Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Cliff PalaceFewkes, Jesse Walter
History
Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Cliff Palace
Fewkes, Jesse Walter
Colorado -- Antiquities; Mesa Verde National Park (Colo.)
Room 11, which may be called the square tower, is the only four-story
building standing in Cliff Palace, its walls reaching from the floor to
the roof of the cave. When work began on this building the whole
northwestern angle had fallen, and the remaining walls were tottering.
To prevent total destruction, the entire corner was built up from a
foundation laid on the floor level of the neighboring kiva. A small
entrance to the ground floor, or the lowest of the four rooms, is from
a banquette (10) on the western side, where there is a passageway from
this lower story of room 11 to room 12, situated in its rear. Room 12
has a good floor, and room 11 a fireplace in the southwestern corner of
the lowest room of the square tower. Almost all the beams of the higher
rooms of this tower had been taken out, leaving nothing but the holes in
the walls to indicate the former existence of floors. The beams now
connecting the walls were placed there by our workmen to serve as
staging and for tying the sides together. The second and third stories
of the square tower are also without floors. Their inner walls are
plastered a reddish color, in places whitewashed, and the third wall is
decorated with interesting paintings. In the western wall of the second
story was a small window, and portions of a large T-shaped doorway still
show on the northern wall of the third story. Split sticks support the
section of wall from the top of this doorway to the roof of the cave.
From the arrangement of its rear walls it would appear that the whole of
this tower was built subsequently to the rooms back of it, which extend
on each side, north and south. The repair of a doorway of the northern
wall was difficult, the foundation walls of the eastern and northern
corners of the tower being slabs of stone set on edge, quite inadequate
to support the lofty wall above. This insufficient foundation leads to
the belief that when the base of the square tower was constructed there
was no thought of erecting upon it the four stories that we now find.
(Pl. 12, 13_a_, 14_a_.)
Some of the rooms of the square tower bear evidence of having been
living rooms, and possibly the approaches to the upper chambers were by
ladders from the outside; otherwise the T-shaped doorway on the northern
side, above the painted room, remains unexplained.
Room 12, situated east of the square tower, has no characteristic
features, being more a passageway than a room, opening at one end into
room 13 and connecting with kiva D at the other end.
Room 13 likewise presents no distinctive features; its rear wall is
considerably blackened by smoke, and it has a large square window
opening into room 12.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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