POTTERY
Brief mention of ceramic objects found in the area considered in this review is here introduced because they substantiate the evidences of the buildings concerning the relationship of prehistoric people in this neighborhood. Moreover, they add to our limited knowledge of the arts in a little-known area. Very little has been recorded concerning pottery from the ruins near Gallup, but the few known specimens do not bear a sufficiently specialized symbolism to separate them from others found in different geographical areas. Evidently no distinctive ceramic area was developed in this region. Attention, however, may be called to the fact that the symbols on pottery ([fig. 7]) represent the oldest types, and that geometrical designs rather than conventional animal figures predominate. The pottery suggests Zuñi ware, but is radically different from modern Zuñi and has different symbols, showing, as far as it goes, that settlements in which it occurs were made prior to the development of modern Zuñi ceramic decorations which were influenced by them. It has a likeness to old Zuñi ware, but has a closer resemblance to fragments from the Crown Point Ruin, and the Chaco settlements, which is significant.
Perhaps the most exceptional specimens obtained during the author’s trip are two large, black jars ([fig. 8]), their color recalling Santa Clara ware. The decoration on these jars takes the form of designs on a raised zigzag band meandering about their necks, similar to pottery used by the Navaho Indians. The informant, a reliable white man, claims they are not Navaho work, and showed the locality near a ruined ancient wall where he excavated them. He also reports a portion of a human skeleton found in the same neighborhood which affords good indication that they were mortuary, while the position of the grave would show that they were deposited by the same people who inhabited the room near by. The question is pertinent, however, whether they were not a modern secondary burial; but if we accept this theory it indicates an unusual condition, for the Navaho seldom bury their pottery as mortuary offerings.[13]
The author noticed, especially in his examination of the mounds near Kit Carson Spring, certain foundation walls indicating small, circular, buildings strung along in a row on the tops of ridges. One or two of these suggest a round ruin near Zuñi, and seem to afford the missing link in the prehistoric chain of settlements connecting the great Chaco ruins[14] with some of those in Zuñi valley. These important similarities are supported by the traditions of the Zuñi that some of their ancestors once inhabited the buildings on the Chaco; and the fact that certain ruins, among them Kintiel, north of Navaho Springs, are definitely claimed by the Zuñi to have been inhabited by their Corn clan.
The black and white pottery, found about Gallup, is identical with that of the latter ruin, and very similar to that generally found in the earliest epoch of pueblo occupancy. As pointed out in an article on Zuñi pottery, in the “Putnam Anniversary Volume,” modern Zuñi pottery is so different from the ancient that we can hardly regard it as evolved from it. The same is true among the Hopi; the modern pottery decoration is not like the old, but is Tewa. Hopi-Tewa pottery is largely the work of Nampeo, who once decorated her pottery solely with Tewa symbols instead of old Hopi. In 1895 she abandoned the Tewa symbols of her people to meet a demand for old pottery and substituted for Tewa designs copies of ancient Hopi pottery from Sikyatki. Thus there have been two radical changes in the style of Hopi pottery since 1710; one the substitution of Tewa designs for old Hopi, the other a return to Sikyatki motifs within the last 20 years. This modern innovation, however, has not been derived from the ancient by any evolution, but by acculturation. Possibly a similar change has taken place at Zuñi, calling for caution in supposing that pottery found in the refuse heaps is necessarily evolved from that preexisting or found in strata below it.
The author has seen no evidence that would lead him to abandon the theory, that the Zuñi valley was once peopled by clans related to those on Little Colorado derived from the Gila, and that other clans drifted into the valley from the north at a later date. These later additions were from the circular ruin belt. Later came Tewa clans as the Asa of the Hopi, and others. The author finds more evidences of acculturation than autochthonous evolution in modern Zuñi, as in modern Hopi ceramic symbols. Pottery (figs. [9], [10]) found in ruins about Gallup belongs to the same type as that from Kintiel which Cushing, from legendary evidences, found to have been settled by Zuñi clans.[15]