the joints would hold the blocks steady. These walls were laid on footings of smooth-worn river pebbles. Block after block was carved and laid into structures seven feet high. Indian women carried water from the little river in ollas on the tops of their heads and trudged day after day up the steep slopes to the cliff. They gathered clay, perhaps not from Frijoles Canyon, because it was hard to find. They might have traveled miles for enough to apply a thin coating of wash over the stone walls of their homes.

Indian men labored with stone axes to fell the trunks of pines which they used in building roofs to their houses. They gouged holes out of the soft cliff to insert the ends of roof beams and sealed them in tightly with mud mortar. Across these vigas they laid small poles. Many miles were covered to obtain long slender canes and cat-tail stems from the muddy low banks of the Rio Grande for the next roof layer. Then pine needles and brush supplied the next coat. Something leafy had to hold the thick mud coats which were smoothed flat over the top. Sometimes Indian houses had doors in the front walls and sometimes they did not. It all depended upon the wish of the individual builder. Most of the houses had two-pole ladders of pine. Rungs were lashed down tight with willows, pliable reeds or even strings of rawhide or rope made from the yucca fiber. By means of ladders the Indian could climb to his roof-top and go down through a small hatchway or opening. This gave added protection against hostile groups. In any one of many cavate or house rooms was a fireplace. In the ceiling above was an opening for the escape of the smoke. Cliff dwellings were smoky places regardless of the type or style.

Time developed the terraced community apartment house for the prehistoric Pueblo Indian in the cliff as well as in the open flats on the floor of the Canyon. Second stories, it seems, came quite late in the evolution of house types at Frijoles. Narrow mud walls of such poor quality as were built in earlier times at Tyuonyi would never have held two stories but the new walls of fashioned rock would hold them because they were more stable. It stands to reason that when stone and mortar were laid into a wall, the process of drying out transformed the wall into a unit. This process reminds me of an expression I remember from my freshman days in college, that: “Pre-Cambrian rocks are homogeneous in their heterogeneity,” and it is certainly true that stone walls built by our prehistoric friends of the sixteenth century could enjoy the same comment. Floors to these houses were plastered with fine adobe mortar. The rough surfaces of walls were plastered over too, from floor to roof timbers. And the cliff dweller was lucky if no water got inside his house. The secret was to keep them dry. It might not have been an uncommon sight to have witnessed the mudding of roofs by Indian women of sixteenth century Tyuonyi. After a good rain they could have taken advantage of water caught in pottery vessels which had been set outside the houses. This would have saved the women many a weary step to water and return.

One story was not sufficient so up, up, up went the houses to two and three stories. The cliff formed the back walls of the rooms—then Mr. Prehistoric Indian had only three walls to lay instead of four. Walls of stone, ten and twelve inches thick, would hold the weight of one or two additional stories and especially when they leaned against the steady cliff. But additional rooms meant more poles, more cane, brush and mud. When second and third story rooms were added the smoke from fires in rooms below escaped through a front opening. There was no way for the smoke to escape through the upper rooms and the cliff dweller was smart enough not to cut a hole in the floor and let the smoke into his house above. And, too, second and third story rooms likely were much safer than first story rooms. Ladders could be pulled up to the roofs. Who knows that these Tewas were not thinking of revengeful Keres people to the south?

In some cases caves were hewn and used independently of the talus houses to the front but certainly it was impossible to stay inside while large fires were burning. The poor cliff dweller would have suffocated. Many attempts were made to ventilate caves by boring smoke holes above the doorways. But it was impossible to ventilate a cave successfully. Not much of a draft was created. Indians attempted to ventilate their cave homes by cutting as many as three holes through the soft cliff and then plastering the holes on the inside to facilitate the passage of the smoke. They met with little success.

Fires were kindled inside and when smoke filled the room the Indian either had to go outside or into his talus house. I once had an experience with fires in caves. Undoubtedly, the Indian of long ago experienced the same as I. When a fire was kindled the smoke circled around and filled the chamber. The vents did not work. Smoke hovered down to the height of the door and went out at that point leaving a definite line of demarkation around the cave wall. The Indian plastered the wall underneath this smoke line so that his house would not be so filthy and so that he could crouch down and lean his shoulders against it without getting soot all over his back. I have seen cave walls exhibiting as many as thirteen thin plaster coats. Never let it be said that caves were popular places in which to live while large fires were burning inside. Perhaps our prehistoric friend knew that if he built a fire inside his cave the walls would warm up. Then hours later, after most of the smoke had gone out, he could return and be quite comfortable without suffocating. And he, no doubt, would have rolled down a deer skin or matting of corn shucks over the opening to keep out the cold during the winter months.

The majority of the caves at Tyuonyi were connected with the talus houses to the front. Caves entered from second-story rooms were very popular and likely were used, for the most part, as ante-chambers and not as independent dwellings. They were excellent for storage purposes and if the Indian wanted to live he had to hold food over from one season to the next. Covering a period of a little more than a hundred years, let us say, the Indians of Frijoles Canyon cut over three hundred cave rooms in the north cliff. Some were, used independently of the houses to the front but most of them were not. Caves were hewn before houses were built, and likely, a great number of them were cut after the talus houses were erected against the cliff. They built just as many houses as caves, if not more. Houses extended as far as four rows of rooms out from the cliff and they were terraced up as high as three stories. On top of them were open porches which we call “ramadas” today. They were mere shelters with four corner poles and a few cross pieces of juniper or pine with brush and leaves over the top. What delight some old cronies might have had basking in the sun during some hot summer afternoon!

This was the valley of the cliff dweller, the Ancient Tewa more than likely, who built houses and cut caves for almost two miles up and down the north cliff of Frijoles Canyon. Here he could see for great distances—he could look up and he could look down. He could hear the water rippling in the Rito below and he could live in true Indian fashion. But these villages were not built in a day or a year. It took many years. Although there are the ruins of enough houses and caves along the north wall to have housed two thousand primitive Indians, no more than a few hundred ever lived here at one time. There simply wasn’t land enough to farm, or game enough to supply food for a greater number. It would seem that Tyuonyi never had a static occupation but an ever moving one.

The cliff dwellers at Frijoles, like their kin to the north, knew that the only safe method of living was in communities. So they erected what is known today as the “Long House.” One section of the north cliff was almost vertical and its base sloped gently down to the waters of the little river. This must have been the concentration of the cliff homes. Rooms were built side by side for over seven hundred feet. There were few cave rooms here to crawl back into and out of the weather. These people must have learned by experience how uncomfortable caves were, because they stuck to houses with stone walls and roofs of poles and brush and grass and mud. And they built these homes solid against the cliff and even carved recesses in the cliff so that the ends of the building stones would fit perfectly. Then the walls would not slip. The Long House was not very far from water—fifty yards. This was just a step for the women.

Some of the dwellers carved and painted pictures on the back walls of their houses or even in the caves which had barely enough room for three or four people to occupy. Call it writing if you like. It likely was “doodling.” They had no written language. They were forced to record what they thought and what they believed or had seen on the walls of their houses or in the designs of their pottery. Birds were the most common design. A mountain sheep was occasionally drawn, or a squirrel, or a rabbit; perhaps a bear or a katsina—a supernatural being. They might have tried to depict their ancestors emerging from the darkness and climbing up a high pole from the underworld of Sipapu. The awanyu or “plumed serpent” was quite common. It was the guardian spirit of springs. In one cave there was a drawing of a horse and certainly this was not an ancient drawing for the Spanish brought the horse to New Mexico. Some wandering Tewa could have seen the Spanish on horseback—on creatures which Indians thought devoured people. It might have been that other Tewa-speaking people from around the pueblo of San Juan, far to the north, described a horse by pictograph, when they hurried into the mountain homes of their kin after seeing the Spanish in 1540. Or it might have been drawn by some visitor after the evacuation of the Indians. It could even have been someone’s joke.

About a quarter-mile from the cliff dwellings, and where the Canyon becomes narrow, is a deep natural cave. It is eighty feet across and its opening faces the valley one hundred fifty feet above the waters of the Rito. One prehistoric group lived here for a time. They were certainly secluded. Hand holds were gouged from the soft cliffs with sharp pointed rocks and here in this, now called “Ceremonial Cave,” Indians built seventeen first-story rooms and several second-story rooms around the back. They excavated a kiva or ceremonial chamber to the front of the cave. Think of the task these Indians had when they carted water and poles and sticks and perhaps stones up the side of the cliff. Tons of rock were required to build these houses and the ceremonial chamber. This little group built their kiva twelve feet in diameter. It was a circular affair dug to a depth of nine feet and lined with a wall of stone which was plastered on the inside. The floor was of a special kind. It was hard, black and shiny. It had been polished with a smooth stone like the ones the Indian women use today to polish their black pottery. Only this floor was made of blood—animal blood. The Indians carefully saved the blood from animals which they killed and then mixed it with fine silt and soot from the fire and smeared it over their kiva floor in thin layers. When the blood coagulated the plaster hardened and then it was polished by rubbing a smooth stone over it in backward and forward motion. This must have been an important room to have had such an elaborately made floor. But kivas in prehistoric times may have been more important than they are today.

In the floor were six small holes in a straight line. While the plaster was still wet small pieces of oak or some other tough pliable wood was bent in loops and the ends of each piece were pushed down into the soft mud plaster. Then these holes, or round depressions were made around the loops leaving them exposed. These were directly below a horizontal pole suspended from the ceiling. This was a loom. By an arrangement of long straight sticks these ingenious Indians devised a method of weaving. Since it is thought that in years gone by women and children were not allowed in the kivas to break up the complacency of a man’s ceremony, we might suppose that some old man sat here and ran a shuttle through warp cords of cotton strung vertically from roof poles to floor loops. Here he carried on weaving of a ceremonial nature with cotton or animal hair while the smoke from a ceremonial fire in the fireplace circled around making the kiva a very unpleasant place to be despite an elaborate system of ventilation.

These “high-up” cave dwellers had their houses built like the ones at Mesa Verde, completely sheltered by the overhanging cave roof. To the side of the dwellings, situated near the back wall of the cave, was a turkey pen of little cleanliness. When I discovered this pen hundreds of years later, the floor was covered with human feces, turkey and rodent droppings. They had all lived here in times anterior to the coming of the Spaniards—Indians, turkeys and rodents. The Indian hauled his water and food from the valley below. He secluded himself from the bulk of the Indian population at Tyuonyi. The question will always be, why? Of course, there was a small pueblo on the other side of the Canyon on a little knoll across the river but this might have been built, occupied and abandoned before Indians ever occupied the big cave as a place of residence.

And then, there were Indians who preferred to live on the floor of the Canyon in pueblos—terraced community apartment houses. Several hundred yards below the concentration of the cliff dwellings and in the lower end of the Tyuonyi they built such an apartment house. Little is known about it because it has never been excavated. Broken pieces of pottery, the most important tool of the archæologist, are found strewn over its ruins today. Its walls are down now and its rooms are almost completely filled in with debris. This particular group of Indians preferred to have their dwelling close to water and they erected it with stone and mud mortar. This is all that is known of this isolated settlement.

It is quite possible that the most popular dwelling places in Frijoles Canyon were the dwellings at the Long House, so well protected by the sheer vertical cliff wall. These could have been over-crowded. Indians might have cared little about living in other sections of the cliff. It might have been that some of the cliff dwellers had experienced terrible slides when hundreds of tons of loose rock and boulders came tumbling down on their little houses, crushing them like pasteboard boxes and burying the occupants alive. All the man-power in the northern part of the Pajarito Plateau could never have rescued their kin who might have been caught in these cave homes. Those rocks had rolled from the top to stay and there they remain today. One wonders what stories those buried caves hold—if, by chance, the skeletons of the occupants are still there. Indians perhaps have died scratching at the boulders which covered the entrances to their caves or tearing their hair and clutching their throats as they suffocated and fell extended on the hard plaster floors in their rooms. Those caves have never been opened.

It is easy to see that the valley floor could have been more popular as a dwelling place than sections of the cliff more susceptible to slides than the Long House. A part of the main population built and lived in a large terraced community apartment house known as “Puwige” or “pueblo where the women scraped the bottoms of the pottery vessels clean.” This is now the famous ruin known the world over. It has been featured in the _National Geographic Magazine_ and many other publications.

Puwige never existed during the very early occupation of the Canyon. Its initial wall stones were not laid until the beginning of the Great Period. Any Indian family might have erected a few rooms near the little river—close to water. Then another family came along and built a few more rooms. A son took on a wife and the entire family helped to build his house, since house-building was a community proposition. Indian men went to the slopes where boulders had rolled down and broke them with heavy stones and fashioned the pieces into uneven building blocks. This was no small job. Walls were laid in mud mixed by the small brown hands of Indian women. Poles were cut and laid across the walls, then splittings and cane and brush were laid over the tops and sealed with thick coats of mud. Thick coats of crude plaster were spread over the inside of walls and over floors. These Indians had little clay, none for walls anyway, without hauling it in on their backs, so, they poured hot ashes into the mud to make it stick. Hot ashes formed a sort of lime. Coronado, in 1540, found the Indians at Tiguex making a mortar and plaster in this manner. Slabs of basalt were brought in and set edgewise in the rooms as fireplaces. This was the home of the newlyweds—built right next to the groom’s father’s house. The young bride could have come from the Long House to live at Puwige, the community house, with her husband’s family.

The place on which Puwige was erected was so situated that the Indians had to make walls with sharp turns to follow the contour of the land. This must have been a popular place to live for as time went on more and more rooms were added. Indians evidently preferred this to the vulnerable cliffs. It was not all planned and executed at one time. Some second-story rooms were added and then porches of poles and brush were built. Additions of rooms continued until Puwige was shaped in the form of a crescent with the open part facing the little river which was only a few feet away. Indians lived here for untold years. Something happened. I know not what. It seems that they closed the gap by building three rows of rooms. It was no more a crescent but a circle of rooms built around a large plaza or inner court. Rooms were built in rows, seven deep on the east side of the circle and three on the west side. There were about three hundred rooms on the ground floor and many second and third-story rooms—four hundred in all, more or less. The place was turned into a veritable fort. These people were cunning. They cut seven rooms out through the east side and formed a narrow passageway through which everyone had to pass in order to enter his home. They went from the outside of the pueblo through this narrow passage, dodging obstructions, until they reached the huge inner court. And then they ascended to their respective dwellings by means of small ladders, pulling them to their roof-tops during times of danger. Leave it to the Tewas, “the little strong people,” to find ways and means of protecting themselves from lurking danger.

I was once told a story by some San Ildefonso Indians about this Puwige hallway. Guarding the hallway was a half-circle barricade of stone and mud. It was several feet thick and both ends joined the walls of the main building. Through this circular wall was a small opening. The wall must have stood six or eight feet high to have been effective. Now the Tewas contend that at one time, long ago, a sentry was stationed day and night inside the circle. When Puwige was attacked the alarm was given and a huge boulder was rolled in front of the opening. This was to slow down the attackers. If they were fortunate enough to get by the boulder then it was intended that they stumble over a slab of basalt set edgewise in the passageway. It must have stood a foot or more in the air. If the attackers got by the stone without losing balance, then they encountered numerous wooden posts bedded upright in the dirt floor of the long narrow passage. How confusing and prohibitive! Entrance to Puwige was almost impossible unless “the little strong people” desired it. For the villager, an Indian woman with a water jar on her head, moving along slowly, entrance was easy, but for the enemy—no. Warriors stood on housetops, high in the air, and shot sharp-pointed arrows at enemies. They threw rocks and pottery vessels. They fought with clubs—anything they could get their hands on. Puwige was not easy to penetrate.

Was this Puwige occupied by any particular group or were the people of the cliff houses allowed to scramble down and hurry to the inside for protection? Was it a fort for the entire community or just for the people who lived here? The cliff homes were being lived in at the same time as Puwige and might have been more effective as defense units. There was only one side to protect in the cliff homes—the front. And who were the attackers: Navaho, Keres or other groups? Legend has it that the Navaho plundered the pueblos for years and years and history tells us so. They stole the hard-earned stores of food from the pueblos and ran off with the women and children whom they made slaves. But it isn’t likely that the Navaho, on foot during the days of Puwige, cared much about penetrating the mountain homes. It would have been a chore to carry the loot back with them. The Navajo likely did not relish the idea of coming over the high range of mountains from the west for a few pots of beans and corn. Would it not be more likely that the so-called “little strong people” might have feared attacks during the night by the Keres to the south who had been driven from their Canyon homes? Tyuonyi was “the oasis of the Pajarito” and the Tewas did not intend to be driven from their fertile valley. Some lurking band could have crept over the south cliff when all was quiet—while Tewas were resting peacefully below. And the attackers were quiet too, with their moccasined feet, like the mountain lion which creeps upon a fawn. A falling rock or the crackling of a dead branch would be a dead give-away. This was not to happen to “the little strong people.”

In 1540 the Spanish explorers passed the Keres province and moved northward, it would appear, near the present site of San Juan Pueblo. The entire Indian population fled to the mountains, as you will recall, where they said they had four very strong villages. It is entirely possible that some of these people from the north pushed deep into the mountain country and on to the Valley of the Frijoles where the Spanish could not go on horseback. It was a Hidden Valley. If this had been true, if these northern people had moved into Tyuonyi with their kith and kin and had told about how the Spanish stormed pueblos and shot cannon at other Indians and readily conquered the inhabitants, “the little strong people” might have had incentive to fortify their Puwige against the undesirable attentions of the conquerors. Or it might have been some visitor from the Valley of the Rio Grande who told about depredations at Tiguex. But would a Keres warn a Tewa? We must not overlook the fact that it would have been possible for friendly relations to have existed between the rival groups of people at the time of the Spanish Conquest. They could have lived close together and traded pottery and other articles back and forth. One might go so far as to say that they could have lived at Tyuonyi together a few years prior to its abandonment. But taking all these things into consideration it was likely the Keres whom the Tewas fortified themselves against, and from whom they had probably experienced hostile visits. So they fortified their Puwige and drew up their ladders to the roof-tops in defiance. And the people in the cliffs also drew up their ladders.

Within the inner court of this big community house were three kivas. These deep underground ceremonial chambers lined with rock walls were built adjacent to the rooms on the north side. Puwige was large. It was more than two hundred seventy-five feet across and the tiers of rooms formed a wide band around the outside of the circular court. Why the Indians erected three kivas so close together is uncertain unless it was to have more room in the plaza. It is possible that the kivas were erected first, outside of the village, and as the pueblo grew the three little ceremonial chambers were entirely enclosed within it. But why three kivas inside Puwige? Indians had their reasons. These three ceremonial chambers were small. They were not more than twelve or fifteen feet in diameter. The hard plaster floors were seven or eight feet below the surface of the ground. Their roofs were of poles laid across the stone walls with brush and grass and mud for a covering. Small combination hatchways and smoke vents were cut in the roofs and ladders were put down to the floors as a means of getting in and out. These chambers were likely society kivas of which there were several in every Indian village. Or we might compare them with club rooms in our own society. They were places where the elders met in council, or where they came to spend an hour or so, perhaps a week, visiting with their spiritual fathers. Kivas were places where policy was discussed and decided upon—or a kiva might have been a place where a group of hunters gathered before going on a hunt to pray that their hunt would be successful. We will never know what went on in the secret chambers at Tyuonyi, or as a matter of fact, in any other prehistoric kiva.

And speaking of kivas or ceremonial chambers, some groups preferred to have theirs in the cliffs, hewn out like the smoky cave rooms but generally larger. And the kivas, like the cave rooms, were plastered half-way up the walls whenever they became smoked. This happened quite often if fires were kept burning.

The greatest period of occupation of Hidden Valley must have begun sometime during the fifteenth century. It was to last about a hundred years. With the beginning of this Great Period, the period in which Puwige and all of the talus houses were most likely built and occupied, there certainly must have been some social or ceremonial organization similar to that in the modern pueblos. There were likely two moieties. The dual system where every person in the village belonged to one of two kivas—either Turquoise or Squash, or, Winter or Summer respectively. Presumably a baby born in the winter belonged to the Turquoise kiva. If it was a patrilineal society then the individual might have belonged to the same kiva as his father. Who knows but that it was a matter of personal choice? Each kiva, Turquoise or Squash, had a ruler or cacique whose word was absolute. He was the father of the village to whom villagers looked for guidance and his appointment was for life. The moieties were under the spiritual guidance of the two town chiefs who were responsible for the welfare of the people. An important office was that of cacique. He had been chosen because of his thorough knowledge of chants, sacred rituals, ceremonial procedure and prayers. No one doubted the word of the cacique. And all Indians owed duties to their respective kivas. Although the groups, Turquoise and Squash, were in opposition they also depended upon one another for the common good of the pueblo.

If the dual system was in vogue at Tyuonyi, there must have been two kivas to support it. A peculiar thing, it seems, took place here. At least one tribal kiva was built and was in use before the Great Period of occupation came along. It was a large structure forty-two feet in diameter. Sixty Indians could have crouched down around the inside against the wall. Indian men, years before, excavated a large concave depression in the side of a hill a hundred yards or so down the Canyon from Puwige. Days and days were required to bring in thousands of cobble stones. They labored untiringly. They brought them from the river and they brought chunks from the cliff. Around this deep concave depression which they had laboriously scooped out of the earth with broken pieces of pottery, sticks, flat stones and whatever else they had to work with, Indian men laid stone after stone of this volcanic tuff in crude mortar. They laid a wall ten feet thick. It required thousands of the unworked stones to line this deep pit. It was a circular affair and was their way of creating a semi-subterranean chamber when they did not know how to lay single thickness masonry walls with fashioned blocks.

No prehistoric Rio Grande kiva, that I know of, has an entrance through its wall such as this which was found at Frijoles. They all were entered through the roof. Such things as wall entrances are customary in kivas in the San Juan area but not in the Rio Grande Valley. And these early people dug five pits in the floor of their kiva and lined them with cobble stones. They must have had some use for them of which we know nothing. Pits of this type are something else not seen in prehistoric Rio Grande kivas. They are found in the kivas at Chaco Canyon though, and it is possible that they could have been vestiges of that early culture.

This particular ceremonial chamber had apparently fallen into disuse for a time. But during the Great Period of occupation, when “the little strong people” presumably occupied the Tyuonyi, it was rebuilt. There was little use in going to work and building an entirely new kiva when one was already here and could be rebuilt. The old roofing had fallen to the inside and there were hundreds of pounds of debris in the kiva chamber. All this was cleaned out. Building a kiva was a community enterprise. Men again began cutting and fashioning rectangular blocks from large chunks fallen from the cliff. As each block was fashioned it was laid into a single thickness coursed masonry wall around the inside of the thick wall of cobble stone which belonged to the earlier occupation. The Indian was smart. He laid this circular wall sloping outward toward the top so that the pressure from the heavy roof would be diverted downward when it was laid over the walls. When the wall was finished it was nine feet high from the floor of the kiva to the ceiling. And then to keep it from falling down, the Indians dug underneath the footing stones, and objects modeled of clay which looked like doughnuts were laid in the holes. When we discovered these doughnut-shaped affairs I was mystified until an old Indian from San Ildefonso told me they were put there purposely to hold the wall up, in a spiritual way of course.

What a large structure this was! It was almost as large as the kivas at Chaco Canyon where the ancestors of these Indians probably lived several hundred years before. There was no kiva this large in the entire Rio Grande Valley. Huge timbers forty-five feet long were required to span its diameter and timbers that large were difficult to carry. But with crude stone axes and obsidian knives these kiva builders penetrated the forest to cut girders for their ceremonial chamber. In the year 1513 A.D. or thereabout, they cut three trees with trunks fifteen inches or more in diameter. It took hours, days perhaps. They hacked and they pounded with their Neolithic implements of toil until all three trees had been felled. I would hate to estimate the time required to fell these timbers but time meant nothing to the Indian. Then there was the job of removing all the branches, needles and bark.

Preparing a girder in prehistoric times was a great task. Green timber is much heavier than seasoned wood. And so these timbers weighing a ton or more were dragged out of the forest to the kiva with stout ropes made of yucca fiber. Sheer strength was all these people had. There were no carts with wheels on them to bear the brunt of the load. Heavy objects had to either be dragged or carried. After much sweat and toil the ends of the huge poles were rolled over into position in shallow trenches worked out for this purpose on both sides of the kiva. These three timbers formed the under structure of the roof. When they were placed exactly like the Indian wanted them, pointed rocks were driven into the ground around the ends and the open spaces were packed with adobe so that these huge round logs would not roll. They placed much smaller timbers of pine across the huge vigas. These were not so difficult to cut and they were laid about three feet apart. From down-timbers of pine, piñon, cottonwood or any other type of fallen trees they hacked and ripped long narrow sections for the next roof course. The splittings were transported in bundles to the kiva and one by one they were laid close together over the small pine poles. Great quantities of thin willow branches, cane or cat-tail stems were used for the next course. Pine needles, brush, yucca leaves and whatever leafy material they could gather was placed on the top. They needed this brush and leafy material because it was to hold the thick heavy mud coats which were spread over the top. Indian women carried urn after urn of water on their heads from the Rito and stamped and mixed this mud. The only chore left was to throw dirt over the top.

When the ceremonial chamber was finished it looked like a huge, low mound—almost level with the ground. The Indians did not forget the square opening in the top for the exit of the smoke. Kivas were stuffy places inside. And as in all kivas there was a ventilator. This had been built during the earlier period of occupation and reused during the Great Period. It was a mere tunnel which looked like a fireplace and it suddenly turned upward like a fireplace chimney. The mouth of the chimney was level with the ground so that the draft would be downward and would go into the kiva and lift the smoke from the firebox to the ceiling and eventually out the square opening. The Indian of Tyuonyi did understand something about ventilating a kiva. He was smart enough to know that if the top of the ventilator was built very far above ground level it would work like a fireplace. Then all the smoke would be drawn to the floor of the kiva and sucked out through the low tunnel. And in this case he could not have remained inside. But he never found out how to ventilate his cave room in the cliff. How unfortunate!

Directly across the kiva in the west side was the entrance which had also been put here years before. It was merely a tunnel with a roof of small juniper branches. The outside end was open and was just large enough for the ends of a two-pole ladder to rest. Indians usually go into their kivas through the roofs, but not here. They climbed down the ladder, stooped, and with knees in a flexed position scurried through the tunnel to the inside.

The five pits in the floor, which have been mentioned before, were apparently no longer needed for they were filled in with dirt and stones tightly packed. A thin layer of dirt was thrown over the entire floor surface. Kiva floors are generally plastered over and during this period of occupation the Tyuonyi women, more than likely, were the ones who smeared four fine coats of adobe over the floor and smoothed it out with their hands.

I have neglected to mention one of the most important things of all—the Sipapu or ceremonial entrance from the underworld. It was the place of ceremonial emergence into this earthly life. Archæologists generally find a small hole in the floor of almost every kiva. But here at Tyuonyi a special kind of Sipapu was made. A piece of soft volcanic ash was formed into a rectangular block and buried edgewise in the floor. A small hole shaped like an icecream cone was drilled in the top as the spirit entrance. The Indians have a legend about this. It is symbolic of the entrance to the land of “Earth Old Women” and of the place where the human race originated. Long ago they climbed up a Douglas Spruce Tree and came into this world through a lake called Sipapu. And when they die the spirits go to Sipapu and on to the underworld. It is said that this lake is located in the sand hills north of Alamosa, Colorado. How important the kiva was to the Indians of Tyuonyi! Sipapu represented the place of creation and to them it was important in no small way. The cacique of each one of the big tribal kivas, both Squash and Turquoise, was a direct representative of the Earth Mother or “Earth Old Woman.”

But the dweller at Tyuonyi had forgotten something. He did not realize how tremendously heavy the roof of his big kiva was. He did not know that the small pine timbers, the splittings, brush, grass, mud and dirt would cause the big pine vigas to bend and sag and crack in the middle. It is a question whether or not the roof fell in during some important ceremony. The situation had to be remedied at any rate. Pine poles, nine or ten inches in diameter were cut so they would support the weight of the roof. Six holes were dug in the kiva floor, two under each of the big vigas. Flat rocks were put in the bottoms of the holes and the ends of the six timbers were inserted and swung into place under the big girders, and driven with heavy rocks into an upright position. The big vigas might have sagged a little but the roof never fell after this time. Flat stones were driven tight around the bottoms of the support posts and the holes in which they rested were packed solid with mud and rocks to keep the timbers from slipping. And this was how the prehistoric Indian at Tyuonyi built his ceremonial chambers in which women were not allowed unless requested by the men. There might have been more than one roof put on this kiva. The first one could have been laid during the latter part of the fifteenth century. It could have fallen and then been rebuilt. Archæologists do know that the last time this large kiva was roofed over was during the early part of the sixteenth century. We found one of the large charred ends of a big roof timber and it had been cut in 1513 A.D. So it was about this time that the last kiva roof was laid. Just how long it was in use is a question. It was surely used until the end of the occupation of Frijoles Canyon sometime near the close of the sixteenth century.

The Indians of Tyuonyi during the Great Period had developed the dwellings in the north cliff extensively to the number of some three hundred caves. There might have been twice as many talus houses to the front, some one story and others two and three stories high. The cliff population centered around the Long House while other groups built houses in different locations at the base of the north cliff. And still other groups built the big community apartment house of about four hundred rooms to a height of possibly three stories and called it “Puwige” or “pueblo where the Indian women scraped the bottoms of the pottery vessels clean.” And they built it in the form of a fort with a narrow hallway through the east side as the only means of entrance. And here they fortified themselves during times of attack by other Indians like themselves who might have been jealous of the watered Valley of the Frijoles. Another group preferred to remove themselves down the Canyon a quarter-mile and they erected a circular pueblo, a miniature of Puwige, seemingly. Still another group preferred to be more isolated and so they chose a deep cave one hundred fifty feet above the Canyon floor in which to build their house and kiva.

One would think, looking at the ruined home sites, that thousands of prehistoric Indians dwelt at Tyuonyi but that was never the case. Although the dwellings were extensive they were not all occupied at any one time. Small groups moved in. Others moved out. They could have taken turns living in Hidden Valley and then returned to the northern villages of Potsui’i, Sankawi, Navawi or Tshirege, where their kin and kind lived. Tyuonyi might have been a place for summer occupation during the growing season. When planting time came little groups trickled in from the large northern community villages and remained for a while. One cannot be sure of what went on in the Canyon. It was a suitable place for continued occupation with the possibility of an influx of population during the summer months. One can only speculate. Scientific investigation reveals nothing in this regard. The legends are scant now—the old men who remembered them are just about gone. So one is left with little about how Indians lived on the Pajarito Plateau during prehistoric times.