Plate XXXIII. The chief kiva of Shupaulovi.
As in other villages of this group, the desire to adhere to the subterranean form of ceremonial chamber outweighed the inducement to place it within the village, or, in the case of the second kiva, even of placing it on the same level as the houses, which are 30 feet above it with an abrupt trail between them. It is curious and instructive to see a room, the use of which is so intimately connected with the inner life of the village, placed in such a comparatively remote and inaccessible position through an intensely conservative adherence to ancient practice requiring this chamber to be depressed.
The general view of the village given in [Pl. XXXI] strikingly illustrates the blending of the rectangular forms of the architecture with the angular and sharply defined fractures of the surrounding rock. This close correspondence in form between the architecture and its immediate surroundings is greatly heightened by the similarity in color. Mr. Stephen has called attention to a similar effect on the western side of Walpi and its adjacent mesa edge, which he thought indicates a distinct effort at concealment on the part of the builders, by blending the architecture with the surroundings. This similarity of effect is often accidental, and due to the fact that the materials of the houses and of the mesas on which they are built are identical. Even in the case of Walpi, cited by Mr. Stephen, where the buildings come to the very mesa edge, and in their vertical lines appear to carry out the effect of the vertical fissures in the upper benches of sandstone, there was no intentional concealment. It is more likely that, through the necessity of building close to the limits of the crowded sites, a certain degree of correspondence was unintentionally produced between the jogs and angles of the houses and those of the mesa edge.
Such correspondence with the surroundings, which forms a striking feature of many primitive types of construction where intention of concealment had no part, is doubtless mainly due to the use of the most available material, although the expression of a type of construction that has prevailed for ages in one locality would perhaps be somewhat influenced by constantly recurring forms in its environment. In the system of building under consideration, such influence would, however, be a very minute fraction in the sum of factors producing the type and could never account for such examples of special and detailed correspondence as the cases cited, nor could it have any weight in developing a rectangular type of architecture.
In the development of primitive arts the advances are slow and laborious, and are produced by adding small increments to current knowledge. So vague and undefined an influence as that exerted by the larger forms of surrounding nature are seldom recognized and acknowledged by the artisan; on the contrary, experiments, resulting in improvement, are largely prompted by practical requirements. Particularly is this the case in the art of house-building.
Plate XXXV. View of Shumopavi.