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 small size of the ordinary pueblo doorway was perhaps due as much to
the fact that there was no convenient means of closing it as it was to
defensive reasons. Many primitive habitations, even quite rude ones
built with no intention of defense, are characterized by small doors and
windows. The planning of dwellings and the distribution of openings in
such a manner as to protect and render comfortable the inhabited rooms
implies a greater advance in architectural skill than these builders had
achieved.
The inconveniently small size of the doorways of the modern pueblos is
only a survival of ancient conditions. The use of full-sized doors,
admitting a man without stooping, is entirely practicable at the present
day, but the conservative builders persist in adhering to the early
type. The ancient position of the door, with its sill at a considerable
height from the ground, is also retained. From the absence of any
convenient means of rigidly closing the doors and windows, in early
times external openings were restricted to the smallest practicable
dimensions. The convenience of these openings was increased without
altering their dimensions by elevating them to a certain height above
the ground. In the ruin of Kin-tiel there is marked uniformity in the
height of the openings above the ground, and such openings were likely
to be quite uniform when used for similar purposes. The most common
elevation of the sills of doorways was such that a man could readily
step over at one stride. It will be seen that the same economy of space
has effected the use of windows in this system of architecture.
WINDOWS.
In the pueblo system of building, doors and windows are not always
clearly differentiated. Many of the openings, while used for access to
the dwellings, also answer all the purposes of windows, and, both in
their form and in their position in the walls, seem more fully to meet
the requirements of openings for the admission of light and air than for
access. We have seen in the illustrations in Chapters III and IV,
openings of considerable size so located in the face of the outer wall
as to unfit them for use as doorways, and others whose size is wholly
inadequate, but which are still provided with the typical though
diminutive single-paneled door. Many of these small openings, occurring
most frequently in the back walls of house rows, have the jambs,
lintels, etc., characteristic of the typical modern door. However,
as the drawings above referred to indicate, there are many openings
concerning the use of which there can be no doubt, as they can only
provide outlook, light, and air.
[Illustration: Plate XCV. Ancient floor-beams at Kin-tiel.]
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