Kwasa the cliff dweller

by Katharine Atherton Grimes

“Bah,” said Wiki, tasting it, “it is too warm to drink, now that the sun is on it. I would rather have gone to the spring.”

“Come, then,” cried Kwasa, jumping down from the wall. “If we go to the spring perhaps we may see something of the hunters. It is time they were returning, my grandmother says.”

Kwasa told the truth when he said it was a long way to the spring. For the great rock-built house, or rather cluster of houses, in whose inner court the boys had been playing, was placed three hundred feet from the bottom of a canyon in a huge cavern which Nature had left in the face of the precipitous cliff. Along the outer edge of the cavern, following the outline of the opening, was a high wall of masonry pierced with numerous openings that served as doors and windows. So exactly had the builders matched the color of the rocky cliff face, and so skilfully was the great structure placed in its lofty niche, that a traveler in the canyon below could hardly have told it was there at all.

This outer wall was in some places four stories high. Back of it the building was terraced down to the floor of the cave, each story projecting beyond the one above it so that its roof made a sort of porch for the upper rooms. Rude ladders were everywhere, leading from each story to the next, for the people who lived in this peculiar dwelling liked to go up and down from the outside. Each story was divided into many rooms, most of them rather small, but several near the center of the structure being of good size. In some of these were stone fireplaces for cooking, and one, larger than any of the others, was set apart for ceremonial use.

Back of the great house, or rather village, for it was the home of many families, was a long and narrow court running well back under the sheltering slope of the cavern roof. Here the children could play and the women could weave and grind and make pottery and mats in well-guarded safety, for back of them and overhead rose the mighty arch of the cavern, and between them and the cliff’s edge stood the solid sandstone structure.

Where the cave roof slanted down to meet the floor there were other rooms, built close in under the rock. These were storerooms where food was kept. In them were great piles of beans and corn, rolls of piki or paper bread which the women were forever baking over the fireplaces, and immense quantities of buffalo meat, dried and pounded fine and laid away between layers of tallow. In one of these rooms was kept the colored corn and beans used in the sacred rites which were held at certain times in the ceremonial hall, or in the queer, underground chamber in the center of the court.

Above the cavern the cliff rose sheer and unbroken for hundreds of feet, but below it the rocky wall fell more unevenly to the valley far below. The vivid brown and yellow and red of the upper expanse was varied only here and there by clumps of cedar or pinon or scrub oak, with scattering bunches of yucca and cactus between, but on the lower slope the vegetation was somewhat more dense. All had the same reddish-brown tinge, for it had been a long time since the rains of the last spring had washed away the wind-blown dust which whirled down in clouds from the bare and forbidding surfaces above.

Across the canyon rose another bluff, but this was unbroken from top to bottom by ledge or cavern. To the southwest the canyon swept away majestically, broadening in the distance to a stretch of comparatively level land through which, in the rainy season, a small river ran. At the head of the canyon, some distance to the northeast, was a large spring of sweet, cold water, which, supplemented by the reservoir at the back of the cavern, furnished an ample supply for the village.

Down the steep stairway leading from the village to the valley Kwasa and Wiki went quickly. A stranger would have had a hard time finding the half-hidden niches cut in the face of the cliff, but the boys, sure-footed as mountain goats, were soon in the valley, running eagerly toward the spring.

“Hush,” warned Kwasa, suddenly crouching behind a tuft of brown yucca.