Fig. 33. A Zuñi oven with pottery scales embedded in its surface.
The introduction of the use of adobe in Zuñi should probably be attributed to foreign influence, but the position of the village in the open plain at a distance of several miles from the nearest outcrop of suitable building stone naturally led the builders to use stone more sparingly when an available substitute was found close at hand. The thin slabs of stone, which had to be brought from a great distance, came to be used only for the more exposed portions of buildings, such as copings on walls and borders around roof openings. Still, the pueblo builders never attained to a full appreciation of the advantages and requirements of this medium as compared with stone. The adobe walls are built only as thick as is absolutely necessary, few of them being more than a foot in thickness. The walls are thus, in proportion, to height and weight, sustained, thinner than the crude brick construction of other peoples, and require protection and constant repairs to insure durability. As to thickness, they are evidently modeled directly after the walls of stone masonry, which had already, in both Tusayan and Cibola, been pushed to the limit of thinness. In fact, since the date of the survey of Zuñi, on which the published plan is based, the walls of several rooms over the court passageway in the house, illustrated in [Pl. LXXXII], have entirely fallen in, demonstrating the insufficiency of the thin walls to sustain the weight of several stories.
The climate of the pueblo region is not wholly suited to the employment of adobe construction, as it is there practiced. For several months in the year (the rainy season) scarcely a day passes without violent storms which play havoc with the earth-covered houses, necessitating constant vigilance and frequent repairs on the part of the occupants.
Though the practice of mud-coating all walls has in Cibola undoubtedly led to greater carelessness and a less rigid adherence to ancient methods of construction, the stone masonry may still be seen to retain some of the peculiarities that characterize ancient examples. Features of this class are still more apparent at Tusayan, and notwithstanding the rudeness of much of the modern stone masonry of this province, the fact that the builders are familiar with the superior methods of the ancient builders, is clearly shown in the masonry of the present villages.
Perhaps the most noteworthy characteristic of pueblo masonry, and one which is more or less present in both ancient and modern examples, is the use of small chinking stones for bringing the masonry to an even face after the larger stones forming the body of the wall have been laid in place. This method of construction has, in the case of some of the best built ancient pueblos, such as those on the Chaco in New Mexico, resulted in the production of marvelously finished stone walls, in which the mosaic-like bits are so closely laid as to show none but the finest joints on the face of the wall with but little trace of mortar. The chinking wedges necessarily varied greatly in dimensions to suit the sizes of the interstices between the larger stones of the wall. The use of stone in this manner no doubt suggested the banded walls that form so striking a feature in some of the Chaco houses. This arrangement was likely to be brought about by the occurrence in the cliffs of seams of stone of two degrees of thickness, suggesting to the builders the use of stones of similar thickness in continuous bands. The ornamental effect of this device was originally an accidental result of adopting the most convenient method of using the material at hand. Though the masonry of the modern pueblos does not afford examples of distinct bands, the introduction of the small chinking spalls often follows horizontal lines of considerable length. Even in mud-plastered Zuñi, many outcrops of these thin, tabular wedges protrude from the partly eroded mudcoating of a wall and indicate the presence of this kind of stone masonry. An example is illustrated in Fig. 34, a tower-like projection at the northeast corner of house No. 2.
Fig. 34. Stone wedges of Zuñi masonry exposed in rain-washed wall.
In the Tusayan house illustrated in [Pl. LXXXIV], the construction of which was observed at Oraibi, the interstices between the large stones that formed the body of the wall, containing but small quantities of mud mortar, were filled in or plugged with small fragments of stone, which, after being partly embedded in the mud of the joint, were driven in with unhafted stone hammers, producing a fairly even face of masonry, afterward gone over with mud plastering of the consistency of modeling clay, applied a handful at a time. Piled up on the ground near the new house at convenient points for the builders may be seen examples of the larger wall stones, indicating the marked tabular character of the pueblo masons’ material. The narrow edges of similar stones are visible in the unplastered portions of the house wall, which also illustrates the relative proportion of chinking stones. This latter, however, is a variable feature. [Pl. XV] affords a clear illustration of the proportion of these small stones in the old masonry of Payupki; while in [Pl. XI], illustrating a portion of the outer wall of the Fire House, the tablets are fewer in number and thinner, their use predominating in the horizontal joints, as in the best of the old examples, but not to the same extent. [Fig. 35] illustrates the inner face of an unplastered wall of a small house at Ojo Caliente, in which the modern method of using the chinking stones is shown. This example bears a strong resemblance to the Payupki masonry illustrated in [Pl. XV] in the irregularity with which the chinking stones are distributed in the joints of the wall. The same room affords an illustration of a cellar-like feature having the appearance of an intentional excavation to attain a depth for this room corresponding to the adjoining floor level, but this effect is due simply to a clever adaptation of the house wall to an existing ledge of sandstone. The latter has had scarcely any artificial treatment beyond the partial smoothing of the rock in a few places and the cutting out of a small niche from the rocky wall. This niche occupies about the same position in this room that it does in the ordinary pueblo house. It is remarkable that the pueblo builders did not to a greater extent utilize their skill in working stone in the preparation of some of the irregular rocky sites that they have at times occupied for the more convenient reception of their wall foundations; but in nearly all such cases the buildings have been modified to suit the ground. An example of this practice is illustrated in [Pl. XXIII], from the west side of Walpi. In some of the ancient examples the labor required to so prepare the sites would not have exceeded that expended on the massive masonry composed of numberless small stones. Many of the older works testify to the remarkable patience and industry of the builders in amassing and carefully adjusting vast quantities of building materials, and the modern Indians of Tusayan and Cibola have inherited much of this ancient spirit; yet this industry was rarely diverted to the excavation of room or village sites, except in the case of the kivas, in which special motives led to the practice. In some of the Chaco pueblos, as now seen, the floors of outer marginal rooms seem to be depressed below the general level of the surrounding soil; but it is now difficult to determine whether such was the original arrangement, as much sand and soil have drifted against the outer walls, raising the surface. In none of the pueblos within the limits of the provinces under discussion has there been found any evidence of the existence of underground cellars; the rooms that answer such purpose are built on the level of the ground. At Tusayan the ancient practice of using the ground-floor rooms for storage still prevails. In these are kept the dried fruit, vegetables, and meats that constitute the principal winter food of the Tusayan. Throughout Tusayan the walls of the first terrace rooms are not finished with as much care as those above that face the open courts. A quite smoothly finished coat of adobe is often seen in the upper stories, but is much more rarely applied to the rough masonry of the ground-floor rooms. At Zuñi no such difference of treatment is to be seen, a result of the recent departure from their original defensive use. At the present day most of the rooms that are built on the ground have external doors, often of large size, and are regarded by the Zuñi as preferable to the upper terraces as homes. This indicates that the idea of convenience has already largely overcome the traditional defensive requirements of pueblo arrangement. The general finish and quality of the masonry, too, does not vary noticeably in different portions of the village. An occasional wall may be seen in which underlying stones may be traced through the thin adobe covering, as in one of the walls of the court illustrated in [Pl. LXXXII], but most of the walls have a fairly smooth finish. The occasional examples of rougher masonry do not seem to be confined to any particular portion of the village. At Tusayan, on the other hand, there is a noticeable difference in the extent to which the finishing coat of adobe has been used in the masonry. The villages of the first mesa, whose occupants have come in frequent contact with the eastern pueblo Indians and with outsiders generally, show the effect in the adoption of several devices still unknown to their western neighbors, as is shown in the discussion of the distribution of roof openings in these villages, pp. [201]-[208]. The builders of the first mesa seem also to have imitated their eastern brethren in the free use of the adobe coating over their masonry, while at the villages of the middle mesa, and particularly at Oraibi, the practice has been comparatively rare, imparting an appearance of ruggedness and antiquity to the architecture.