NEW FIRE-HOUSE GROUP
FIRE TEMPLE
Fire Temple is one of the most remarkable cliff houses in the park, if not in the whole Southwest. It is situated in a shallow cave in the north wall of Fewkes Canyon, near the head of the same, and can readily be seen from the road along the southwest rim of the canyon. This ruin was formerly called Painted House, but when it was excavated in May 1920 evidence was obtained that it was a specialized building and not a habitation. The facts brought to light point to the theory that it was consecrated to the fire cult, one of the most ancient forms of worship.
The ruin is rectangular in form, almost completely filling the whole of its shallow cave, and the walls of the rooms extend to the roof. A ground plan shows a central court 50 feet long and about 25 feet broad, flanked at each end with massive-walled buildings two stories high. The walls of these rooms are well constructed, plastered red and white within and on the side turned to the court. The white plaster is adorned with symbolic figures. The beams used in the construction of the ceiling of the lower room are missing, but the walls show clearly that the structure was formerly two stories high. No beams were used in the construction of the floors, the lower story having been filled in with fragments of rocks on which was plastered a good adobe floor.
The court or plaza was bounded by a low wall on the south side, the buildings enclosing the east and west ends, where there was a banquette, apparently for spectators. The north side of the court was formed by the solid rocks of the cliff, but on the lower part a narrow masonry wall had been laid up about head high, projecting from the cliff a foot and less on the top. The wall was formerly plastered red below and white above, triangular figures and zigzag markings recalling symbols of lightning on the line of the junction of the red and white surfaces.
About the center of the court on a well-hardened adobe floor there is a circular walled fire pit containing an abundance of ashes, and on either side of it are foundations of small rectangular structures.
In the central fire pit fire was kept burning during the elaborate fire dances of the natives, and possibly also a perpetual fire was conserved in this pit from one act of kindling the new fire to another. The function of the rectangular enclosures lying one on each side of the circular enclosures is unknown. The new fire may have been kindled in the middle of the three rooms of the lowest tier west of the main court. This is a painted room, and on its walls there still remain in fair preservation a row of five symbols of fire, numerous pictures of mountain sheep and other animals.
Just west of Fire Temple there is a group of rooms which were evidently habitations, since household utensils were found in them. One of these rooms has in the floor a vertical shaft which opens outside the house walls like a ventilator. The former use of this structure is unknown. Although the Fire Temple was not inhabited, there were undoubtedly dwellings nearby.
NEW FIRE HOUSE
A hundred feet east of the Fire Temple there are two low caves, one above the other, in which may have lived those who attended this sanctuary. The ruin is the New Fire House proper, or the habitation of the fire priests and their families. The rooms in the lower cave were fitted for habitation, consisting of two, possibly three, circular ceremonial rooms and a few secular rooms; but the upper cave is destitute of the former. The large rooms of the upper house look like granaries for the storage of provisions, although possibly they also were inhabited. In the rear of the large rooms identified as granaries was found a small room with a well-preserved human skeleton accompanied with mortuary pottery. One of these mortuary offerings is a fine mug made of black and white ware beautifully decorated; a specimen worthy of exhibition with the best in any museum. In the rear of the cave were three well-constructed grinding bins, their metates still in place.
The upper house is now approached from the lower by foot holes in the cliff and a ladder. Evidences of a secondary occupation of one of the kivas in the lower house appear in a wall of crude masonry without mortar, part of a rectangular room built diagonally across the kiva. The plastering on the rear walls of the lower house is particularly well preserved. One of the kivas has, in place of a deflector and ventilator shaft, a small rectangular walled enclosure surrounded by a wall, recalling structures on the floor of the kivas of Sun Temple. The meaning of this departure from the prescribed form of ventilator is not apparent.