[ FURNITURE.]
The pueblo Indian has little household furniture, in the sense in which the term is commonly employed; but his home contains certain features which are more or less closely embodied in the house construction and which answers the purpose. The suspended pole that serves as a clothes rack for ordinary wearing apparel, extra blankets, robes, etc., has already been described in treating of interiors. Religious costumes and ceremonial paraphernalia are more carefully provided for, and are stored away in some hidden corner of the dark storerooms.
The small wall niches, which are formed by closing a window with a thin filling-in wall, and which answer the purpose of cupboards or receptacles for many of the smaller household articles, have also been described and illustrated in connection with the Zuñi interior ([Pl. LXXXVI]).
In many houses, both in Tusayan and in Cibola, shelves are constructed for the more convenient storage of food, etc. These are often constructed in a very primitive manner, particularly in the former province. An unusually frail example may be seen in [Fig. 67], in connection with a fireplace. Fig. 101, showing a series of mealing stones in a Tusayan house, also illustrates a rude shelf in the corner of the room, supported at one end by an upright stone slab and at the other by a projecting wooden peg. Shelves made of sawed boards are occasionally seen, but as a rule such boards are considered too valuable to be used in this manner. A more common arrangement, particularly in Tusayan, is a combination of three or four slender poles placed side by side, 2 or 3 inches apart, forming a rude shelf, upon which trays of food are kept.
Fig. 101. Arrangement of mealing stones in a Tusayan house.
| Fig. 102. A Tusayan grain bin. |
Another device for the storage of food, occasionally seen in the pueblo house, is a pocket or bin built into the corner of a room. Fig. 101, illustrating the plan of a Tusayan house, indicates the position of one of these cupboard-like inclosures. A sketch of this specimen is shown in Fig. 102. This bin, used for the storage of beans, grain, and the like, is formed by cutting off a corner of the room by setting two stone slabs into the floor, and it is covered with the mud plastering which extends over the neighboring walls.
A curious modification of this device was seen in one of the inner rooms in Zuñi, in the house of José Pié. A large earthen jar, apparently an ordinary water vessel, was built into a projecting masonry bench near the corner of the room in such a manner that its rim projected less than half an inch above its surface. This jar was used for the same purpose as the Tusayan corner bin.