Offshoots of the mountain or pueblo culture following down the San Juan River penetrated to Hopi and settled at Walpi, shortly after which they were joined by clans from Little Colorado bringing Gila culture, as is recounted in legends still existing. The mountain culture introduced the terraced form of building and the kiva free from the house masses. But this kiva has a rectangular form due either to the configuration of the mesa top or to influences from the south, where the sacred room is rectangular and enclosed by dwellings. In a case of Zuñi we have the plain type or southern contingent predominating, the original settlement at Zuñi having been made by clans from the far south, which were later joined and modified by those from the north. Here we have at the present day the sacred room of rectangular shape hidden away among the dwellings. This was a secondary condition probably brought about by the influence of Catholic missionaries, who forced the Zuñi to abandon their sacred room in the courts of the town, and resort to secrecy to perform the forbidden rites. Both Hopi and Zuñi show in their architecture the influence of two component stocks or peoples, a fact more strikingly brought out in their religious ceremonials.
The prehistoric center of pueblo culture origin is situated many miles distant from the area now inhabited by its survivals. When the Spanish travelers first came in touch with this unique condition of life, its center of origin was no longer inhabited. Legendary accounts still survive in the modern pueblos that they came from the north; our main source of information or proof of the truth of these legends is the character of architecture and pottery obtained from the northern ruins, aided by what may be gathered from the modified architecture of the inhabited pueblos, or from historical documents.
It is a universal characteristic of primitive men that the most enduring and best-constructed buildings are those devoted to worship. We find, for instance, throughout the Old World that the prehistoric structures of this kind which have survived as monuments of the past are temples, either in the form of rude monoliths or imposing buildings, the habitations of their builders having long since disappeared, as they were built of perishable material and their sites can now be detected only by low mounds.
Temples, however, were more lasting and work on them was cumulative; each generation improved on its predecessor, and as they were built of stone the additions of successive generations were permanent, and remained as an index of past civilization. The same is true among prehistoric pueblos of North America. They also erected dual buildings: one being a perishable habitation; the other the permanent religious building.
Let us consider the chronological evolution of these two types of architecture. In the very earliest condition the primitive people of the Southwest constructed a massive-walled building to serve for the performance of their rites and ceremonies. Each social group had its own sanctuary, which we now recognize as the kiva, commonly built in the form of towers scattered throughout the mountainous regions of Utah and Colorado. As is customary with similar religious edifices, we find these, as a rule, perched on the tops of high cliffs, not for outlooks, but for conspicuous buildings for refuge of the neighboring population. In ancient Greece we find the temples of Cecrops, the ancient deity of Athens, on an Acropolis, and towering above Corinth is the Acrocorinth. Towers almost identical with those of Colorado occur in different localities in Europe. We find them, for example, in Ireland, in Spain, in Sardinia, and in Corsica, where they have received a different name, but are always associated with the very earliest inhabitants of those localities. In Peru we find the problematical chulpas. The function of these towers in both the Old and the New World has been a bone of contention among archeologists. The best explanation that has been advanced for Old World towers is that they are defensive and religious structures; the towers of the New World may have had a similar use, as they are alike in form. In other words, we may suppose that they also are religious structures, but we can add in support of that theory evidence not available in Europe, for we find that, the form of the tower is identical with that of the sacred room or kiva, and that it has survived to the present time as a special chamber for worship.
Having then determined that we can regard the oldest form of pueblo building as a religious structure, let us pass to the probable steps in the evolution from this early condition into the highest development of that strictly American type of habitation. It is evident, if the tower be looked on as the sanctuary of the clan, that the existence of two or more clans united would necessitate the same number of towers, a condition which we find repeated in the areas under consideration. Granted that the first step in the evolution of the pueblo would be the union of the secular with the sacred room, this might be accomplished either by adding the tower to the group of dwellings, if the latter were situated in a cave, or by moving the habitations out of the cave and annexing them to the base of the tower. Both of these methods seem to have been adopted, resulting on the one hand in cliff-dwellings, and on the other in communal buildings in the open or on top of a plateau. Subsequent stages in the evolution of the pueblo consist in the enlargement because of the growth of the clan of the outlines of the dwelling clustered around the base of the tower until subsequently contiguous groups joined, making one village, composed of as many clans as there are architectural units. The sacred building lost its predominance in this enlargement, and the tower passed without morphological changes into the kiva. We can trace all these modifications in the canyons and plateaus of southwestern Colorado.
Sociological advance goes hand in hand with architectural complication. In the beginning the number of social units is indicated by the number of kivas; the next stage is the diminution in relative number of sacred rooms and other changes which appear in the relative size of the kivas. The several social units brought in such intimate contact naturally evolved a system of worship reflecting that union. This appears most clearly in the formation of a fraternity of priests to perform the ceremony resulting from consolidation, which leads to the abandonment of kivas rendered unnecessary, or to the fusion of several into one, and the enlargement of those remaining to accommodate the fraternity composed of men of several social units. This enlargement is shown at Far View House, a pueblo lately excavated in the Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. The total population of this pueblo was probably as large as that of Cliff Palace, but whereas in this cliff dwelling we find twenty-three sacred rooms, in Far View House there are but four, one of which (the central) is four times as large as any in Cliff Palace. It is easy to see why the central kiva in the pueblo is more centrally placed than the others, when we remember that it was probably the oldest, and was the first settled, and in subsequent growth of the village remained the predominant one of the group.
Following the lines of social evolution and architectural types considered in the preceding pages, we come now to a classification of buildings in the Southwest. Passing over the earliest expression of architecture, where a hut or dugout shows few peculiar features but practically is universal among a seminomadic people, we come to durable houses built of clay or stone. Even in these small buildings we recognize two types of rooms—circular and rectangular. We find two distinct types of village communities, one occupying the area extending from Utah to the inhabited pueblos on the Rio Grande. This group may be known in prehistoric culture by circular ruins and circular kivas. Here probably arose the original terraced form of building. The purest expression of its architecture occurs in cliff-dwellings like Cliff Palace and Spruce-tree House in the Mesa Verde National Park, but its extensions west and south are modified as the distance from the place of origin increases.
The second type of buildings in the Southwest arose in the Gila valley, and is best illustrated by Casa Grande in southern Arizona. From this nucleus extensions of architectural forms were carried northward and eastward to the pueblos now inhabited by Hopi and Zuñi Indians. A characteristic feature of this type is the massive-walled buildings surrounded by a rectangular wall or compound. The circular kiva and circular ruin do not exist in present forms of this type. Ruins in southern Arizona, belonging to this type, often have very much modified forms, especially as the type extended northward and came in contact with extensions of the pueblo culture. Architectural characters and other features of this type show marked affinities with the corresponding culture of prehistoric peoples of Mexico.
The mythology and ritual of the people in this area are more closely related to Mexican than to northern or pueblo culture. This may be illustrated by many examples, of which one instance may be taken. One of the most marked peculiarities of the prehistoric culture in this zone is the elaborate worship of a supernatural being called the Horned Serpent.[1] The Horned Serpent cult was introduced into Hopiland from the Gila and is associated with the sky-god, whose symbol is the sun. Evidences of the widespread influence of this cult in prehistoric times is shown by figures of this being found on pottery all the way from Hopi to the Mexican plateau. Among the Maya and Aztec, when Horned Snake worship was perhaps the most complicated anywhere in pre-Columbian America, it was, as it is at Hopi, intimately associated with sun-worship. The Horned and Plumed Serpent figures adorn many prehistoric buildings of Mexico, and occur in all the codices of the Maya. Here we have the symbol not originally regarded as serpents. Kukulcan, or Quetzalcoatl, were but beneficent beings who taught the ancients agriculture and other arts, but whose benign presence was banished through the machinations of a sorcerer. The striking similarities in the objective symbolism of the Plumed Serpent of Mexican mythology and the Hopi Horned Serpent have been shown elsewhere; the ceremonies in which his effigy is used in the Hopi ritual are practically connected with sun-worship, and were introduced from the south. Wherever the influence of the architectural type above considered is detected we find evidences of Horned Serpent cult.