[Footnote 9: A Study of Pueblo Architecture, by Victor Mindeleff: 8th. Ann. Rep. Bur. Eth. for 1886-1887; Washington, 1891, pp. 1-228.] [Transcriber’s Note: This article is available from Project Gutenberg as e-text #19856.] [Illustration: Figure 305. Notched doorway in Tusayan.] CHIMNEYS AND FIREPLACES. Nowhere in the village ruins or in the cavate lodges of the lower Verde were any traces of chimneys or other artificial smoke exits found. The village ruins are too much broken down to permit definite statement of the means employed for smoke exits, but had the inhabitants employed such exits as are in use in the pueblos today some evidence of them would remain. Probably there was no other exit than the door, and perhaps trapdoors or small openings in the roofs, such as were formerly employed in the inhabited pueblos, according to their traditions. In the cavate lodges no exit other than the door was possible, and many of them are found with their walls much blackened by smoke. The fireplaces or fire holes of the cavate lodges have already been alluded to, and one of the best examples found is illustrated in plate XXXII, and the location of a number of others is shown on the general plan. These fireplaces are located not in the center of the chamber, but near the principal doorway, and doubtless the object of this location was to facilitate the escape of the smoke. Fire holes were never located in interior rooms. The fireplace illustrated in plate XXXII has been already described (p. 227); it was excavated in the solid rock of the floor and was lined with fragments of pottery laid in mud mortar as closely as their shape would permit. A part of this pottery lining can be seen in the illustration. When the room was cleared out the fire hole was found to be about half full of fine ashes. [Illustration: Plate XLVII. STANDING WALLS OPPOSITE VERDE.] CONCLUSIONS. The ruins of the lower Verde valley represent a comparatively late period in the history of the Pueblo tribes. The period of occupancy was not a long one and the population was never large, probably not exceeding at any time 800 or 1,000 souls, possibly less than 700; nor were the dwellings in that region all occupied at the same time. There is no essential difference, other than those due to immediate environment, between the architecture of the lower Verde region and that of the more primitive types found in other regions, Tusayan for example. The Verde architecture is, however, of a more purely aboriginal type than that of any modern pueblo, and the absence of introduced or foreign ideas is its chief characteristic. There are no chimneys, no adobe walls, no constructive expedients other than aboriginal and rather primitive ones. The absence of circular kivas[10] or sacred council chambers is noteworthy.