Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park

by Jesse Walter Fewkes

There are both doors and windows in the secular houses of Spruce-tree House, although the two rarely exist together. The windows, most of which are small square peep-holes or round orifices, look obliquely downward, as if their purpose was rather for outlook than for air, the latter being admitted as a rule through the doorway. (Pls. 10, 11.)

The two types of doorways differ more in shape than in any other feature. These types may be called the rectangular and the T-shaped form. Both are found at a high level, but it can not be discovered how they could have been entered without ladders or notched logs. Although these modes of entrance were apparently often used it is remarkable that no traces of the logs have yet been found in the extensive excavations at Spruce-tree House. The T-shaped doorways are often filled in at the lower or narrow part, sometimes with stones rudely placed, oftentimes with good masonry, by which a T-shaped door is converted into one of square type. Doorways of both types are often completely filled in, leaving only their outlines on the sides of the wall.

Floors and Roofs

The floors of the rooms are all smoothly plastered and, although purposely broken through in places by those in search of specimens, are otherwise in fairly good condition. In one of the rooms at the left of the main court is a small round hole at the bottom of a concave depression like a fireplace, the use of which is not known. Many of the floors sound hollow when struck, but this fact is not an indication of the presence of cavities below. In tiers of rooms that rise above the first story the roof of one room forms the floor of the room above it. Wherever roofs still remain they are found to be well constructed ([pl. 9]) and to resemble those of the old Hopi houses. In Spruce-tree House the roofs are supported by timbers laid from one wall to another; these in turn support crossbeams on which were placed layers of cedar bark covered with a thick coating of mud. In several roofs hatchways are still to be seen, but in most cases entrances are at the sides. One second-story room has a fireplace constructed like those on the ground floor or on the roof. Several fireplaces were found on the roofs of buildings one story high.

The largest slabs of stone used in the construction of the rooms of Spruce-tree House were generally made into lintels and thresholds. The latter surfaces were often worn smooth by those crawling through the opening and in some cases they show grooves for the insertion of the door slabs. Although the sides of the door are often upright slabs of stone these may be replaced by boards set in adobe plaster. Similar split boards often form lintels.

The door was apparently a flat stone set in an adobe casing on the inside of the frame where it was held in position by a stick. Each end of this stick was inserted into an eyelet made of bent osiers firmly set in the wall. Many of these broken eyelets can still be seen in the doorways and one or two are still entire. A slab of stone closing one of the doorways is still in place.

KIVAS

There are eight circular subterranean rooms identified as ceremonial rooms, or kivas, in Spruce-tree House (pls. 12, 13). Beginning on the north these kivas are designated by letters A-H. When excavation began small depressions full of fallen stones, with here and there a stone buttress projecting out of the débris, were the only indications of the sites of these important chambers. The walls of kiva H were the most dilapidated and the most obscured of all, the central portion of the front wall of rooms 62 and 63 having fallen into this chamber; added to the débris were the high walls of the round room, no. 69. Kiva G is the best-preserved kiva and kiva A the most exceptional in construction. Kiva B, never seen by previous investigators, was in poor condition, its walls being almost completely broken down. Part of the wall of kiva A is double ([pl. 13]), indicating a circular room built inside another room the shape of which inclines to oval, the former utilizing a portion of the wall of the latter. This kiva is also exceptional in being surrounded on three sides by rooms, the fourth side being the wall of the cavern. From several considerations the author regards this as the oldest kiva in Spruce-tree House.

The typical structure of a Spruce-tree House kiva is as follows: Its form is circular or oval; the site is subterranean, the roof being level with the floor of the surrounding plaza. (Pls. 13-15.) Two walls, an outer and an inner, inclose the room, the latter forming the lower part. Upon the top of this lower wall rest six pedestals, which support the roof beams; the outer wall braces these pedestals on one side. The spaces between these pedestals form recesses in which the floors extend a few feet above the floor of the room.