[Pl. LXXXVI] illustrates a typical Zuñi interior. In this instance the example happens to be rather larger than the average room. It will be noticed that this apartment has many features in common with that at Tusayan last described. The pole upon which blankets are suspended is here incorporated into the original construction of the house, its two ends being deeply embedded in the masonry of the wall. The entire floor is paved with slabs of much more regular form than any used at Tusayan. The Zuñi have access to building stone which is of a much better grade than is available in Tusayan.
Plate LXXXVI. A Zuñi interior.
This room is furnished with long, raised benches of masonry along the sides, a feature much more common at Zuñi than at Tusayan. Usually such benches extend along the whole length of a wall, but here the projection is interrupted on one side by the fireplace and chimney, and on the left it terminates abruptly near the beginning of a tier of mealing stones, in order to afford floor space for the women who grind. The metates are arranged in the usual manner, three in a row, but there is an additional detached section placed at right angles to the main series. The sill of the doorway by which this room communicates with an adjoining one is raised about 18 inches above the floor, and is provided with a rudely mortised door in a single panel. Alongside is a small hole through which the occupant can prop the door on the inside of the communicating room. The subsequent sealing of the small hand-hole with mud effectually closes the house against intrusion. The unusual height of this door sill from the floor has necessitated the construction of a small step, which is built of masonry and covered with a single slab of stone. All the doors of Zuñi are more or less raised above the ground or floor, though seldom to the extent shown in the present example. This room has no external door and can be directly entered only by means of the hatchway and ladder shown in the drawing. At one time this room was probably bounded by outer walls and was provided with both door and windows, though now no evidence of the door remains, and the windows have become niches in the wall utilized for the reception of the small odds and ends of a Zuñi household. The
chimney of this house will be noticed as differing materially, both in form and in its position in the room, from the Tusayan examples. This form is, however, the most common type of chimney used in Zuñi at the present time, although many examples of the curved type also occur. It is built about midway of the long wall of the room. The Tusayan chimneys seldom occupy such a position, but are nearly always built in corners. The use of a pier or buttress-projection for the support of a roof girder that is characteristic of Tusayan is not practiced at Zuñi to any extent. Deer horns have been built into the wall of the room to answer the purpose of pegs, upon which various household articles are suspended.
The various features, whose positions in the pueblo dwelling house have been briefly described above, will each be made the subject of more exhaustive study in tracing the various modifications of form through which they have passed. The above outline will furnish a general idea of the place that these details occupy in the house itself.
[ KIVAS IN TUSAYAN.]
[General use of kivas.]—Wherever the remains of pueblo architecture occur among the plateaus of the southwest there appears in every important village throughout all changes of form, due to variations of environment and other causes, the evidence of chambers of exceptional character. The chambers are distinguishable from the typical dwelling rooms by their size and position, and, generally, in ancient examples, by their circular form. This feature of pueblo architecture has survived to the present time, and is prominent in all modern pueblos that have come under the writer’s notice, including the villages of Acoma and Jemez, belonging to the Rio Grande group, as well as in the pueblos under discussion. In all the pueblos that have been examined, both ancient and modern, with the exception of those of Tusayan, these special rooms, used for ceremonial purposes, occupy marginal or semidetached positions in the house clusters. The latter are wholly detached from the houses, as may be seen from the ground plans.
[Origin of the name.]—Such ceremonial rooms are known usually by the Spanish term “estufa,” meaning literally a stove, and here used in the sense of “sweat house,” but the term is misleading, as it more properly describes the small sweat houses that are used ceremonially by lodge-building Indians, such as the Navajo. At the suggestion of Major Powell the Tusayan word for this everpresent feature of pueblo architecture has been adopted, as being much more appropriate. The word “kiva,” then, will be understood to designate the ceremonial chamber of the pueblo building peoples, ancient and modern.