[ FIREPLACES AND CHIMNEYS.]
The original fireplace of the ancient pueblo builders was probably the simple cooking pit transferred to a position within the dwelling room, and employed for the lighter cooking of the family as well as for warming the dwelling. It was placed in the center of the floor in order that the occupants of the house might conveniently gather around it. One of the first improvements made in this shallow indoor cooking pit must have consisted in surrounding it with a wall of sufficient height to protect the fire against drafts, as seen in the outdoor pits of Tusayan. In excavating a room in the ancient pueblo of Kin-tiel, a completely preserved fireplace, about a foot deep, and walled in with thin slabs of stone set on edge, was brought to light. The depression had been hollowed out of the solid rock.
This fireplace, together with the room in which it was found, is illustrated in [Pl. C] and Fig. 60. It is of rectangular form, but other examples have been found which are circular. Mr. W. H. Jackson describes a fireplace in a cliff dwelling in “Echo Cave” that consisted of a circular, basin-like depression 30 inches across and 10 inches deep. Rooms furnishing evidence that fires were made in the corners against the walls are found in many cliff dwellings; the smoke escaped overhead, and the blackened walls afford no trace of a chimney or flue of any kind.
Fig. 60. Ground plan of an excavated room in Kin-tiel.
The pueblo chimney is undoubtedly a post-Spanish feature, and the best forms in use at the present time are probably of very recent origin, though they are still associated with fireplaces that have departed little from the aboriginal form seen at Kin-tiel and elsewhere. It is interesting to note, in this connection, that the ceremony consecrating the house is performed in Tusayan before the chimney is added, suggesting that the latter feature did not form a part of the aboriginal dwelling.
In Cibola a few distinct forms of chimney are used at the present time, but in the more remote Tusayan the chimney seems to be still in the experimental stage. Numbers of awkward constructions, varying from the ordinary cooking pit to the more elaborate hooded structures, testify to the chaotic condition of the chimney-building art in the latter province.
Before the invention of a chimney hood, and while the primitive fireplace occupied a central position in the floor of the room, the smoke probably escaped through the door and window openings. Later a hole in the roof provided an exit, as in the kivas of to-day, where ceremonial use has perpetuated an arrangement long since superseded in dwelling-house construction. The comfort of a dwelling room provided with this feature is sufficiently attested by the popularity of the modern kivas as a resort for the men. The idea of a rude hood or flue to facilitate the egress of the smoke would not be suggested until the fireplace was transferred from the center of a room to a corner, and in the first adoption of this device the builders would rely upon the adjacent walls for the needed support of the constructional members. Practically all of the chimneys of Tusayan are placed in corners at the present time, though the Zuñi builders have developed sufficient skill to construct a rigid hood and flue in the center of a side wall, as may be seen in the view of a Zuñi interior, [Pl. LXXXVI].
Although the pueblo chimney owes its existence to foreign suggestion it has evidently reached its present form through a series of timid experiments, and the proper principles of its construction seem to have been but feebly apprehended by the native builders, particularly in Tusayan. The early form of hood, shown in [Fig. 66], was made by placing a short supporting pole across the corner of a room at a sufficient distance from the floor and upon it arranging sticks to form the frame work of a contracting hood or flue. The whole construction was finally covered with a thick coating of mud. This primitive wooden construction has probably been in use for a long time, although it was modified in special cases so as to extend across the entire width of narrow rooms to accommodate “piki” stones or other cumbersome cooking devices. It embodies the principle of roof construction that must have been employed in the primitive house from which the pueblo was developed, and practically constitutes a miniature conical roof suspended over the fireplace and depending upon the walls of the room for support. On account of the careful and economical use of fuel by these people the light and inflammable material of which the chimney is constructed does not involve the danger of combustion that would be expected. The perfect feasibility of such use of wood is well illustrated in some of the old log-cabin chimneys in the Southern States, where, however, the arrangement of the pieces is horizontal, not vertical. These latter curiously exemplify also the use of a miniature section of house construction to form a conduit for the smoke, placed at a sufficient height to admit of access to the fire.