Fig. 498.—A typical cliff-dwelling.
This condition of things would drive the people to seek security in the neighboring cliffs of fertile cañons, where not only might they build their dwelling places in the numerous rock-shelters, but they could also cultivate their crops in comparative safety along the limited tracts which these eyries overlooked. The narrow foothold afforded by many of these elevated cliff-shelves or shelters would force the fugitives to construct house over house; that is, build a second or upper story around the roof of the cavern. What more natural than that this upper room should take a name most descriptive of its situation—as that portion built around the cavern-shelter or ósh ten—or that, when the intervention of peace made return to the abandoned farms of the plains or a change of condition possible, the idea of the second story should be carried along and the name first applied to it survive, even to the present day? That the upper story took its name from the rock-shelter may be further illustrated. The word ósh ten comes from ó sho nan te, the condition of being dusky, dank, or mildewy; clearly descriptive of a cavern, but not of the most open, best lighted, and driest room in a Pueblo house.
To continue, we may see how the necessity for protection would drive the petty clans more and more to the cliffs, how the latter at every available point would ultimately come to be occupied, and thus how the "Cliff-dwelling" (see Fig. [498]), was confined to no one section but was as universal as the farm-house type of architecture itself, so widespread, in fact, that it has been heretofore regarded as the monument of a great, now extinct race of people!
COMMUNAL PUEBLOS DEVELOPED FROM CONGREGATION OF CLIFF-HOUSE TRIBES.
Fig. 499.—Typical terraced communal pueblo.
We may see, finally, how at last the cañons proved too limited and in other ways undesirable for occupation, the result of which was the confederation of the scattered cliff-dwelling clans, and the construction, first on the overhanging cliff-tops, then on mesas, and farther and farther away, of great, many-storied towns, any one of which was named, in consequence of the bringing together in it of many houses and clans, thlu él lon ne, from thlu a, many springing up, and él lon a, that which stands, or those which stand; in other words, "many built standing together." This cannot be regarded as referring to the simple fact that a village is necessarily composed of many houses standing together. The name for any other village than a communal pueblo is tí na kwïn ne, from tí na—many sitting around, and kwïn ne, place of. This term is applied by the Zuñis to all villages save their own and those of ourselves, which latter they regard as Pueblos, in their acceptation of the above native word.