Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895: Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744Fewkes, Jesse Walter
History
Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895: Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744
Room _b_ is an irregular, square chamber, two stories high,
communicating with _a_ and _c_ by passages which are enlarged by
breakage in the walls. A small hole in the front wall, about 6 feet
from the floor, opens externally to the air. The walls are, in
general, about 2 feet thick, and are composed of flat red stones laid
in clay of the same color. The cliff forms the rear wall of the
chamber. The clay at certain places in the walls, especially near the
insertions of the beams and about the window openings, appears to have
been mixed with a black pitch, which serves to harden the mixture.
Room _c_ is the first of a series of chambers, with external
passageways, but its walls are very much broken down, and the openings
thereby enlarged. The front wall is almost straight and in one place
stands 30 feet, the maximum height of the standing wall of the ruins.
In one corner a considerable quantity of ashes and many evidences of
fire, some of which may be ascribed to Apache occupants, was detected.
A wooden beam, marking the line of the floor of a second story, was
seen projecting from the front wall, and there are other evidences of
a floor at this level. Large beams apparently extended from the front
wall to the rear of the chamber, where they rested on a ledge in the
cliff, and over these smaller sticks were laid side by side and at
right angles to the beams. These in turn supported either flat stones
or a layer of mud or clay. The method of construction of one of these
roofs is typical of a Tusayan kiva, where ancient architectural forms
are adhered to and best preserved.
The entrance to room _d_ is very much enlarged by the disintegration
of the wall, and apparently there was at this point a difference in
level of the front wall, for there is evidence of rooms in advance of
those connected with the chambers described, as shown by a line of
masonry, still standing, parallel to the front face of inclosures _c_
and _d_.
Room _e_ communicates by a doorway with the chamber marked _f_, and
there is a small window in the same partition. This room had a raised
banquette on the side toward the cliff, recalling an arrangement of
the floor similar to that in the cavate dwellings opposite Squaw
mountain which I have described. This platform is raised about three
feet above the remainder of the floor of _f_, and, like it, is strewn
with large slabs of stone, which have fallen from the overhanging
roof. In the main floor, at one corner, near the platform, there is a
rectangular box-like structure made of thin slabs of stone set on
edge, suggesting the grinding bins of the Pueblos. Room _f_
communicates with _g_ by a passageway which has a stone lintel. The
holes in the walls, in which beams were once inserted, are seen in
several places at different levels above the floor. The ends of
several beams, one extremity of which is invariably charred, were
found set in the masonry, and others were dug from the débris in the
floor.
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