Fig. 36. Wall decorations in Mashongnavi executed in pink on a white ground.
In addition to the above-mentioned uses of stone and earth in the masonry of house walls, the pueblo builders have employed both these materials in a more primitive manner in building the walls of corrals and gardens, and for other purposes. The small terraced gardens of Zuñi, located on the borders of the village on the southwest and southeast sides, close to the river bank, are each surrounded by walls 2½ or 3 feet high, of very light construction, the average thickness not exceeding 6 or 8 inches. These rude walls are built of small, irregularly rounded lumps of adobe, formed by hand, and coarsely plastered with mud. When the crops are gathered in the fall the walls are broken down in places to facilitate access to the inclosures, so that they require repairing at each planting season. Aside from this they are so frail as to require frequent repairs throughout the period of their use. This method of building walls was adopted because it was the readiest and least laborious means of inclosing the required space. The character of these garden walls is illustrated in Pl. XC, and their construction with rough lumps of crude adobe shows also the contrast between the weak appearance of this work and the more substantial effect of the masonry of the adjoining unfinished house. At the Cibolan farming pueblos inclosing walls were usually made of stone, as were also those of Tusayan. [Pl. LXX] indicates the manner in which the material has been used in the corrals of Pescado, located within the village. The stone walls are used in combination with stakes, such as are employed at the main pueblo.
Plate XC. Adobe garden walls near Zuñi.
Small inclosed gardens, like those of Zuñi, occur at several points in Tusayan. The thin walls are made of dry masonry, quite as rude in character as those inclosing the Zuñi gardens. The smaller clusters are usually located in the midst of large areas of broken stone that has fallen from the mesa above. In the foreground of [Pl. XXII] may be seen a number of examples of such work. Pl. XCI illustrates a group of corrals at Oraibi whose walls are laid up without the use of mud mortar.
Plate XCI. A group of stone corrals near Oraibi.