Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines

by Lewis Henry Morgan

The first or basement story is filled up with the rubbish of the fallen walls, ceilings, and floors, in the second row of apartments named. In some cases they are full above the line of the original ceilings; in others nearly up to them. The main ceiling beams were of yellow cedar from eight to twelve inches in diameter, usually three and four in number, and were placed across the narrow way of the room. Stubs of these beams still remain in the walls parallel with the court. Just above the line of these beams in the other two walls were the ends of a row of poles about four inches in diameter, which passed transversely across the cedar beams Stubs of these poles, broken off short at the line of the walls, still remain in place. Upon these poles were originally thin pieces of split cedar limbs, and then the floor of adobe mortar, four or five inches thick. We thus get the position and height of the floor of the first and second stories, which were about nine feet six inches for the ground story, and nine feet for the second story.

The external wall of the main building has fallen the entire length of the structure. As these ruins are resorted to by the few settlers in the valley as a stone quarry to obtain stone for foundations to their houses and barns, and for stoning up their wells, the loose material is being gradually removed, and when the standing walls are more convenient to take they will be removed also. One farmer told me he thought that one quarter of the accessible material of this and the adjacent stone pueblo had already been removed. It is to be hoped that the number of these settlers inclined to Vandalism will not increase.

A part of the partition walls which connected the outside wall with the next parallel wall is still standing where the wall last named rises above the second story. They stand out for three or four feet like buttresses against the wall, and show that the masonry of the parallel and transverse walls was articulated, that the partition walls were continuous from front to rear, and that the walls of the several stories rested upon each other. All this is seen by a bare inspection of the walls as they now stand.

The masonry itself is the chief matter of interest in these structures. Every room in the main building was faced with stone on the four sides, having an adobe floor and a wooden ceiling. Each room had, as far as walls now remain to show, two doorways through the walls parallel with the court, and four openings about twelve inches square, two on the side of each doorway, near the ceiling. These openings were for light and ventilation. In a limited sense it may be said that the stones were dressed, and also that they were laid in courses, but, in the high and strict meaning of these terms, neither is true. The stones used were small and of different sizes. Sometimes they were nearly square, from six to eight inches on a side; sometimes a foot long by six inches wide. The latter is the size of the stones used at Uxmal and Chichen Itza, according to Norman. In some cases longer and thicker stones were used without any attempt to square the ends. In some instances thin pieces of stone were employed with parallel faces. In all cases the stone was a sandstone, now of a reddish brown color. It is the prevailing stone in the bluffs of the Animas River, and of all the rivers parallel with it running into the San Juan, as far as personal observation enabled me to judge. It is a soft rather than a hard stone, usually of a buff color when first quarried, and some of it has decayed in the using. The wasted and weatherworn appearance of some of these stones would otherwise indicate a very great age for the structure. With stone of the size used a good face can be formed by simple fracture, and a joint sufficiently close may be made by a few strokes with a stone maul. If finer work was aimed at, it must have been accomplished by rubbing the stones to a face. But this work is sufficiently explained by the former processes. In the row of apartments and stories named, both faces of each wall were of stone, so that all of the apartments were of stone on the inside. They were fair walls, both in masonry and workmanship, and creditable to the builders. There was an attempt to lay up these walls in courses of uniform thickness, but each course differing from the one above and below it. The attempt was only partially successful. They did not hesitate to break in upon the regularity of the courses. Some of the standing walls are now sprung; but most of them are straight, and fairly vertical, the adobe mortar being sound and the bond unbroken.

The Indian had a string from time immemorial. With it he could strike a circle, and lay out the four sides of a quadrangular structure with tolerable correctness. It is not too much to assume that with a string and sinker attached the Village Indian had the plumb-line, and could prove his wall as well as we can. At all events, the eye still proves the general correctness of their work.

The adobe mortar of the Pueblo Indians is something more than mud mortar, although far below a mortar of lime and sand. Adobe is a kind of finely pulverized clay with a bond of considerable strength by mechanical cohesion. In Southern Colorado, in Arizona, and New Mexico, there are immense tracts covered with what is called adobe soil. It varies somewhat in the degree of its excellence. The kind of which they make their pottery has the largest per cent of alumina, and its presence is indicated by the salt weed which grows in this particular soil. This kind also makes the best adobe mortar. The Indians use it freely in laying their walls, as freely as our masons use lime mortar; and although it never acquires the hardness of cement, it disintegrates slowly. The mortar in these walls is still sound, so that it requires some effort of strength to loosen a stone from the wall and remove it. But this adobe mortar is adapted only to the dry climate of Southern Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico, where the precipitation is less than five inches per annum. The rains and frosts of a northern climate would speedily destroy it. To the presence of this adobe soil, found in such abundance in the regions named, and to the sandstone of the bluffs, where masses are often found in fragments, we must attribute the great progress made by these Indians in house-building.

The exclusive presence of this adobe mortar in all New Mexican structures of the aboriginal period shows that the tribes of New Mexico were then ignorant of a mortar of lime and sand. And here a digression may be allowed to consider whether a cement of this grade was known to the aborigines. Theoretically, the use of a mortar composed of quick-lime and sand, which gives a cement chemically united, would not be expected of the Indian tribes either in North or South America. There is no sufficient proof that they ever produced a cement of this high grade. It requires a kiln, artificially constructed, and a concentrated heat to burn limestone into lime, supposing they had learned that lime could be thus obtained, and some knowledge of the properties of quick-lime before they reached the idea of a true cement. The Spanish writers generally speak of walls of lime and stone, thus implying a mortar of lime and sand. Thus, Bernal Diaz speaks of the great temple in the Pueblo of Mexico as surrounded "with double enclosures built of stone and lime."

[Footnote: The True History of the Conquest of Mexico, Keatinge's Translation, Salem ed., 1803, vol. i, p. 208.] Clavigero remarks that "the houses of lords and people of circumstances were built of stone and lime." [Footnote: History of Mexico, Cullen's Trans., Phila. ed., 1817, vol. ii, p. 232.]

Again, "the ignorant Mr. De Pauw denies that the Mexicans had either the knowledge or made use of lime; but it is evident from the testimony of all the historians of Mexico, by tribute rolls, and above all from the ancient buildings still remaining, that all these nations made the same use of lime as all the Europeans do." [Footnote: ib., vol. ii, p. 237.]

In like manner, Herrera, speaking of Zempoala, near Vera Cruz, remarks that the Spaniards, entering the town, found "the houses [were] built of lime and stone;" [Footnote: History of America, Stevens' Trans., London ed., 1725, vol ii, p. 266.] and again, speaking of the houses in Yucatan, he remarks that "at the place where the encounter happened, there were three houses built of lime and stone." [Footnote: ib., p. 112.]