The village was not a large one, having been occupied probably by only two families, yet there are traces of two kivas. That on the west is so far obliterated that its outline can be made out only with difficulty. That on the east still shows a part of its wall to a height of about a foot. The plan, figure 11, shows the general arrangement. Some of the walls are still standing to a height of 2 or 3 feet, and at the eastern end of the ruin there is a room with walls 6 feet high. More than the usual amount of mud mortar was used in the construction of
the walls of this room, and the interstices were filled with this, chinking with small stones being but slightly practiced. The masonry of the other walls is rougher, with even less chinking, and some of them show later additions which did not follow the main lines. The eastern room had two openings and the tops of the walls are apparently finished, for there are no marks of roof timbers. The room may have been roofless, but the same effect might have been produced by recent Navaho repairs and alterations. In the exterior wall, at the southeastern corner, there is a series of hand-holes, as though access to the interior were sometimes had in this way, but the hand-holes are later than the wall. On the back wall of the cove there are a number of pictographs.
Fig. 12—Ground plan of kivas in Canyon de Chelly.
Just above the mouth of Del Muerto and on the opposite side of the main canyon, at the point marked [17] on the map, there was a village on the canyon bottom. It overlooked a fine stretch of cultivable land on both sides of the canyon. There is a large isolated mass of rock here, nearly as high as the cliffs on either side, and connected with those back of it by a slope of talus and débris, partly bare rock, partly covered with sand dunes. At the point where the ruin occurs the rock is bare and about 40 feet high, partly overhanging the site. The remains, shown in plan in figure 12, occupy the summit of a hill about 10 feet high, composed principally of débris of walls. Only a few faint traces now remain, but two kivas are still clearly distinguishable. The one on the south had an interior bench, which apparently extended
around it. The other shows walls 2 feet high, and has been plastered with a number of successive coats. The small wall on the extreme right of the plan is composed of almost pure mud.
There are a number of ruins in the canyons of the type shown in figure 13. They are generally located directly on the bottom, and seldom as much as 5 feet above it, within coves or under overhanging cliffs; they are always of small area, and generally so far obliterated that no walls or wall remains are now visible. The obliteration is due not so much to antiquity, which may or may not have been a cause, but to the character of the site they occupied. They are always in sheltered situations, and being on the canyon bottom are much used by the Navaho as sheepfolds and have been so used for years. Sometimes, although rarely, faint traces of kivas can be made out.
