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
The western end of the ledge was occupied by a structure whose use at
first sight is not apparent. The wall, as shown on the plan, is curved,
very thick and heavy, and built partly over the sloping rock forming the
back of the cave. The front wall is 3 feet thick, and its top, now
level, is about 5 feet above a narrow bench in front of it. There is no
doorway or other opening into it, and access into its interior was had
over the steep sloping rock to the north by means of hand-holes in the
rock. These are shown in plate L. The interior appears to have been
plastered.
This structure measures 15 by 5 feet inside, there being no wall on the
north, as the east wall merges into the sloping rock. The foot-holes in
the rock, before referred to, are at this end, nearest the village, and
appear to be in several series. The structure is so situated that the
sun shines on it only a few hours each day, and it seems more than
probable that it was a reservoir. The bed of the stream, the channel
followed in low water, sweeps against the base of the cliff below this
point, and by carrying water 20 feet it would be directly beneath and
about 50 feet below it. Finally, the cliff wall above this point is
decorated with pictographs of tadpoles and other water symbols in common
use among the pueblos, and these do not occur elsewhere on this site. In
the southwestern corner of the structure, near the bottom, there was an
opening about 18 inches high, which was carefully filled up from the
inside and plastered. This may have been an outlet by which the water
was discharged when the reservoir was cleaned out. The wall has caved in
slightly above it. The mud mortar used in building this structure and
the other walls was necessarily brought from below.
[Illustration: Plate L
Reservoir in Ruin No. 10 ]
About 25 feet east of the reservoir there are remains of a small single
room, rectangular, with a circular addition, shown on the ground plan.
The walls are well chinked and well constructed, the mud mortar being
used when about the consistency of modeling clay. In front of this room,
about 5 feet distant and on the edge of the sloping rock, a hole has
been pecked into the solid rock of the ledge. This hole is 12 inches
wide on top, slightly tapering, 10 inches deep on the upper side, and
4 inches on the lower. Twelve feet to the northeast there is a similar
hole, and below it, distant 10 inches, another, and beyond this others,
distributed generally along the foot of the sloping rock forming the
back of the ledge, but sometimes farther out on the flat floor. Probably
these holes mark the sites of upright posts supporting a drying scaffold
or frame, the horizontal poles of which extended backward to the wall of
the cliff.
[Illustration: Fig. 25--Oven-like structure in ruin No. 10.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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