Ground Plan—Pueblo Bonito.
THE PUEBLO BONITO.
The ground plan of the Chaco structures shows three tiers—but in one case at least four tiers—of apartments built round three sides of a courtyard, which is generally rectangular, in some cases has curved corners, and in one building—the Peñasco Blanco—approximates to the form of a circle. The fourth side of the court is in some ruins open, and in others enclosed by a wall extending in a curve from one extremity of the building to the other. The following cuts show the ground plans of two of the ruins, the Pueblo Hungo Pavie, 'crooked nose,' and Pueblo Bonito. The circumference of five of these buildings is respectively eight hundred and seventy-two, seven hundred, seventeen hundred, thirteen hundred, and thirteen hundred feet; the number of rooms still traceable on the ground floor of the same buildings is seventy-two, ninety-nine, one hundred and twelve, one hundred and twenty-four, and one hundred and thirty-nine. These apartments are from five feet square to eight by fourteen feet. A room in the Pueblo Chettro Kettle was seven and a half by fourteen feet, and ten feet high. The walls were plastered with a red mud, and several square or rectangular niches of unknown use were noticed. The supporting beams of the ceiling were two in number, and the transverse poles were tied at their ends with some wooden fibre, and covered with a kind of cedar lathing. Ropes hung from the timbers. A room in the Pueblo Bonito is shown in the cut.
Interior of Room—Pueblo Bonito.
This room is unplastered, and the sides are constructed in the same style as the outer walls. The transverse poles are very small, about an inch in diameter, laid close together, very regular, and resemble barked willow. It was another room in this ruin which had the smooth boards in connection with its ceiling.[XI-50]
The doors by which the rooms communicate with each other and with the courtyard are very small, many of them not exceeding two and a half feet square. There are no doors whatever in the outer walls, and no windows except in the upper stories. The larger size of the windows and of the inner doors indicate that the rooms of the upper stories were larger than below. In some cases the walls corresponding to the second or third stories had no windows. In one case lower story windows were found walled up. The tops, or lintels, of the doors and windows were in some cases stone slabs, in others small timbers bound together with withes, and in a few they are reported to have been formed by overlapping stones very much like the Yucatan arch; a specimen is shown in the cut.