Part 10 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate XLVI. Hawikuh, plan.]
So far as could be ascertained there is no prearranged plan for an entire house of several stories, or for the arrangement of contiguous houses. Most of the ruins examined emphasize this absence of a clearly defined general plan governing the location of rooms added to the original cl.u.s.ter. Two notable exceptions to this want of definite plan occur among the ruins described. In Tusayan the Fire House (Fig. 7) is evidently the result of a clearly defined purpose to give a definite form to the entire cl.u.s.ter, just as, on a very much larger scale, does the ruin of Kin-tiel, belonging to the Cibola group (Pl. LXIII). In both these cases the fixing of the outer wall on a definite line seems to have been regarded as of more importance than the specific locations of individual rooms or dwellings within this outline. Throughout that part of Tusayan which has been examined, however, the single room seems now to be regarded as the pueblo unit, and is spoken of as a complete house.
It is the construction of such a house unit that is here to be described.
A suitable site having been selected, the builder considers what the dimensions of the house should be, and these he measures by paces, placing a stone or other mark at each corner. He then goes to the woods and cuts a sufficient number of timbers for the roof of a length corresponding to the width of his house. Stones are also gathered and roughly dressed, and in all these operations he is a.s.sisted by his friends, usually of his own gens. These a.s.sistants receive no compensation except their food, but that of itself entails considerable expense on the builder, and causes him to build his house with as few helpers as possible.
The material having been acc.u.mulated, the builder goes to the village chief, who prepares for him four small eagle feathers. The chief ties a short cotton string to the stem of each, sprinkles them with votive meal, and breathes upon them his prayers for the welfare of the proposed house and its occupants. These feathers are called Nakwa kwoci, a term meaning a breathed prayer, and the prayers are addressed to Msauwu, the Sun, and to other deities concerned in house-life. These feathers are placed at the four corners of the house and a large stone is laid over each of them. The builder then decides where the door is to be located, and marks the place by setting some food on each side of it; he then pa.s.ses around the site from right to left, sprinkling piki crumbs and other particles of food, mixed with native tobacco, along the lines to be occupied by the walls. As he sprinkles this offering he sings to the Sun his Kitdauwi, house song: Si-ai, a-hai, si-ai, a-hai. The meaning of these words the people have now forgotten.
Mr. Stephen has been informed by the Indians that the man is a mason and the woman the plasterer, the house belonging to the woman when finished; but according to my own observation this is not the universal practice in modern Tusayan. In the case of the house in Oraibi, ill.u.s.trated in Pl. XL from a photograph, much, if not all, of the masonry was laid, as well as finished and plastered, by the woman of the house and her female relatives. There was but one man present at this house-building, whose grudgingly performed duty consisted of lifting the larger roof beams and lintels into place and of giving occasional a.s.sistance in the heavier work. The ground about this house was strewn with quant.i.ties of broken stone for masonry, which seemed to be all prepared and brought to the spot before building began; but often the various divisions of the work are carried on by both men and women simultaneously. While the men were dressing the stones, the women brought earth and water and mixed a mud plaster. Then the walls were laid in irregular courses, using the mortar very sparingly.
The house is always built in the form of a parallelogram, the walls being from 7 to 8 feet high, and of irregular thickness, sometimes varying from 15 to 22 inches in different parts of the same wall.
Pine, pion, juniper, cottonwood, willow, and indeed all the available trees of the region are used in house construction. The main beams for the roof are usually of pine or cottonwood, from which the bark has been stripped. The roof is always made nearly level, and the ends of the beams are placed across the side walls at intervals of about 2 feet.
Above these are laid smaller poles parallel with the side walls, and not more than a foot apart. Across these again are laid reeds or small willows, as close together as they can be placed, and above this series is crossed a layer of gra.s.s or small twigs and weeds. Over this framework a layer of mud is spread, which, after drying, is covered with earth and firmly trodden down. The making of the roof is the work of the women. When it is finished the women proceed to spread a thick coating of mud for a floor. After this follows the application of plaster to the walls. Formerly a custom prevailed of leaving a small s.p.a.ce on the wall unplastered, a belief then existing that a certain Katchina came and finished it, and although the s.p.a.ce remained bare it was considered to be covered with an invisible plaster.
The house being thus far completed, the builder prepares four feathers similar to those prepared by the chief, and ties them to a short piece of willow, the end of which is inserted over one of the central roof beams. These feathers are renewed every year at the feast of Soyalyina, celebrated in December, when the sun begins to return north ward. The builder also makes an offering to Msauwu (called feeding the house) by placing fragments of food among the rafters, beseeching him not to hasten the departure of any of the family to the under world.
A hole is left in one corner of the roof, and under this the woman builds a fireplace and chimney. The former is usually but a small cavity about a foot square in the corner of the floor. Over this a chimney hood is constructed, its lower rim being about 3 feet above the floor.
As a rule the house has no eaves, the roof being finished with a stone coping laid flush with the wall and standing a few inches higher than the roof to preserve the earth covering from being blown or washed away.
Roof-drains of various materials are also commonly inserted in the copings, as will be described later.
All the natives, as far as could be ascertained, regard this single-roomed house as being complete in itself, but they also consider it the nucleus of the larger structure. When more s.p.a.ce is desired, as when the daughters of the house marry and require room for themselves, another house is built in front of and adjoining the first one, and a second story is often added to the original house. The same ceremony is observed in building the ground story in front, but there is no ceremony for the second and additional stories.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate XLVII. Hawikuh, view.]
Anawita (war-chief of Sichumovi) describes the house in Walpi in which he was born as having had five rooms on the ground floor, and as being four stories high, but it was terraced both in front and rear, his sisters and their families occupying the rear portion. The fourth story consisted of a single room and had terraces on two opposite sides. This old house is now very dilapidated, and the greater portion of the walls have been carried away. There is no prescribed position for communicating doorways, but the outer doors are usually placed in the lee walls to avoid the prevailing southwest winds.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 19. A Tusayan wood rack.]
Formerly on the approach of cold weather, and to some extent the custom still exists, people withdrew from the upper stories to the kikoli rooms, where they huddled together to keep warm. Economy in the consumption of fuel also prompted this expedient; but these ground-floor rooms forming the first terrace, as a rule having no external doorways, and entered from without by means of a roof hatchway provided with a ladder, are ordinarily used only for purposes of storage. Even their roofs are largely utilized for the temporary storage of many household articles, and in the autumn, after the harvests have been gathered, the terraces and copings are often covered with drying peaches, and the peculiar long strips into which pumpkins and squashes have been cut to facilitate their desiccation for winter use. Among other things the household supply of wood is sometimes piled up at one end of this terrace, but more commonly the natives have so many other uses for this s.p.a.ce that the sticks of fuel are piled up on a rude projecting skeleton of poles, supported on one side by two upright forked sticks set into the ground, and on the other resting upon the stone coping of the wall, as ill.u.s.trated in Fig. 19. At other times poles are laid across a re-entering angle of a house and used as a wood rack, without any support from the ground. At the autumn season not only is the available s.p.a.ce of the first terrace fully utilized, but every projecting beam or stick is covered with strings of drying meat or squashes, and many long poles are extended between convenient points to do temporary duty as additional drying racks. There was in all cases at least one fireplace on the inside in the upper stories, but the cooking was done on the terraces, usually at the end of the first or kikoli roof. This is still a general custom, and the end of the first terrace is usually walled up and roofed, and is called tupubi. Tuma is the name of the flat baking-stone used in the houses, but the flat stone used for baking at the kisi in the field is called tupubi.
Kikoli is the name of the ground story of the house, which has no opening in the outer wall.
The term for the terraced roofs is ihpobi, and is applied to all of them; but the tupatca ihpobi, or third terrace, is the place of general resort, and is regarded as a common loitering place, no one claiming distinct owners.h.i.+p. This is suggestive of an early communal dwelling, but nothing definite can now be ascertained on this point. In this connection it may also be noted that the eldest sisters house is regarded as their home by her younger brothers and her nieces and nephews.
Aside from the tupubi, there are numerous small rooms especially constructed for baking the thin, paper-like bread called piki. These are usually not more than from 5 to 7 feet high, with interior dimensions not larger than 7 feet by 10, and they are called tumc.o.kobi, the place of the flat stone, tuma being the name of the stone itself, and tc.o.k describing its flat position. Many of the ground-floor rooms in the dwelling houses are also devoted to this use.
The terms above are those more commonly used in referring to the houses and their leading features. A more exhaustive vocabulary of architectural terms, comprising those especially applied to the various constructional features of the kivas or ceremonial rooms, and to the kisis, or temporary brush shelters for field use, will be found near the end of this paper.
The only trace of a traditional village plan, or arrangement of contiguous houses, is found in a meager mention in some of the traditions, that rows of houses were built to inclose the kiva, and to form an appropriate place for the public dances and processions of masked dancers. No definite ground plan, however, is ascribed to these traditional court-inclosing houses, although at one period in the evolution of this defensive type of architecture they must have partaken somewhat of the symmetrical grouping found on the Rio Chaco and elsewhere.
LOCALIZATION OF GENTES.
In the older and more symmetrical examples there was doubtless some effort to distribute the various gentes, or at least the phratries, in definite quarters of the village, as stated traditionally. At the present day, however, there is but little trace of such localization. In the case of Oraibi, the largest of the Tusayan villages, Mr. Stephen has with great care and patience ascertained the distribution of the various gentes in the village, as recorded on the accompanying skeleton plan (Pl. x.x.xVII). An examination of the diagram in connection with the appended list of the families occupying Oraibi will at once show that, however clearly defined may have been the quarters of various gentes in the traditional village, the greatest confusion prevails at the present time. The families numerically most important, such as the Reed, Coyote, Lizard, and Badger, are represented in all of the larger house cl.u.s.ters.
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