Plate XLII. The site of Moen-kopi.
Moen-kopi is built in two irregular rows of one-story houses. There are also two detached single rooms in the village—one of them built for a kiva, though apparently not in use at the time of our survey, and the other a small room with its principal door facing an adjoining row. The arrangement is about the same that prevails in the other villages, the rows having distinct back walls of rude masonry.
Rough stone work predominates also in the fronts of the houses, though it is occasionally brought to a fair degree of finish. Some adobe work is incorporated in the masonry, and at one point a new and still unroofed room was seen built of adobe bricks on a stone foundation about a foot high. There is but little adobe masonry, however, in Tusayan. Its use in this case is probably due to Mormon influence.
Moen-kopi was the headquarters of a large business enterprise of the Mormons a number of years ago. They attempted to concentrate the product of the Navajo wool trade at this point and to establish here a completely appointed woolen mill. Water was brought from a series of reservoirs built in a small valley several miles away, and was conducted to a point on the Moen-kopi knoll, near the end of the south row of houses, where the ditch terminated in a solidly constructed box of masonry. From this in turn the water was delivered through a large pipe to a turbine wheel, which furnished the motive power for the works. The ditch and masonry are shown on the ground plan of the village ([Pl. XLIII]). This mill was a large stone building, and no expense was spared in fitting it up with the most complete machinery. At the time of our visit the whole establishment had been abandoned for some years and was rapidly going to decay. The frames had been torn from the windows, and both the floor of the building and the ground in its vicinity were strewn with fragments of expensive machinery, broken cog-wheels, shafts, etc. This building is shown in [Pl. XLV], and may serve as an illustration of the contrast between Tusayan masonry and modern stonemason’s work carried out with the same material. The comparison, however, is not entirely fair, as applied to the pueblo builders in general, as the Tusayan mason is unusually careless in his work. Many old examples are seen in which the finish of the walls compares very
favorably with the American mason’s work, though the result is attained in a wholly different manner, viz, by close and careful chinking with numberless small tablets of stone. This process brings the wall to a remarkably smooth and even surface, the joints almost disappearing in the mosaic-like effect of the wall mass. The masonry of Moen-kopi is more than ordinarily rough, as the small village was probably built hastily and used for temporary occupation as a farming center. In the winter the place is usually abandoned, the few families occupying it during the farming months returning to Oraibi for the season of festivities and ceremonials.
Plate XLV. The Mormon mill at Moen-kopi.