Fig. 52—White House ruin in Tseonitsosi canyon.
Figure 52 shows a cluster of rooms in the little canyon called Tseonitsosi. This is another Casa Blanca, or White House, and, oddly enough,
it resembles its namesake in De Chelly, not only in the coat of whitewash applied to the front of the main room, but in having a subordinate room to the left, over which the wash extends, and in the character of the site it occupies. The principal part of the structure was built in a cave, 18 or 20 feet from the ground, across the front of which walls extended as in the other Casa Blanca, and, like that ruin, there are also some ruins at the foot of the cliff, on the flat. Figure 53 is a ground plan. The resemblance to the other Casa Blanca, however, goes no further. The ruin here illustrated represents a very small settlement, hardly more than half a dozen rooms in all, and there is no trace of a circular kiva, or other evidence of permanent habitation. It is possible that the space between the edge of the floor of the cave above and the whitened house back of it was occupied by some sort of structure, but no evidence now remains which would warrant such a hypothesis, except that the door of the white house is now about 4 feet above the ground. The cave is only 40 feet long and a little over 10 feet deep, and there is not room on the floor for more than three or four rooms, in addition to those shown on the plan. The room on the right still preserves its roof intact, showing the typical pueblo roof construction. It has a well-preserved doorway, and three other openings may be seen in the main room.
Fig. 53—Ground plan of a ruin in Tseonitsosi canyon.
Apparently some effort at ornamentation was made here. The whitewash was not applied to the fronts of the two back rooms so as to cover
all of them, but in a broad belt, leaving the natural yellowish-gray color of the plastering in a narrow band above and a broad band below it. Moreover, the principal opening of the larger room was specially treated; in the application of the whitewash a narrow border or frame of the natural color was left surrounding it. The attempt to apply decoration not utilitarian in character is rare among the ruins here. It implies either a late period in the occupancy of this region, or an occupancy of the site by a people who had practiced this method of house-building longer or under more favorable conditions than the others.