A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola: Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1886-1887, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 3-228Mindeleff, Cosmos
History
A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola: Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1886-1887, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 3-228
Mindeleff, Cosmos
Pueblo Indians -- Antiquities; Pueblo architecture
The finish of pueblo masonry rarely went far beyond the two leading
forms, to which attention has been called, the free use of adobe on the
one hand and the banded arrangement of ancient masonry on the other.
These types appear to present development along divergent lines. The
banded feature doubtless reached such a point of development in the
Chaco pueblos that its decorative value began to be appreciated, for it
is apparent that its elaboration has extended far beyond the
requirements of mere utility. This point would never have been reached
had the practice prevailed of covering the walls with a coating of mud.
The cruder examples of banded construction, however--those that still
kept well within constructional expediency--were doubtless covered with
a coating of plaster where they occurred inside of the rooms. At Tusayan
and Cibola, on the other hand, the tendency has been rather to elaborate
the plastic element of the masonry. The nearly universal use of adobe is
undoubtedly largely responsible for the more slovenly methods of
building now in vogue, as it effectually conceals careless construction.
It is not to be expected that walls would be carefully constructed of
banded stonework when they were to be subsequently covered with mud. The
elaboration of the use of adobe and its employment as a periodical
coating for the dwellings, probably developed gradually into the use of
a whitewash for the house walls, resulting finally in crude attempts at
wall decoration.
Many of the interiors in Zuñi are washed with a coating of white, clayey
gypsum, used in the form of a solution made by dissolving in hot water
the lumps of the raw material, found in many localities. The mixture is
applied to the walls while hot, and is spread by means of a rude
glove-like sack, made of sheep or goat skin, with the hair side out.
With this primitive brush the Zuñi housewives succeed in laying on a
smooth and uniform coating over the plaster. An example of this class of
work was observed in a room of house No. 2. It is difficult to determine
to what extent this idea is aboriginal; as now employed it has doubtless
been affected by the methods of the neighboring Spanish population,
among whom the practice of white-coating the adobe houses inside and out
is quite common. Several traces of whitewashing have been found among
the cliff-dwellings of Canyon de Chelly, notably at the ruin known as
Casa Blanca, but as some of these ruins contained evidences of
post-Spanish occupation, the occurrence there of the whitewash does not
necessarily imply any great antiquity for the practice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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