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 — John Shaqi
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 first desideratum in the minds of the old pueblo builders in
choosing the location of their habitations was nearness to some area of
tillable land. This land was generally adjacent to the site of the
village, and was almost invariably overlooked by it. In fact this
requirement was considered of far more importance than adaptability to
defense, for the latter was often sacrificed to the former. A good
example in which both requirements have been fully met is the ruin under
discussion. This, however, is the result of an exceptionally favorable
environment; as a rule the two requirements conflict with each other,
and it is always the latter requirement--adaptability to defense--which
suffers. These statements are true even of the so-called fortresses, of
the cavate lodges, of the cliff ruins, and of many of the large village
ruins scattered over the southwestern portion of the United States. In
the case of the large village ruins, however, there is another feature
of pueblo life which sometimes produces a different result, viz, the use
of outlying single houses or small clusters separated from the main
village and used for temporary abode during the farming season only.
This feature is well developed in some of the modern pueblos,
particularly in Zuñi and Acoma.
The principle illustrated by this ruin is an important one. Among the
ancient pueblo builders there was no military art, or rather the
military art was in its infancy; purely defensive structures, such as
fortresses, were unknown, and the idea of defense never reached any
greater development than the selection of an easily defended site for a
village, and seldom extended to the artificial improvement of the site.
There is another result of this lack of military knowledge not
heretofore alluded to, which will be discussed at length on some other
occasion and can only be mentioned here: this is the aggregation of a
number of small villages or clusters into the large many-storied pueblo
building, such as the modern Zuñi or Taos.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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