Part 9
2. The next step gives us villages, generally of small size, located on the foothills of mesas and overlooking large areas of good land which were doubtless under cultivation. This class comprises more examples perhaps than any other, and many of them come well within the historic period, such as six of the seven villages of Tusayan at the time of the Spanish conquest in 1540, all of the Cibolan villages of the same date, and some of the Rio Grande pueblos of that time.
3. In some localities, though not in all, the small villages were at a later period moved to higher and more inaccessible sites. This change has taken place in Tusayan within the historic period, and in fact was not wholly completed even fifty years ago. The pueblo of Acoma was in this stage at the time of the conquest, and has remained so to the present day. As a rule each of the small villages preserved its independence, but in some cases they combined together to occupy together a high defensive site. Such combination is, however, unusual.
4. The final stage in the development of pueblo architecture is the large, many-storied, or beehive village, located generally in the midst of broad valleys, depending on its size and population for defense, and usually adjacent to some stream. In this class of structure the defensive motive, in so far as it affected the choosing of the site, entirely disappears. The largest existing pueblo, Zuni, made this step early in the eighteenth century; the next largest, Taos, was probably in this stage in 1540, and has remained so since. In some cases ruins on foothill sites (2) have merged directly into many-storied pueblos on open sites (4), without passing through an intermediate stage.
There is another step in the process of development which is now being taken by many pueblos, which, although an advance from the industrial point of view, is to the student of architecture degeneration. This consists of a return to single houses located in the valleys and on the bottom lands wherever convenience to the fields under cultivation required. This movement is hardly twenty years old, but is proceeding at a steadily accelerating pace, and its ultimate result is the complete destruction of pueblo architecture. Whatever we wish to know of this phase of Indian culture must be learned now, for two generations hence probably nothing will remain of it.
This hasty sketch will illustrate some of the difficulties that lie in the way of a complete classification of the ruins of the pueblo country. It is impossible to arrange them in chronologic sequence, because they are the product of different tribes who at different times came under the influence of analogous causes, and results were produced which are similar in themselves but different in time. It is believed, however, that the classification suggested exhibits a cultural sequence and probably within each tribe a chronologic order.
In this classification no mention has been made of the cliff and cave ruins. These structures belong partly to class III, villages on defensive sites, and partly to a subclass which pertained to a certain extent to all the others. In the early stages of pueblo architecture the people lived directly on the laud they tilled. Later the villages were located on low foothills overlooking the land, but in this stage some of the villages had already attained considerable size and the lands overlooked by them were not sufficient for their needs. As a consequence some of the inhabitants had to work fields at a distance from the home village, and as a matter of convenience small temporary shelters were erected near by. In a still later stage, when the villages were removed to higher and more easily defended sites, the number of farming shelters must have largely increased, as suitable sites which also commanded large areas of good land could not often be found. At a still later stage, when the inhabitants of a number of small villages combined to form one large one, this difficulty was increased still more, and it is probable that in this stage the construction of outlying farming settlements attained its maximum development. Often whole villages of considerable size, sometimes many miles from the home pueblo, were nothing more than farming shelters. These villages, like the single-room shelters, were occupied only during the farming season; in the winter the inhabitants abandoned them completely and retired to the home village.
Some farming villages, such as those described above, are still in use among the pueblos. The little village of Moen-Kapi, attached to Oraibi, but 75 miles distant from it, is an example. There are also no fewer than three villages in the Zuni country of the same class. Nutria, Pescado, and Ojo Caliente are summer villages of the Zuni, although distant from that pueblo from 15 to 25 miles. It is significant that none of these subordinate villages possess a kiva. It is believed that the cliff ruins and cavate lodges, which are merely variants of each other due to geological conditions, were simply farming shelters of another type, produced by a certain topographic environment.
The importance which it is believed should attach to the site on which a ruin is found will be apparent from the above. It was certainly a prominent element in the De Chelly group. A study of the detailed map here published will illustrate how completely the necessity for proximity to an area of cultivable land has dominated the location of the settlements, large and small; and a visit to the place itself would show how little influence the defensive motive has exercised. Near the mouth of the canyon, where cultivable areas of land are not many, there are few ruins, but those which do occur overlook such lands. In the middle portion, where good lands are most abundant, ruins also are most abundant; while above this, as the rocky talus develops more and more, the ruins become fewer and fewer; and in the upper parts of the canyon, beyond the area shown on the map, they are located at wide distances apart, corresponding to little areas of good land so located. Not all of the available land was utilized, and only a small percentage of the available sites were built upon. Between the mouth of De Chelly and the junction of Monument canyon, 13 miles above, there are seventy-one ruins. A fair idea of their distribution may be obtained from a study of the detailed map (plate XLIII), in conjunction with the following figures:
I. Old villages on open sites occur at the points marked 12, 41, 52, 17_a_, 55, 60, 61, and 67; in all, nine sites; principally in the upper part of the canyon.
II. Home villages on bottom lands, located without reference to defense, occupy sites 3, 4, 17, 20, 28, 48, and 51; in all, seven sites. Probably there are many more ruins of this class and the preceding, now so far obliterated as to be overlooked or indistinguishable.
III. Home villages on defensive sites occur at the points marked 5, 10, 13, 15, 16, 27, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 40, 44, 47, 59, 62, and 66; in all, seventeen. This includes many sites where the settlements were very small, often only a few rooms, but there is always at least one kiva.
IV. Cliff outlooks and farming shelters occupy sites 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 33, 35, 38, 39, 42, 43, 45, 46, 49, 50, 53, 54, 56, 57, 64, 63, 65, 68, 69, and 70; in all, thirty-seven, or more than half. Some of these sites are now marked only by Navaho remains, and possibly a small percentage of them are of Navaho making, but the sites which are clearly and unmistakably Navaho are not mentioned here. Of all the sites only one (No. 7) is actually inaccessible without artificial aid.
The absence of any attempt to improve the natural advantages of the sites is remarkable. No expedients were employed to make access either easier or more difficult, except that here and there series of hand and foot holes have been pecked in the rock. Steps, either constructed of masonry or cut in the rock, such as those found in the Mancos canyon and the Mesa Verde region, are never seen here. The cavities in which the ruins occur are always natural; they are never enlarged or curtailed or altered in the slightest degree, and very rarely is the cavity itself treated as a room, although there are some excellent sites for such treatment. The back wall of a cove is often the back wall of a village, but aside from this the natural advantages of the sites were seldom realized.
The settlements were always located with reference to the canyon bottom, and access was never had from above, notwithstanding that in some cases access from above was easier than from below. Yet the inhabitants must necessarily have obtained their supply of firewood from above, as the quantity in the canyons, especially in that part where most of the ruins occur, is very limited. The Navaho throw the wood over the cliffs, afterward gathering up the fragments below and carrying them on their backs to their hogans at various points on the canyon bottom. The crash of falling logs, dropped or pushed over the edge of a cliff, sometimes 400 or 500 feet high, is not an infrequent sound in the canyon, and is at first very puzzling to the visitor.
The canyon walls are so nearly vertical, or rather so large a proportion is vertical, that egress or ingress, except at the mouth of the canyon, is a matter of great difficulty. Near the junction of Monument canyon, 13 miles above the mouth of De Chelly, there is a practicable horse trail ascending a narrow gorge to the southeast. The Navaho call it the Bat trail, on account of its difficulties. Another horse trail crosses Del Muerto some 8 or 10 miles above its mouth. With these exceptions there is no point where a horse can get into the canyons or out of them, but there are dozens of places where an active man, accustomed to it, can scale the walls by the aid of foot-holes which have been pecked in the rock at the most difficult places. These foot trails are in constant use by the Navaho, who ascend and descend by them with apparent ease, but it is doubtful whether a white man could be induced to climb them, except perhaps under the stress of necessity. There are even some trails over which sheep and goats are driven in and out of the canyon, but anyone who had not seen the flocks actually passing over the rocks would declare such a feat impossible. Some of these trails at least are of Navaho origin. Whether any of them were used by the former dwellers in the canyon can not now be determined; it seems probable that some of them were.
Plate LVI shows a characteristic site in the lower part of the canyon. It occurs at the point marked 8 on the map, and is now quite difficult of approach, owing to the wearing away or weathering of a long line of foot-holes in the sloping rock, but formerly access was easy enough. It is now marked by a cluster of Navaho burial cists. Figure 66 shows an example that occurs in De Chelly, about 8 miles above the junction, of Monument canyon. At first glance, and at a distance, this site appears to be really inaccessible, but a close inspection of the figure will show that it could be reached with comparative little difficulty over the rounded mass of rock shown to the left. By cutting off that side of the figure it could be made to serve as an illustration of a wholly inaccessible ruin.
MASONRY
The ancient pueblo builder, like his modern successor, was so closely in touch with nature, so dependent on his immediate physical surroundings, that variations in some at least of his arts are more natural and to be expected than uniformity. Especially is this true of the art of construction, and variations in masonry are more often than not the result of variations in the material employed, which is nearly always that most convenient to hand. Yet there were other conditions that necessarily influenced it, such, for example, as the character of the structure to be erected, whether permanent or temporary. The summer village of Ojo Caliente presents a type of masonry much ruder than any found in the home village of Zuni, although both were built and occupied by the same people at the same time.
Within the limits of Canyon de Chelly, where the physical conditions and the character of material are essentially uniform, a considerable variation in the masonry is found, implying that some conditions other than the usual ones have influenced it. Were the masonry of one class of ruins inferior or superior throughout to that of another it might be easily explained, but variations within each class are greater than those between classes. Conditions analogous to those which prevailed in the case of Ojo Caliente and Zuni may have governed here, or there may have been other conditions of which we now know nothing. It may be that sites originally occupied as farming shelters subsequently became regular villages, as has happened in other regions. The position of the kivas in many of the ruins suggests this. As a whole the masonry is inferior to that found in the Mancos canyon and the Chaco, and superior to that of Tusayan, but, as in Tusayan, where the masonry is sometimes very roughly constructed, the builders were well acquainted with the methods which produced the finer and better work.
The highest type of masonry in the pueblo system of architecture consists of small blocks of stone of nearly uniform size, dressed, and laid in courses, and rubbed down in situ. No attempt was made to break joints. This system requires the careful preparation of the material beforehand, and examples of it are not very common in Canyon de Chelly. As a variant we have walls composed of stones of fairly uniform size, laid with the best face out and with the interstices chinked with small spalls. The chinking is carried to such an extent in some places, as in the Chaco ruins, that the walls present the effect of a mosaic composed of small spalls. Chinking is almost a universal practice, and in some localities had passed, or was passing, from a mere constructive to a real decorative feature. Here we have the beginning of that architecture which has been defined by Ferguson as "ornamental and ornamented construction"--in other words, of architecture as an art rather than as a craft.
The use of an exterior finish of plaster was conducive to poor masonry. Such plastering is found throughout the region, but it is much more abundant in the modern than in the ancient work. Perhaps we may find in this a suggestion of relative age; not in the use of plastering, but in its prevalence.
Pueblo masonry is composed of very small units, and the results obtained testify to the patience and industry of the builders rather than to their knowledge and skill. In fact, their knowledge of construction was far more limited than would at first sight be supposed. The marked tabular character of the stone used rendered but a small amount of preparation necessary for even the best masonry. For over 90 per cent of it there was no preparation other than the selection of material. The walls and buildings were always modified to suit the ground, never the reverse, and instances in which the site was prepared are very rare, if not indeed unknown. There are no such instances in De Chelly, where sites were often irregular, and a small amount of work would have rendered them much more desirable.
Plate LVII shows a type of masonry which is quite common in De Chelly. It is the west room of ruin 16, near the mouth of Del Muerto. An attempt at regularity, and possibly at decorative effect, is apparent in the use of courses of fairly uniform thickness, alternating with other courses or belts composed of small thin fragments. Beautiful examples of masonry constructed on this method occur in the Chaco ruins, but here, while the method was known, the execution was careless or faulty. Chinking with small spalls has been extensively practiced and gives the wall an appearance of smoothness and finish. A similar wall, rather better constructed, occurs at the point marked 3 on the map, and in this case the stones composing the wall were rubbed down in situ. Another wall, which occurs in the same ruin, is shown in plate LVIII. In places very large stones have been used, larger than one man could handle conveniently, but the general effect of the wall face is very good. This effect was obtained by placing the best face of the stone outward and by careful chinking.
Chinking was sometimes done, not with slips of stone driven in with a hammer, after the usual style, but with bits of mud pressed in with the fingers. The mud was used when about the consistency of modeling clay, and bears the imprints of the fingers that applied it; even the skin markings show clearly and distinctly. From this use of mud to its use as an exterior plaster there is but a short step; in fact, examples which are intermediate can be seen throughout the canyon. In places mud has been applied to small cracks and cavities in larger quantities than was necessary, and the excess has been smoothed over the adjacent stones forming a wall partly plastered, or plastered in patches. Plate LIX, which shows the interior of a room in ruin 10, will illustrate this. Here the process has been carried so far that the wall is almost plastered, but not quite. In plastered walls the process was carried a step farther, and the surface was finished by the application of a final coat of mud made quite liquid. The interior plastering of kivas was always much more carefully done than that of any other walls. Owing to blackening by smoke and recoating, the thickness of the plastering in kivas can be easily made out. Often it is as thin as ordinary paper.
Plate LX shows walls in which an abundance of mud mortar was used, and the effect is that of a plastered wall. The difference between these walls and those shown in plate LVII is only one of degree, the wall shown in plate LIX being of an intermediate type. No instance occurs in the canyon where a coating of mud was evenly applied to the whole surface of a wall, in the way, for example, that stucco is used by us. It seems probable, therefore, that the application of plaster as a finish grew out of the use of stone spalls for chinking, and its prevalence in modern as compared with old structures is suggestive. It is not claimed, however, that because we have examples of the intermediate stages in De Chelly that the process was developed there. The step is such a slight one that it might have been made in a hundred different localities at a hundred different times or at one time; but it is well to note that in any given group of ruins or locality it is likely to be later than masonry chinked with stones. Surface finishing in mud plaster is the prevailing method at the present day, and well-executed masonry of stone carefully chinked is almost invariably ancient. The use of surface plaster is largely responsible for the deterioration of stonework that has taken place since the beginning of the historic period. The modern village of Zuni, which dates from the beginning of the eighteenth century, although built on the site of an older village, is essentially a stone-built village, though that fact would never appear from a cursory examination, so completely is the stonework covered by surface plaster.
In Tusayan (Moki) walls have been observed in progress of erection. The stones were laid up dry, and some time after, when the rains came and pools of water stood here and there in pockets on the mesa top, mud mortar was mixed and the interstices were filled. This method saved the transportation of water from the wells below up to the top of the mesa, a task entailing much labor. Doubtless a similar method was followed in De Chelly, where the stream bed carries water only during a part of the year. But stone was also actually laid in mud mortar, as shown in plate LII, which illustrates a rough type of masonry.
It is probable that the practice of chinking grew up out of the scarcity of water, when walls were erected during the dry season and finished when the rains made the manufacture of mud mortar less of a task. The rough wall shown in the illustration is the outside of an interior wall of a kiva, and it was probably covered by the rectangular inclosing wall that came outside of it. It will be noticed that chinking, both with mud and with spalls, was extensively practiced and seems here to have been an essential part of the construction. In this example it could have no relation to the finish of the wall, for the wall was not finished.
Much of the masonry in the canyon is of the type described, but examples differ widely in degree of finish and in material selected. Some of the walls appear very rough and even crude, so much so that they almost appear to be the first efforts of a people at an unknown art, but a closer inspection shows that even the rudest walls were erected with a knowledge of the principles which were followed in the best ones, and that the difference resulted only from the care or lack of care employed. The rudest walls are much superior to the masonry of the Navaho cists which are found in conjunction with them and which are constructed on a different method.
Although walls were often built on sloping rock, and the builders had experience and at times disastrous experience to guide them, the necessity for a fiat and solid foundation was never appreciated. Walls were sometimes built on loose debris; even refuse which had been covered and formed an artificial soil was considered sufficient. There are many instances in the canyon where lack of foresight or lack of knowledge in this respect has brought about the destruction of walls. Walls resting on foreign material occur throughout the region; they are not confined to anyone class of ruins or to any part of the canyon, but are found as much or more in the most recent as in the most ancient examples. Mummy Cave ruin and Casa Blanca are good examples. In the latter the small room on the left of the upper group (plate XLVII) is especially interesting. The side walls appear to rest on a deposit of refuse nearly 2 feet thick, which in turn rests on the sloping rock. The front wall is supported by a buttress as shown; without this support it would certainly have been pushed out. The buttress appears to have been built at the same time as the front wall, although its use in this way is not aboriginal. The whole arrangement is such as would result if this room, originally represented by a low front wall perhaps, were constructed when the site became inadequate and consequently at a late period in its occupancy.
The character of the refuse and debris upon which some of the walls rest is worth notice. It is well known that sheep were introduced into this country by the Spaniards, and the presence in the ruins of sheep dung, or of a material which closely resembles it, is important. Much of this is due to subsequent Navaho occupancy, and many ruins are used today by these Indians as sheepfolds. It is said, moreover, that at the time of the Navaho war, when the soldiers bayoneted all the sheep they could find, large flocks were driven up into some cliff ruins that are almost inaccessible, and kept there for a time in security. But many instances are found where the walls rest directly upon layers of compacted dung. An example is shown in plate LII, and others are mentioned in the text under the descriptions of various ruins.