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
Many of the older pueblos of both groups appear to have belonged to the
valley types--villages of considerable size, located in open plains or
on the slopes of low-lying foothills. A comparison of the plans in
Chapters II and III will illustrate these differences. In Tusayan the
necessity of defense has driven the builders to inaccessible sites, so
that now all the occupied villages of the province are found on mesa
summits. The inhabitants of the valley pueblos of Cibola, although
compelled at one time to build their houses upon the almost inaccessible
summit of Tâaaiyalana mesa, occupied this site only temporarily, and
soon established a large valley pueblo, the size and large population of
which afforded that defensive efficiency which the Tusayan obtained only
by building on mesa promontories. This has resulted in some adherence on
the part of the Tusayan to the village plans of their ancestors, while
at Zuni the great house clusters, forming the largest pueblo occupied in
modern times, show a wide departure from the primitive types. In both
provinces the architecture is distinguished from that of other portions
of the pueblo region by greater irregularity of plan and by less
skillfully executed constructional details; each group, however, happens
to contain a notable exception to this general carelessness.
In Cibola the pueblo of Kin-tiel, built with a continuous defensive
outer wall, occupies architecturally a somewhat anomalous position,
notwithstanding its traditional connection with the group, and the Fire
House occupies much the same relation in reference to Tusayan. The
latter, however, does not break in upon the unity of the group, since
the Tusayan, to a much greater extent than the Zuñi, are made up of
remnants of various bands of builders. In Cibola, however, some of the
Indians state that their ancestors, before reaching Zuñi, built a number
of pueblos, whose ruins are distinguished from those illustrated in the
present paper by the presence of circular kivas, this form of ceremonial
room being, apparently, wholly absent from the Cibolan pueblos here
discussed.
The people of Cibola and of Tusayan belong to distinct linguistic
stocks, but their arts are very closely related, the differences being
no greater than would result from the slightly different conditions that
have operated within the last few generations. Zuñi, perhaps, came more
directly under early Spanish influence than Tusayan.
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