Fig. 85. A large Tusayan
doorway with one notched jamb.
One more characteristic type of the ancient pueblo doorway remains to be described. During the autumn of 1883, when the ruined pueblo of Kin-tiel was surveyed, a number of excavations were made in and about the pueblo. A small room on the east side, near the brink of the arroyo that traverses the ruin from east to west, was completely cleared out, exposing its fireplace, the stone paving of its floor, and other details of construction. Built into an inner partition of this room was found a large slab of stone, pierced with a circular hole of sufficient size for a man to squeeze through. This slab was set on edge and incorporated into the masonry of the partition, and evidently served as a means of communication with another room. The position of this doorway and its relation to the room in which it occurs may be seen from the illustration in [Pl. C], which shows the stone in situ. The doorway or “stone-close” is shown in [Fig. 86] on a sufficient scale to indicate the degree of technical skill in the architectural treatment of stone possessed by the builders of this old pueblo. The writer visited Zuñi in October of the same season, and on describing this find to Mr. Frank H. Cushing, learned that the Zuñi Indians still preserved traditional knowledge of this device. Mr. Cushing kindly furnished at the
time the following extract from the tale of “The Deer-Slayer and the Wizards,” a Zuñi folk-tale of the early occupancy of the valley of Zuñi.
| Fig. 86.
An ancient circular doorway or “stone-close” in Kin-tiel. |
“‘How will they enter?’ said the young man to his wife. ‘Through the stone-close at the side,’ she answered. In the days of the ancients, the doorways were often made of a great slab of stone with a round hole cut through the middle, and a round stone slab to close it, which was called the stone-close, that the enemy might not enter in times of war.”
Mr. Cushing had found displaced fragments of such circular stone doorways at ruins some distance northwest from Zuñi, but had been under the impression that they were used as roof openings. All examples of this device known to the writer as having been found in place occurred in side walls of rooms. Mr. E. W. Nelson, while making collections of pottery from ruins near Springerville, Arizona, found and sent to the Smithsonian Institution, in the autumn of 1884, “a flat stone about 18 inches square with a round hole cut in the middle of it. This stone was taken from the wall of one of the old ruined stone houses near Springerville, in an Indian ruin. The stone was set in the wall between two inner rooms of the ruin, and evidently served as a means of communication or perhaps a ventilator. I send it on mainly as an example of their stone-working craft.” The position of this feature in the excavated room of Kin-tiel is indicated on the ground plan, [Fig. 60], which also shows the position of other details seen in the general view of the room, [Pl. C].
A small fragment of a “stone-close” doorway was found incorporated into the masonry of a flight of outside stone steps at Pescado, indicating its use in some neighboring ruin, thus bringing it well within the Cibola district. Another point at which similar remains have been brought to light is the pueblo of Halona, just across the river from the present Zuñi. Mr. F. Webb Hodge, recently connected with the Hemenway Southwestern Archeological Exposition, under the direction of Mr. F. H. Cushing, describes this form of opening as being of quite common occurrence in the rooms of this long-buried pueblo. Here the doorways are associated with the round slabs used for closing them. The latter were held in place by props within the room. No slabs of this form were seen at Kin-tiel, but quite possibly some of the large slabs of nearly rectangular form, found within this ruin, may have served the same purpose. It would seem more reasonable to use the rectangular
slabs for this purpose when the openings were conveniently near the floors. No example of the stone-close has as yet been found in Tusayan.
The annular doorway described above affords the only instance known to the writer where access openings were closed with a rigid device of aboriginal invention; and from the character of its material this device was necessarily restricted to openings of small size. The larger rectangular doorways, when not partly closed by masonry, probably were covered only with blankets or skin rugs suspended from the lintel. In the discussion of sealed windows modern examples resembling the stone-close device will be noted, but these are usually employed in a more permanent manner.