Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology: to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1886-1887, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891
History
Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology: to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1886-1887, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891
Navajo Indians -- Rites and ceremonies; Pueblo Indians -- Antiquities; Pueblo architecture
Here again we find that the ceremonial chamber that forms so important a
feature among these people, occupies no fixed relation to the dwellings,
and its location is largely a matter of accident, a site that would
admit of the partial excavation or sinking of the chamber below the
surface being the main requisite. The northwest court contains another
of the small inclosed shrines already described as occurring at
Shupaulovi and elsewhere.
The stonework of this village also possesses a somewhat distinctive
character. Exposed masonry, though comparatively rare in this
well-plastered pueblo, shows that stones of suitable fracture were
selected and that they were more carefully laid than in the other
villages. In places the masonry bears a close resemblance to some of the
ancient work, where the spaces between the longer tablets of stone were
carefully chinked with small bits of stone, bringing the whole wall to a
uniform face, and is much in advance of the ordinary slovenly methods of
construction followed in Tusayan.
Shumopavi is the successor of an older village of that name, one of the
cities of the ancient Tusayan visited by a detachment of Coronado’s
expedition in 1540. The ruins of that village still exist, and they
formerly contained vestiges of the old church and mission buildings
established by the monks. The squared beams from these buildings were
considered valuable enough to be incorporated in the construction of
ceremonial kivas in some of the Tusayan villages. This old site was not
visited by the party.
ORAIBI.
This is one of the largest modern pueblos, and contains nearly half the
population of Tusayan; yet its great size has not materially affected
the arrangement of the dwellings. The general plan (see Pl. XXXVI),
simply shows an unusually large collection of typical Tusayan
house-rows, with the general tendency to face eastward displayed in the
other villages of the group. There is a remarkable uniformity in the
direction of the rows, but there are no indications of the order in
which the successive additions to the village were made, such as were
found at Mashóngnavi.
The clusters of rooms do not surpass the average dimensions of those in
the smaller villages. In five of the clusters in Oraibi a height of four
stories is reached by a few rooms; a height seen also in Walpi.
At several points in Oraibi, notably on the west side of cluster No. 7,
may be seen what appears to be low terraces faced with rough masonry.
The same thing is also seen at Walpi, on the west side of the
northernmost cluster. This effect is produced by the gradual filling in
of abandoned and broken-down marginal houses, with fallen masonry and
drifted sand. The appearance is that of intentional construction, as may
be seen in Pl. XXXIX.
[Illustration: Plate XXXIII. The chief kiva of Shupaulovi.]
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