| Fig. 19. A Tusayan wood rack. |
Formerly on the approach of cold weather, and to some extent the custom still exists, people withdrew from the upper stories to the kikoli rooms, where they huddled together to keep warm. Economy in the consumption of fuel also prompted this expedient; but these ground-floor rooms forming the first terrace, as a rule having no external doorways, and entered from without by means of a roof hatchway provided with a ladder, are ordinarily used only for purposes of storage. Even their roofs are largely utilized for the temporary storage of many household articles, and in the autumn, after the harvests have been gathered, the terraces and copings are often covered with drying peaches, and the peculiar long strips into which pumpkins and squashes have been cut to facilitate their desiccation for winter use. Among other things the household supply of wood is sometimes piled up at one end of this terrace, but more commonly the natives have so many other uses for this space that the sticks of fuel are piled up on a rude projecting skeleton of poles, supported on one side by two upright forked sticks set into the ground, and on the other resting upon the stone coping of the wall, as illustrated in Fig. 19. At other times poles are laid across a re-entering angle of a house and used as a wood rack, without any support from the ground. At the autumn season not only is the available space of the first terrace fully utilized, but every projecting beam or stick is covered with strings of drying meat or squashes, and many long poles are extended between convenient points to do temporary duty as additional drying racks. There was in all cases at least one fireplace on the inside in the upper stories, but the cooking was done on the terraces, usually at the end of the first or kikoli roof. This is still a general custom, and the end of the first terrace is usually walled up and roofed, and is called tupubi. Tuma is the name of the flat baking-stone used in the houses, but the flat stone used for baking at the kisi in the field is called tupubi.
Kikoli is the name of the ground story of the house, which has no opening in the outer wall.
The term for the terraced roofs is ihpobi, and is applied to all of them; but the tupatca ihpobi, or third terrace, is the place of general resort, and is regarded as a common loitering place, no one claiming distinct ownership. This is suggestive of an early communal dwelling, but nothing definite can now be ascertained on this point. In this connection it may also be noted that the eldest sister’s house is regarded as their home by her younger brothers and her nieces and nephews.
Aside from the tupubi, there are numerous small rooms especially constructed for baking the thin, paper-like bread called piki. These are usually not more than from 5 to 7 feet high, with interior dimensions not larger than 7 feet by 10, and they are called tumcokobi, the place of the flat stone, tuma being the name of the stone itself, and tcok describing its flat position. Many of the ground-floor rooms in the dwelling houses are also devoted to this use.
The terms above are those more commonly used in referring to the houses and their leading features. A more exhaustive vocabulary of architectural terms, comprising those especially applied to the various constructional features of the kivas or ceremonial rooms, and to the “kisis,” or temporary brush shelters for field use, will be found near the end of this paper.
The only trace of a traditional village plan, or arrangement of contiguous houses, is found in a meager mention in some of the traditions, that rows of houses were built to inclose the kiva, and to form an appropriate place for the public dances and processions of masked dancers. No definite ground plan, however, is ascribed to these traditional court-inclosing houses, although at one period in the evolution of this defensive type of architecture they must have partaken somewhat of the symmetrical grouping found on the Rio Chaco and elsewhere.
[ LOCALIZATION OF GENTES.]
In the older and more symmetrical examples there was doubtless some effort to distribute the various gentes, or at least the phratries, in definite quarters of the village, as stated traditionally. At the present day, however, there is but little trace of such localization. In the case of Oraibi, the largest of the Tusayan villages, Mr. Stephen has with great care and patience ascertained the distribution of the various gentes in the village, as recorded on the accompanying skeleton plan ([Pl. XXXVII]). An examination of the diagram in connection with the appended list of the families occupying Oraibi will at once show that, however clearly defined may have been the quarters of various gentes in the traditional village, the greatest confusion prevails at the present time. The families numerically most important, such as the Reed, Coyote, Lizard, and Badger, are represented in all of the larger house clusters.