Many of the older pueblos of both groups appear to have belonged to the valley types—villages of considerable size, located in open plains or on the slopes of low-lying foothills. A comparison of the plans in Chapters II and III will illustrate these differences. In Tusayan the necessity of defense has driven the builders to inaccessible sites, so that now all the occupied villages of the province are found on mesa summits. The inhabitants of the valley pueblos of Cibola, although compelled at one time to build their houses upon the almost inaccessible summit of Tâaaiyalana mesa, occupied this site only temporarily, and soon established a large valley pueblo, the size and large population of which afforded that defensive efficiency which the Tusayan obtained only by building on mesa promontories. This has resulted in some adherence on the part of the Tusayan to the village plans of their ancestors, while at Zuni the great house clusters, forming the largest pueblo occupied in modern times, show a wide departure from the primitive types. In both provinces the architecture is distinguished from that of other portions of the pueblo region by greater irregularity of plan and by less skillfully executed constructional details; each group, however, happens to contain a notable exception to this general carelessness.
In Cibola the pueblo of Kin-tiel, built with a continuous defensive outer wall, occupies architecturally a somewhat anomalous position, notwithstanding its traditional connection with the group, and the Fire House occupies much the same relation in reference to Tusayan. The latter, however, does not break in upon the unity of the group, since the Tusayan, to a much greater extent than the Zuñi, are made up of remnants of various bands of builders. In Cibola, however, some of the Indians state that their ancestors, before reaching Zuñi, built a number of pueblos, whose ruins are distinguished from those illustrated in the present paper by the presence of circular kivas, this form of ceremonial room being, apparently, wholly absent from the Cibolan pueblos here discussed.
The people of Cibola and of Tusayan belong to distinct linguistic stocks, but their arts are very closely related, the differences being no greater than would result from the slightly different conditions that have operated within the last few generations. Zuñi, perhaps, came more directly under early Spanish influence than Tusayan.
Churches were established, as has been seen, in both provinces, but it is doubtful whether their presence produced any lasting impression on the people. In Tusayan the sway of the Spaniards was very brief. At some of the pueblos the churches seem to have been built outside of the village proper where ample space was available within the pueblo; but such an encroachment on the original inclosed courts seems never to have been attempted. Zuñi is an apparent exception; but all the house clusters east of the church have probably been built later than the church itself, the church court of the present village being a much larger area than would be reserved for the usual pueblo court. These early churches were, as a rule, built of adobe, even when occurring in stone pueblos. The only exception noticed is at Ketchipauan, where it was built of the characteristic Indian smoothly chinked masonry. The Spaniards usually intruded their own construction, even to the composition of the bricks, which are nearly always made of straw adobe.
At Tusayan there is no evidence that a church or mission house ever formed part of the villages on the mesa summits. Their plans are complete in themselves, and probably represent closely the first pueblos built on these sites. These summits have been extensively occupied only in comparatively recent times, although one or more small clusters may have been built here at an early date as outlooks over the fields in the valleys below.
It is to be noted that some of the ruins connected traditionally and historically with Tusayan and Cibola differ in no particular from stone pueblos widely scattered over the southwestern plateaus which have been from time to time invested with a halo of romantic antiquity, and regarded as remarkable achievements in civilization by a vanished but once powerful race. These deserted stone houses, occurring in the midst of desert solitudes, appealed strongly to the imaginations of early explorers, and their stimulated fancy connected the remains with “Aztecs” and other mysterious peoples. That this early implanted bias has caused the invention of many ingenious theories concerning the origin and disappearance of the builders of the ancient pueblos, is amply attested in the conclusions reached by many of the writers on this subject.
In connection with the architectural examination of some of these remains many traditions have been obtained from the present tribes, clearly indicating that some of the village ruins, and even cliff dwellings, have been built and occupied by ancestors of the present Pueblo Indians, sometimes at a date well within the historic period.
The migrations of the Tusayan clans, as described in the legends collected by Mr. Stephen, were slow and tedious. While they pursued their wanderings and awaited the favorable omens of the gods they halted many times and planted. They speak traditionally of stopping at certain places on their routes during a certain number of “plantings,” always building the characteristic stone pueblos and then again taking up the march.
When these Indians are questioned as to whence they came, their replies are various and conflicting; but this is due to the fact that the members of one clan came, after a long series of wanderings, from the north, for instance, while those of other gentes may have come last from the east. The tribe to-day seems to be made up of a collection or a confederacy of many enfeebled remnants of independent phratries and groups once more numerous and powerful. Some clans traditionally referred to as having been important are now represented by few survivors, and bid fair soon to become extinct. So the members of each phratry have their own store of traditions, relating to the wanderings of their own ancestors, which differ from those of other clans, and refer to villages successively built and occupied by them. In the case of others of the pueblos, the occupation of cliff dwellings and cave lodges is known to have occurred within historic times.
Both architectural and traditional evidence are in accord in establishing a continuity of descent from the ancient Pueblos to those of the present day. Many of the communities are now made up of the more or less scattered but interrelated remnants of gentes which in former times occupied villages, the remains of which are to-day looked upon as the early homes of “Aztec colonies,” etc.