Preliminary report on a visit to the Navaho National Monument, Arizona

by Jesse Walter Fewkes

Pottery

The pottery collected consists of jars, vases, food bowls, and circular disks with a row of perforations about the margin. There are also dipper handles and broken ladles of the usual shape. Some of these specimens are of corrugated ware, others have smooth surfaces with painted decoration. The proportion of corrugated and indented ware found in the Navaho Monument ruins is about the same as in the Mesa Verde National Park. The finest coiled ware was obtained from the latter locality. Several fragments of flat dishes, perforated on their margins (pl. [15], b), or colanders having holes in the middle, form part of the collection.[45]

The most instructive form of pottery in the collection brought back from northern Arizona is a decorated globular vase of black-and-white ware (pl. [16], b). The decoration on this specimen is not confined to the exterior but is found also on the inner surface of the lip; it consists mainly of triangles so united as to form hour-glass figures. A unique design on this vessel consists of two parallel lines, each with dots on one side, suggesting similar bands in red on the inner wall of the third story of the square tower of Cliff Palace.

Three small bowls of crude ware are fluted on the outside, the ridge, or fluting, being raised somewhat above the surface of the bowl and having a zigzag course. One of the best of these unique ceramic forms has this fluting broken into S-shaped figures, as shown in the accompanying illustration (pl. [17], a).

The writer collected also several perforated clay disks which were possibly used as spindle whorls, although they may have been gaming implements. A similar disk made of mountain-sheep horn was found at Kitsiel.

The largest and one of the finest vases (pl. [18], a) from the neighborhood of Red Lake is also of black-and-white ware. The decoration is external and consists of black figures covering the neck and upper body. The base is rounded and the lip slightly flaring. This vase may have been used for containing water or possibly as a receptacle for prayer (corn) meal. The food bowls from Red Lake are chiefly of black-and-white ware, the red and yellow varieties being less numerous. A common feature in food bowls of this region is a handle on one side, as shown in plate [15], d. Some of these vessels, although of smooth ware, are without decoration on either the exterior or the interior.

The shallow, slightly concave clay disk[46] shown in plate [15], b, is characteristic in possessing a row of holes near the rim. This disk seems to represent a common type, as several fragments with similar holes were found on the surface of the ruins. The same or related forms appear to have been common in ruins near the Hopi pueblos. These are found in the collection of votive offerings now in the Peabody Museum at Cambridge, from Jedito spring, near Awatobi, and the writer has discovered specimens elsewhere in Hopi ruins, a brief mention of which occurs in a report on the archeological results of his expedition to Arizona in 1895.[47]

Several fragments of deep bowls, each having a handle (pl. [18], b) on the surface, were obtained in the sands below cliff-house B; these are commonly of red ware and have reddish-brown and black decorations. A small dish of black-and-white ware (pl. [15], a) has the rim slightly elevated and rounded on one side. The cups or mugs from this region are shaped unlike those from the Mesa Verde. Mugs from the latter region are cylindrical in form or the walls incline slightly inward so that the diameter of the opening is somewhat less than that of the base. The lip is thick and decorated. One of these cups, here figured, has a constricted neck, and a slightly flaring rim which is thin and undecorated. The decoration of another cup (pl. [15], c) suggests the designs on several mugs from the Little Colorado ruins. So far as form and decoration are concerned, this cup, or handled vase, might have come from Homolobi, Chevlon, or Chaves pass.[48]

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

BULLETIN 50 PLATE 17

a. BOWLS BEARING RELIEF ORNAMENTS

(From left to right): Cat. Nos. 257783, 257784, 257782. Heights, 2½ inches, 2 inches, 2¾ inches.

b. HANDLES OF FOOD-BOWLS

Cat. No. 258326.

c. STONE IMPLEMENTS

(From left to right): Cat. Nos. 258334, 258335, 258336, 258337. Dimensions, 6 x 4 x 1¾ inches; 5¼ x 3¾ x 2½ inches; 4½ x 3¾ x 2 inches; 4¾ x 2¾ x 2½ inches.

POTTERY AND STONE IMPLEMENTS FROM NAVAHO NATIONAL MONUMENT

The designs on fragments of pottery found in ruins in northern Arizona are identical with or related to those from the Black Falls ruins, but differ somewhat from those on pottery from ruins higher up the Little Colorado river. If the history of the modification of ceramic symbols in any of the large composite pueblos of the Southwest be studied, it will be noticed that there are often radical changes, the later symbols not being modifications of earlier ones. Thus modern Zuñi pottery designs differ materially from those found in ruins in the same valley. The modern pottery from East mesa is wholly different from that of Sikyatki, a few miles away. Again, in so-called modern Hopi pottery, Tewa symbols derived from the Rio Grande have replaced old Hopi symbols dominant before the advent of Tewa clans. The changes in pottery symbols in every large composite pueblo are not due to evolution of the modern from the ancient, but reflect the history of the advent of new clans, powerful enough to substitute their designs for those formerly existing. One of the problems of the ethnologist is to determine symbols associated with certain clans, and by means of legends to identify clans with ruins. Having determined the symbols introduced by certain clans and the places where these clans halted in their migrations and built pueblos, the course of these prehistoric movements may be followed. Comparison of symbols on pottery from northern Arizona with those from Black Falls ruins support, so far as they go, the legends that the Snake people, who once lived at Wukóki near the Black Falls, lived also in cliff-houses now ruins near Marsh pass or the White mesa. The symbolism indicates the presence of the same clans, and tradition is thereby supported.