GROUND PLAN
OF THE
BETATA KIN
NAVAHO IND·RES·ARIZ·
BY
W·B·DOUGLASS
U·S·EXAMINER OF SURVEYS
·GENERAL LAND OFF·
One of the largest clusters of rooms in this cliff-house (Betatakin) stands on a huge rock foundation, the vertical face of which is continuous with the wall of masonry of the front building of the cluster. (Pl. [11].) The rear wall of the front room is formed by the vertical face of the cliff. About half of the roof of this room has gone, but several patches still remain even in the broken section. The rooms of the higher tier are set against an upright wall. The doorway is on one side. The shelf of rock on which this room stands is level with the roof of the first room and the cave wall forms its rear. This room was probably a ceremonial chamber, having a fire-hole in the floor, between which and the doorway is a low wall of masonry corresponding to the deflector, or altar, in Mesa Verde ruins.[31] The part of the floor on which one steps in entering this room is raised slightly above the remainder, serving to connect the base of the deflector with the doorsill. The deflector and fire-hole are practically duplicates of features common to several Cliff Palace kivas. At Betatakin, however, the ceremonial room is above ground, not subterranean, and is entered from the side instead of from the top.
A two-story room stands on the rock one tier higher than the ceremonial room just mentioned, its foundation being at the level of the roof of the ceremonial room, as shown in the illustration. The front wall of this room is more or less broken down, but on one side, where projecting rafters are found in place, the masonry, otherwise unbroken, is pierced by a small window. This room has also a door on the side. Several well-preserved rooms extend along a ledge of rock on the same level as the roofs of these buildings, forming another tier above the ceremonial room. One of these has a fine roof; ends of rafters extend from the walls.
Beyond the ceremonial room, on the side where the ruin is most dilapidated, may be noted the same arrangement of the rooms in tiers or terraces, brought about by the varying height of their foundations. Several walls in these rooms are in good condition, but the fronts of many are broken down. Here are found rows of sticks or supports projecting from the débris. The walls are almost invariably of stone; those supported by sticks are usually connecting walls. The roofs of some of these rooms are entire, but many are broken, although their rafters still remain in place.
The whole length of Betatakin is not far from 600 feet, following the foundations from one end to the other. There are not far from 100 rooms visible, and evidences of others covered with débris. The larger of the two rooms identified as ceremonial rooms on account of their deflectors, measures 10 by 7 feet and is about 5 feet high; the smaller is about 7 feet square. There are no vertical ventilators as in circular kivas, the smoke evidently finding egress through a small hole in the roof. The floor of one of these ceremonial rooms was cut in the solid rock.
As above mentioned, there are no circular rooms or towers in Betatakin, although one room has a rounded corner. Traces of the repair of doors and windows are evident, but none of these apertures are T-shaped.
One of the interesting features in Betatakin and several other ruins in this region consists in rows of eyelets cut in the rocky side of the cliff evidently for the attachment of some long object.
A cluster of small rooms isolated from those above described are shown in plate [9]; these give a good idea of the general type of architecture of these buildings and of the modifications or adaptations due to the sites on which they are erected and the vertical cliffs against which they are built. Three rooms set into the angle formed by two vertical cliff faces at right angles to each other illustrate how the cliff serves for rear walls and how the buildings are attached to it for support. The roofs of these rooms are entire and their rafters project beyond the upright walls. The doors and windows are, comparatively speaking, small and rectangular in form. Fragments of walls projecting out of the ground indicate the existence of many rooms covered with débris. These are especially numerous at the end of the ruin to which the trail leads, but as most of them are buried an adequate idea of their arrangement can not be gained without systematic excavation.