The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona: Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1894-95, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1897, pages 73-198Mindeleff, Cosmos
History
The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona: Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1894-95, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1897, pages 73-198
Mindeleff, Cosmos
Arizona -- Antiquities; Chelly, Canyon de (Ariz.); Cliff-dwellings -- Arizona; Pueblo Indians -- Antiquities
Ruins of the class under discussion were not confined to any part of the
canyons, but were located wherever the conditions were favorable. An
example which occurs in the lower part of the canyon, at the point
marked 3 on the map, is shown in plan in figure 10. It occurs at the
back of a deep cove in a little branch canyon, and was at one time quite
an extensive village. It was located on a slight slope or raised place
next the cliffs and overhung by them. A stone dropped from the top of
the cliffs would fall 45 or 50 feet out from their base. There are
remains of three kivas. The central one, which was 12 feet in diameter,
still shows nearly all its periphery, and the wall is in one place
3 feet high. The western kiva is now almost obliterated, but it can
still be made out, and shows a diameter of 15 feet. It is 50 feet west
of the central kiva and on a level about 8 feet below it, being only
about 3 feet above the bottom land. East of the central kiva, and
between it and a large bowlder, there was another, of which only a part
now remains.
North of the central kiva, and extending nearly to the cliff behind,
there are remains of rooms. One corner is still standing to a height of
3 to 4 feet. The western wall was smoothly plastered outside and was
pierced by a narrow notched doorway. The northern wall has an opening
still intact, shown in plate LVIII; it is 2 feet high and 14 inches
wide, with a lintel composed of six small sticks about an inch in
diameter, laid side by side. The sticks are surmounted by a flat stone,
very roughly shaped and separated from them by an inch of mud plaster or
mortar. The masonry is exceptionally well executed, that of the northern
wall being composed of large stones carefully chinked and rubbed down.
The chinking appears to have been carried through in bands, producing a
decorative effect, resembling some of the masonry of the Chaco ruins.
The western wall is composed of larger stones laid up more roughly with
less chinking, and appears to have been a later addition. On the back
wall of the cave are marks of walls showing a number of additional
rooms, and there is no doubt that at one time there was quite an
extensive settlement here.
Around the corner from the last example, as it were (at the point marked
4 on the map), and at the mouth of a little canyon that opens out from
the head of the cove, the ruin shown in plate XLVI occurs. The village
was located on the canyon bottom, in a shallow cove hardly 25 feet deep,
but the view over the bottom is almost closed by a large sand dune, bare
on top and but scantily covered on the sides with grass and weeds. Were
it not for this dune, the site of the ruin would command one of the best
areas of cultivable land in the canyon, but apparently an extensive
outlook was not a desideratum. The slight elevation of the site above
the level of the bottom lands is shown in the illustration.
[Illustration: Plate XLVI
Village Ruin in Canyon De Chelly]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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