The masonry of the Navaho Monument ruins is crude as compared with that found in the ruins of the Mesa Verde National Park, and walls made of adobe supported by upright sticks are more numerous. The character of the masonry may be due in part to the slab-like character of the building stones, and possibly to their greater hardness. The relative predominance of adobe walls supported by upright sticks was fostered by the ease with which they could be constructed and the quantity of clay available for building purposes. Comparison of the masonry of ruins in the Navaho Monument with that of the Black Falls region shows a resemblance much greater than that existing between either group and the cliff-houses of the Mesa Verde region.
There is no architectural feature in Southwestern ruins more distinctive than the ceremonial rooms, or kivas, but as these have never been recognized throughout a large area of Arizona, it is important to determine the character of the ceremonial rooms of the Navaho Monument ruins and to compare them with kivas at present used by the Hopi.
While as a rule there is great similarity in secular rooms in different culture areas of the Southwest, the more archaic ceremonial rooms of these regions vary considerably. The rooms ordinarily called kivas are of two distinct types, circular and rectangular. There are two kinds of circular kivas,[38] one having pilasters and banquettes to support the roof, the other without pilasters, apparently roofless, but surrounded by high walls as if for the purpose of obscuring the view from neighboring plazas. The circular kivas commonly do not form a part of the house mass, being separated some distance from the secular rooms. From all that can be learned it appears that the round kiva is an ancient type, its position in the rear of the cave in such cliff-dwellings as Spruce-tree House and Cliff Palace indicating that this form is as old as the building itself. The circular type, with pilasters, is confined wholly to the eastern region, having been reported from the Mesa Verde, the San Juan and many of its tributaries, Chaco canyon, and certain ruins west of the Rio Grande. Circular kivas somewhat modified are found also in many of the Rio Grande pueblos, where they are still in use. A subtype of circular kivas without pilasters but provided each with one large banquette is the common form of circular ceremonial room in the Navaho National Monument and the Canyon de Chelly. The modern representative of this subtype is the Snake kiva of the Hopi, which has become rectangular, the large banquette (tuwibi, pl. [14]) being modified into the “spectators,” or elevated surface of the floor.
The corresponding ceremonial rooms at Zuñi and in the prehistoric Hopi pueblos are rectangular in form and of simpler architecture. Similarly shaped ceremonial rooms, not subterranean, are still in use in modern Hopi pueblos. As a good example of this archaic form of ceremonial room at Walpi may be mentioned that in which the Flute altar is erected and in which the Flute secret rites are performed.[39] This ancestral room of the clan is a rectangular chamber forming part of the second floor, and is entered from one side. The Flute clans came from a pueblo, now a ruin, in the north, but after union with the Ala, who lived at Tokónabi, they settled at the Snake pueblo, Walpi. So it may be supposed that their ancestors also had no special kiva, but celebrated their secret rites in an ordinary house.
The fraternity of Sun priests likewise erect their altar and perform their secret ceremonies in a room, not in a kiva; so do the Kalektaka, or warriors. None of these rooms is commonly regarded or enumerated as a kiva, but such chambers are believed to be the direct representatives of the ceremonial rooms built above ground as a part of the house, in the manner more characteristic of ceremonial rooms in Arizona ruins.
The ruins in the Navaho Monument have ceremonial rooms allied on one side to the kivas of the San Juan region, and on the other to rooms in the Little Colorado ruins that may have been built for ceremonial use. The latter are constructed above ground, inclosed by other houses, and are rectangular in shape, with lateral doorways. Some of these rooms, as at Betatakin, contain each a fire screen and a fire-hole, as in a circular kiva, the ventilator being replaced by a lateral doorway. It is possible that when the Snake people inhabited their northern homes, before they came to Walpi, their ceremonial rooms were not built, as at present, partly underground, and placed at a distance from the secular houses. The ceremonial rooms of this clan and of immediate relatives when living at Tokónabi or in the Navaho Monument region may have resembled those of the Black Falls cluster of ruins.[40] Their subterranean position and separation from other rooms may be regarded as modifications due to foreign influences after the clan arrived at Walpi.[41]
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
BULLETIN 50 PLATE 15
a. FOOD BOWL