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
Figure 32 illustrates a type which is more common. Here we have the
usual arrangement of rooms along the cliff, with a kiva in front of
them. There were altogether not over 10 or 12 rooms, and they were
probably occupied by one family. Figure 33 shows a kind rather more
abundant than the last, and consisting like it of one circular kiva with
rooms back of and between it and the cliff. Ruins of this type are
generally well protected by an overhanging cliff. Figure 34 is another
example, in which only three rectangular rooms can be made out. The site
here is almost covered with large bowlders. All these examples occur in
Del Muerto.
[Illustration: Fig. 34--Plan of a ruin of three rooms.]
[Illustration: Fig. 35--Ground plan of a small ruin, with two kivas.]
Figure 35 is a ground plan of a small ruin which occurs at the point
marked 36 on the map. It is situated in a shallow cove at the head of
the talus, 200 or 300 feet above the bottom, and is of comparatively
easy access. There is but a small amount of cultivable bottom land
immediately below it, but it commands extensive areas on the opposite
site of the canyon and in the lower part of a branch on that side. There
are but few remains of rooms other than parts of two kivas, but there is
no question that there was at one time a considerable number here. Both
kivas had interior benches, and were of small size, plastered in the
interior. The masonry is fair to good. On the highest point of the
bowlder shown on the right of the plan there is a fragment of compacted
sheep dung and soil, which is now 6 feet above the ground. It is all
that remains of a layer of some thickness which must have been deposited
when the surface was filled up to or nearly to the top of the rock.
Possibly there was a wall outside and only the intermediate space was
filled.
[Illustration: Fig. 36--Ground plan of a small ruin, No. 44.]
[Illustration: Fig. 37--Ground plan of a ruin on a rocky site.]
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