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
This southern portion of the Cibola district seems to have been much
exposed to the inroads of the Apache. One of the effects of this has
already been noticed in the defensive arrangement in the Ketchipauan
church. On account of such danger, the Zuñi were likely to have built
the first house-clusters here on the highest points of the rocky
promontory, notwithstanding the comparative inconvenience of such sites.
Later, as the farmers gained confidence or as times became safer, they
built houses down on the flat now occupied; but this apparently was not
done all at once. The distribution of the houses over sites of varying
degrees of inaccessibility, suggests a succession of approaches to the
occupation of the open and unprotected valley.
Some of the masonry of this village is carelessly constructed, and, as
in the other farming pueblos, there is much less adobe plastering and
smoothing of outer walls than in the home pueblo.
[Illustration: Plate XLIV. Moen-kopi.]
[Illustration: Plate (unnumbered key).]
At the time of the survey the occupation of this village throughout
the year was proposed by several families, who wished to resort to
the parent village only at stated ceremonials and important festivals.
The comparative security of recent times is thus tending to the
disintegration of the huge central pueblo. This result must be
inevitable, as the dying out of the defensive motive brings about a
realization of the great inconvenience of the present centralized
system.
ZUÑI.
The pueblo of Zuñi is built upon a small knoll on the north bank of
the Zuñi River, about three miles west of the conspicuous mesa of
Tâaaiyalana. It is the successor of all the original “Seven Cities of
Cibola” of the Spaniards, and is the largest of the modern pueblos.
As before stated, the remains of Halona, one of the “seven cities,” as
identified by Mr. Cushing, have served as a nucleus for the construction
of the modern pueblo, and have been incorporated into the most densely
clustered portions, represented on the plan (Pl. LXXVI) by numbers 1
and 4.
Some of the Cibolan villages were valley pueblos, built at a distance
from the rocky mesas and canyons that must have served as quarries for
the stone used in building. The Halona site was of this type, the
nearest supply of stone being 3 miles distant. At this point (Halona)
the Zuñi River is perennial, and furnishes a plentiful supply of water
at all seasons of the year. It disappears, however, a few miles west in
a broad, sandy wash, to appear again 20 miles below the village,
probably through the accession of small streams from springs farther
down. The so-called river furnishes the sole water supply at Zuñi, with
the exception of a single well or reservoir on the north side of the
village.
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