Indians of the Mesa Verde

by Don Watson

The initiation and the training take place in the kivas. Night after night, through the fall and winter, the great cave resounds with the chants of the priests as they perform the ceremonies or teach them to the newly initiated members. Much of the legendary material is in the form of endless songs and the men never tire of them. Hour after hour they sit around the kiva fires, eyes closed, chanting softly the musical prayers and legends. Often the chanting continues through the night: now that the season’s strenuous work is over the men are able to spend the nights with their ceremonies and rest in the daytime.

Most of the activities of a society take place in its kiva, which is a ceremonial room, work shop, club room and often, a sleeping chamber. During most of the year it serves as a club room for the men. When the time for a ceremony arrives it becomes a sacred, religious chamber. After the conclusion of the ceremony it is again a loafing place and work room. Women usually enter the kivas only on occasions when they take part in the ceremonies, or are invited in to witness them.

An unmarried boy, after being initiated, often sleeps in the kiva of his society. His mother’s house may be crowded with younger children so the warm, underground room is much more pleasant. Married men very often sleep in the kiva, too, but for different reasons. When a man marries, he goes to live with his wife in the midst of her clan relatives. Often he remains, in a sense, an outsider. While he prizes his family and his home, he prizes, also, his kiva sanctuary. When his house becomes too full of words, he can retire to the peace and quiet and good fellowship of this club room which protects him from family troubles.

A typical kiva is a circular, subterranean room, twelve to fourteen feet in diameter and seven or eight feet deep. Its walls are faced with stone to hold back the surrounding earth. At a height of about three feet from the floor the walls are stepped back so there is a ledge or shelf, at least a foot wide running entirely around the room. Resting on this ledge are six small masonry pillars, evenly spaced around the room, that support the roof. These pillars divide the space above the ledge into six recesses, the one to the south usually being deeper than the rest. The tops of the pillars are a couple of feet below the ground level and this space is built up with a cribbing of logs on which rests the roof of logs and adobe. The only door is a small hatchway in the center of the roof.

The kiva is entered by means of a ladder which rests on the floor and extends up through the small door. This door is also the smokehole for directly below it in the center of the kiva floor is a firepit. Fresh air is brought into the room through a small, vertical shaft back of the deep recess on the south side of the kiva. The top of the shaft is a small opening in the courtyard while the bottom opens into the kiva just above the floor. As the smoke and hot air rise through the doorway fresh air is drawn down the ventilator shaft. Between the ventilator opening and the firepit is a small masonry screen, or deflector, that keeps the fresh air from blowing across the fire.

On the other side of the firepit, opposite the deflector, is a small hole in the kiva floor, three or four inches in diameter and only slightly deeper. This small opening is of extreme importance to the priests. It is the sipapu, the symbolic entrance to the underworld. Many of the gods live in the Mother Earth and the prayers of the medicine men reach them through the small opening. The hole is merely a symbol. It represents the opening through which the Indians feel they themselves and all other living things emerged from the Earth Mother.

The people believe the Sun is their father and the Earth their mother. After the union of the two, the people and all other creatures first came into being in a dark cave in the center of the earth, the world of darkness. After a time they climbed up to another cave where there was a little light. This was the world of twilight. For a short time they lived in this twilight world, then they climbed to another cave with still more light, the world of dawn. Finally, they emerged through a small hole in the earth, Sipapu, and were in the present world. All other creatures emerged just as they did; all life came from the Mother Earth.

The little hole in the kiva floor is merely a symbolic sipapu, representing that original Sipapu through which the people emerged from the Mother Earth. It is a symbolic entrance to the spirit world below. During the ceremonies, offerings are placed in the hole or around it and the priests send their prayers through it to the gods who live in the underworld. And when a person dies, his spirit goes back through Sipapu to a pleasant afterworld within the Earth Mother.

When a ceremony is in progress, the kiva is sacred to the members of the society. Food is brought to them by the women and they eat and sleep in the kiva, leaving it only to perform ceremonial errands. Day and night they follow the sacred ritual, preparing their paraphernalia, recounting legends, chanting endless prayers, making offerings to the gods and performing the various ceremonial acts that are prescribed.

In some of the ceremonies the costumed priests emerge from the kiva and perform public dances or rituals. The villagers gather on the roofs surrounding the dance court and watch with serious reverence. They know these ceremonies are necessary if the delicate adjustment is to be maintained between the people and the mysterious powers which affect them.