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
In addition to the above-mentioned uses of stone and earth in the
masonry of house walls, the pueblo builders have employed both these
materials in a more primitive manner in building the walls of corrals
and gardens, and for other purposes. The small terraced gardens of Zuñi,
located on the borders of the village on the southwest and southeast
sides, close to the river bank, are each surrounded by walls 2½ or 3
feet high, of very light construction, the average thickness not
exceeding 6 or 8 inches. These rude walls are built of small,
irregularly rounded lumps of adobe, formed by hand, and coarsely
plastered with mud. When the crops are gathered in the fall the walls
are broken down in places to facilitate access to the inclosures, so
that they require repairing at each planting season. Aside from this
they are so frail as to require frequent repairs throughout the period
of their use. This method of building walls was adopted because it was
the readiest and least laborious means of inclosing the required space.
The character of these garden walls is illustrated in Pl. XC, and their
construction with rough lumps of crude adobe shows also the contrast
between the weak appearance of this work and the more substantial effect
of the masonry of the adjoining unfinished house. At the Cibolan farming
pueblos inclosing walls were usually made of stone, as were also those
of Tusayan. Pl. LXX indicates the manner in which the material has been
used in the corrals of Pescado, located within the village. The stone
walls are used in combination with stakes, such as are employed at the
main pueblo.
[Illustration: Plate LXIX. Pescado, plan.]
Small inclosed gardens, like those of Zuñi, occur at several points in
Tusayan. The thin walls are made of dry masonry, quite as rude in
character as those inclosing the Zuñi gardens. The smaller clusters are
usually located in the midst of large areas of broken stone that has
fallen from the mesa above. In the foreground of Pl. XXII may be seen a
number of examples of such work. Pl. XCI illustrates a group of corrals
at Oraibi whose walls are laid up without the use of mud mortar.
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