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
construction, and particularly by their small size, in this respect more
closely resembling the rooms of the ancient pueblos. As a result the
poorer classes would be more likely to perpetuate primitive devices,
through the necessity for practicing methods that to the wealthier
members of the tribe were becoming a matter of tradition only. In such a
sedentary tribe as the present Zuñi, these differences of wealth and
station are more marked than one would expect to find among a people
practicing a style of architecture so evidently influenced by the
communal principle, and the architecture of to-day shows the effect of
such distinctions. In the house of the governor of Zuñi a new room has
been recently built, in which the second series of the roof, that
applied over the principal beams, consisted of pine shakes or shingles,
and these supported the final earth covering without any intervening
material. In the typical arrangement, however, illustrated in the
figure, the first series, or principal beams, are covered by another
series of small poles, about an inch and a half or two inches in
diameter, at right angles to the first, and usually laid quite close
together. The ends of these small poles are partially embedded in the
masonry of the walls. In an example of the more careful and laborious
work of the ancient builders seen at Peñasco Blanco, on the Chaco, the
principal beams were covered with narrow boards, from 2 to 4 inches wide
and about 1 inch thick, over which was put the usual covering of earth.
The boards had the appearance of having been split out with wedges, the
edges and faces having the characteristic fibrous appearance of torn or
split wood. At Zuñi an instance occurs where split poles have been used
for the second series of a roof extending through the whole thickness of
the wall and projecting outside, as is commonly the case with the first
series. A similar arrangement was seen in a ruined tower in the vicinity
of Fort Wingate, New Mexico. In the typical roof construction
illustrated the second series is covered with small twigs or brush,
laid in close contact and at right angles to the underlying series, or
parallel with the main beams. Pl. XCVI, illustrating an unroofed adobe
house in Zuñi, shows several bundles of this material on an adjoining
roof. This series is in turn covered with a layer of grass and small
brush, again at right angles, which prepares the frame for the reception
of the final earth covering, this latter being the fifth application to
the roof. In the example illustrated the entire earth covering of the
roof was finished in a single application of the material. It has been
seen that at Tusayan a layer of moistened earth is applied, followed by
a thicker layer of the dry soil.
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