wide, and the ends of the curved walls terminate in smoothly finished surfaces. In front of it there are remains of two walls, about a foot apart, and so arranged as to form an apparent passageway into the interior of the kiva. These seem to be a kind of platform, like that just described, but close inspection shows the walls, which can be traced to within 6 inches of the inner wall of the kiva. This also may be the remains of a chimney-like structure. There are other points in the canyon where the same feature occurs, but in none of them is the evidence of an opening or doorway more definite than in the examples described.
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Fig. 71—Plan of part of a kiva in ruin No. 10. |
The masonry of the kivas is always as good as that of any other structure on the site, and generally much better. The walls are usually massive; sometimes they are 3 feet thick in the upper part and 4 feet in the lower portion, where the bench occurs. In a few cases the kiva has an upper or second story, but when this occurs no attempt is made to preserve the circular form, and the upper rooms are really rectangular with much rounded corners. [Plate XLIX] shows a second-story kiva wall in Mummy Cave ruin, and plate LXIII one in ruin No. [10] in De Chelly. The latter occurs over the principal kiva, and the walls which are still standing on the north and west sides are approximately straight, but the corners are much rounded. Figure 71 is a detailed plan of part of the kiva, showing the arrangement of the upper walls. The kiva walls are about 18 inches thick. On the north side the upper wall is supported by a heavy beam, part of which is still in place. Under the north-east corner of the upper room there is a little triangular space formed by a short connecting wall, shown on the plan. This is really a flying wall, covering only the upper portion of the space, and its purpose is not clear, as the opening left is not large enough to permit the passage of a person, and was available only from the second story.
Plate LXIII. Kiva in Ruin No. 10, Showing Second-Story Walls
Apparently the greatest care was bestowed on the construction and finish of the kivas. The exterior of the circular wall is often rough and unfinished, but this is probably because the whole structure was generally inclosed within rectangular walls. The interior was plastered, often with a number of coats. The southern kiva in ruin No. [10] shows a number of these on its interior surface, applied one after another, and now forming a plastering nearly three-quarters of an inch thick. In its section 18 distinct coats can be counted, separated one from the other by a thin film of smoke-blackened surface. The kiva in ruin No. [16] has 4 or 5 coats, that in ruin No. [31] shows at least 8. In the last example the last coat was not decorated, but some of the underlying ones were.
Kivas are used, principally in the autumn and winter, when the farming season is over and the ceremonies and dances take place. It is probable, therefore, that each coat of plaster means at least a year in the history of the kiva, which would indicate that some of the sites were occupied about twenty years. But Mr Frank H. Cushing has observed in Zuñi a ceremony, part of which is the refinishing of the kiva interior, and this occurs only once in four years. This would give a maximum occupancy of about eighty years to some of the kivas; the ruins as a whole would hardly justify an hypothesis of a longer occupancy than this. In Tusayan the interior of the kiva is plastered by the women once every year at the feast of Powamu (the fructifying moon).
The kivas are seldom true circles, being usually elongated one way or another. Some instances occur which are rectangular, such as the room shown in [figure 19], which was apparently a kiva. Nordenskiöld[19] illustrates an example which appears to have been oval by design, differing in this respect from anything found in De Chelly. Most of the kivas have an interior bench, about a foot wide and 2 feet above the floor. This bench is sometimes continuous around the whole interior, sometimes extends only partly around. Wherever the chimney-like structure is attached to a kiva the bench is omitted or broken at that point. The kiva wall on the floor level is always continuous except before the chimney-like feature. The most elaborate system of benches and buttresses seen in the canyon occurs in the principal kiva of the Mummy Cave ruin. This is shown in the ground plan, [figure 16], and also in [figures 82] and [83]. In the ruins of the Mancos, Nordenskiöld found kivas in which this feature is carried much further. He illustrates[20] an example with a complete bench regularly divided into six equal parts by an equal number of buttresses or pillars (properly pilasters) extending out flush with the front of the bench. This is said