Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-92, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 179-262Mindeleff, Cosmos
History
Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-92, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 179-262
Mindeleff, Cosmos
Pueblo Indians -- Antiquities; Verde River Valley (Ariz.) -- Antiquities
The arrangement and distribution of the rooms within the clusters
indicate an occupancy extending over a considerable period of time.
A reference to the ground plan will show that continuous wall lines are
the exception, and it is seldom that more than two or three rooms are
grouped together in regular order. In irregularity of arrangement the
inhabitants of this village followed a general habit, the result of
which can be seen today in all the inhabited villages and in most of the
large pueblo ruins. It indicates a steady growth of the village by the
addition of rooms, one or two at a time, as they were needed. The
division into clusters, however, indicates an aggregation of related
gentes or subgentes banded together for protection. Given these
conditions, (1) bands of related families living near one another; (2)
hostile pressure from outside; and (3) a site not in itself easily
defended, and a ground plan similar to the one under discussion must
result. Single detached rooms would not be built when the village might
be attacked at any time, but they might be added during periods of peace
and, the conditions being favorable, they might form the nuclei of other
clusters. It is possible that some of the clusters forming this village
had their origin in this manner, but this question can not be determined
from the ground plan, as a similar result would be produced by the
advent of a small band of related families.
Growth in number of rooms does not necessarily indicate growth in
population, and this qualification must not be lost sight of in the
discussion of pueblo ground plans. Among the Pueblos of today, descent,
in real property at least, is in the female line; when a man marries he
becomes a member of his wife’s family and leaves his own home to live
with his wife’s people. If the wife’s home is not large enough to
contain all the members of the household, additional rooms are built
adjoining and connected with those previously occupied. It may be
mentioned in this connection that the women build the houses, although
the men supply the material and do the heavy work. The result of this
custom may be readily seen: a family in which there are many daughters
must necessarily increase the space occupied by it, while a family
consisting of sons, no matter how many they may be, will become extinct,
so far as regards its home in the village. It is no uncommon thing to
see in the villages of today several rooms in course of erection while
there are a dozen or more rooms within a few steps abandoned and going
to decay. Long occupancy, therefore, produces much the same effect on a
ground plan of a village as a large population, or a rapidly growing
one, except that in the former case irregularity in the arrangement of
rooms will be more pronounced.
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