Within the inner court of this big community house were three kivas. These deep underground ceremonial chambers lined with rock walls were built adjacent to the rooms on the north side. Puwige was large. It was more than two hundred seventy-five feet across and the tiers of rooms formed a wide band around the outside of the circular court. Why the Indians erected three kivas so close together is uncertain unless it was to have more room in the plaza. It is possible that the kivas were erected first, outside of the village, and as the pueblo grew the three little ceremonial chambers were entirely enclosed within it. But why three kivas inside Puwige? Indians had their reasons. These three ceremonial chambers were small. They were not more than twelve or fifteen feet in diameter. The hard plaster floors were seven or eight feet below the surface of the ground. Their roofs were of poles laid across the stone walls with brush and grass and mud for a covering. Small combination hatchways and smoke vents were cut in the roofs and ladders were put down to the floors as a means of getting in and out. These chambers were likely society kivas of which there were several in every Indian village. Or we might compare them with club rooms in our own society. They were places where the elders met in council, or where they came to spend an hour or so, perhaps a week, visiting with their spiritual fathers. Kivas were places where policy was discussed and decided upon—or a kiva might have been a place where a group of hunters gathered before going on a hunt to pray that their hunt would be successful. We will never know what went on in the secret chambers at Tyuonyi, or as a matter of fact, in any other prehistoric kiva. And speaking of kivas or ceremonial chambers, some groups preferred to have theirs in the cliffs, hewn out like the smoky cave rooms but generally larger. And the kivas, like the cave rooms, were plastered half-way up the walls whenever they became smoked. This happened quite often if fires were kept burning.