Preliminary report on a visit to the Navaho National Monument, Arizona — John Shaqi
Preliminary report on a visit to the Navaho National Monument, ArizonaFewkes, Jesse Walter
History
Preliminary report on a visit to the Navaho National Monument, Arizona
Fewkes, Jesse Walter
Arizona -- Antiquities; Cliff-dwellings -- Arizona; Navajo National Monument (Ariz.)
One of the most striking features of Kitsiel is the great log, 35 feet
long, under which the visitor passes to inspect the interior of the
ruin. West of this log, which evidently once supported a retaining
wall, the rooms are well preserved; east of it this wall in places has
slipped down the cliff and its component stones are to be found in
the talus below.
It is difficult to discover how many rooms this great cliff-house
formerly had, but there is little doubt that they numbered more than
150, besides the kivas. This ruin is believed to be one of the largest
known cliff-dwellings of the Southwest, ranking in size the Cliff
Palace in the Mesa Verde, which it does not rival, however, in variety
of architectural features. The masonry in Kitsiel is inferior to that
in the Spruce-tree House and the Balcony House, the walls of which show
the highest aboriginal achievement in stonework north of Mexico.[34]
The walled inclosures of Kitsiel are reducible to a few types of which
the following may be distinguished:
(1) Kivas, or circular subterranean rooms with a large banquette on one
side, the walls being generally broken down and without pilasters or
roof-supports.
(2) Kihus, or rectangular rooms with doors on one side, each having a
low bank, or “deflector,” rising from the floor between the doorway
and the fire-hole. Instead of this bank being free from the wall, as
at Betatakin, it is generally joined to it on one side, the floor at
the point of junction being raised slightly above the remaining level.
Smoke-holes are sometimes, but not always, present in the roof. These
rooms, like the circular rooms, are ceremonial in character. The only
opening in their floors that can be compared with the ceremonial
aperture, or _sipapû_, is a shallow depression a few inches deep. The
diameters of these openings are greater than in the case of the sipapû
in Cliff Palace kivas.
(3) Rectangular rooms, some of which have benches and show evidence of
having been living rooms.
(4) Large rooms each with a fireplace in the middle of the floor.
(5) Rooms with metates set in bins made of stone slabs (milling rooms).
(6) Courts and streets. The longest street extends from the middle of
the ruin to the western end and is lined on both sides by rooms many of
the roofs of which are still intact.
An instructive architectural feature of some of the rooms of this ruin
is the use of upright logs in supporting corners. Part of the roof of
one of these rooms situated deep in the cave is formed by the natural
rock and the remainder by an artificial covering supported by upright
logs forked at the end to receive the rafters.
SCAFFOLD HOUSE
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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