Archeological investigations in New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah E-Book

Jesse Walter Fewkes

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

During the year 1916 the author spent five months in Archeological investigations in New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, three of these months being given to intensive work on the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. An account of the result of the Mesa Verde work will appear in the Smithsonian Annual Report for 1916, under the title “A Prehistoric Mesa Verde Pueblo and Its People.” What was accomplished in June and October, 1916, before and after the work at the Mesa Verde, is here recorded.
As archeological work in the Southwest progresses, it becomes more and more evident that we can not solve the many problems it presents until we know more about the general distribution of ruins, and the characteristic forms peculiar to different geographical localities. Most of the results thus far accomplished are admirable, though limited to a few regions, while many extensive areas have as yet not been explored by the archeologist and the types of architecture peculiar to these unexplored areas remain unknown. Here we need a reconnoissance followed by intensive work to supplement what has already been done. The following pages contain an account of what might be called archeological scouting in New Mexico and Utah. While the matter here presented may not shed much light on general archeology, it is, nevertheless, a contribution to our knowledge of the prehistoric human inhabitants of our country. Primarily it treats of aboriginal architecture.
The author spent two months in searching for undescribed buildings concerning some of which comparatively nothing was known. During June, 1916, headquarters were made at Gallup, New Mexico: the Utah ruins, new to science, were visited from the Indian agency at Ouray, Utah.

Leseprobe

Archeological Investigations in New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah

(With 14 Plates)

BY

J. WALTER FEWKES

1917

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385741426

ARCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN NEW MEXICO, COLORADO, AND UTAH

By J. WALTER FEWKES

(With 14 Plates)

INTRODUCTION

During the year 1916 the author spent five months in archeological investigations in New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, three of these months being given to intensive work on the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. An account of the result of the Mesa Verde work will appear in the Smithsonian Annual Report for 1916, under the title “A Prehistoric Mesa Verde Pueblo and Its People.” What was accomplished in June and October, 1916, before and after the work at the Mesa Verde, is here recorded.

As archeological work in the Southwest progresses, it becomes more and more evident that we can not solve the many problems it presents until we know more about the general distribution of ruins, and the characteristic forms peculiar to different geographical localities. Most of the results thus far accomplished are admirable, though limited to a few regions, while many extensive areas have as yet not been explored by the archeologist and the types of architecture peculiar to these unexplored areas remain unknown. Here we need a reconnoissance followed by intensive work to supplement what has already been done. The following pages contain an account of what might be called archeological scouting in New Mexico and Utah. While the matter here presented may not shed much light on general archeology, it is, nevertheless, a contribution to our knowledge of the prehistoric human inhabitants of our country. Primarily it treats of aboriginal architecture.

The author spent two months in searching for undescribed buildings concerning some of which comparatively nothing was known. During June, 1916, headquarters were made at Gallup, New Mexico: the Utah ruins, new to science, were visited from the Indian agency at Ouray, Utah.

The plan of operations in these two fields was somewhat different. The work in New Mexico was an attempt to verify existing legends of the migrations of a Hopi (Walpi) clan that once lived in a ruined pueblo called Sikyatki, where the cemeteries, exhumed in 1895, yielded one of the most beautiful and instructive collections of prehistoric pottery[1] ever brought to the U. S. National Museum from the Southwest.

Legends mention by name several habitations of the Sikyatki people during their migration from the Jemez region, before they built their Hopi pueblo, but lack of time prevented the author from tracing their trail throughout the entire distance back to their original home. The object of the present investigation was to examine one of their halting places, a ruined pueblo called Tebungki, or Fire House,[2] on the prehistoric trail about 25 miles east of Walpi. Between this ruined village and the ancestral home there are large and as yet undescribed ruins, such as those of the Chaco Canyon, which may once have been inhabited by some of these people.

Our knowledge of the former shifting of ancient clans, derived from legends, is fragmentary, and one way to gain further information and revivify forgotten or unrecorded history, is to study the remains of their material culture. Architecture is a most important survival, and pottery, which has transmitted ancient symbolism unchanged, is also valuable. It happens that both these aids characterize the southwestern culture areas. Other objects, as stone implements, woven and plaited fabrics, and basketry, are not greatly unlike those made by unrelated Indians and consequently add little to our knowledge in studies of cultures, but architecture and ceramics are distinctive and afford data from which we can gather much information on the history of vanished races.

TEBUNGKI (FIRE HOUSE)

Hopi legends of clans whose ancestors once peopled the Sikyatki ruin, but are now absorbed in the Walpi population, recount that in their western migration they built, near a deep canyon, a village which they named Fire House. These legends were first obtained from the Hopi by A. M. Stephen and recorded by Victor Mindeleff[3] who located Fire House ruin over 20 years ago. His valuable description and ground plan, the only account heretofore printed, is graphic and substantially correct. He calls attention to the characteristic or salient points which distinguish Fire House from ruined buildings in the Hopi reservation, especially its circular or oval form and the massive, well-constructed masonry of its walls.

The exact dimensions of Fire House (pl. 1) can be obtained only by excavation, but it is approximately 94 by 79 feet in greater and lesser diameter. Some parts of the outside wall are now 10 feet high, and its thickness averages 3 feet, but if the stones accumulated about its base were removed the height would be 4 or 5 feet greater. There are evidences of an external passage-way through the outer wall indicating a central court. Within the enclosure there are many indications of rooms some of which appear to be circular, but the interior is so filled with fallen walls that an accurate ground plan could not be drawn without extensive excavation. The stones forming the wall are, as a rule, cubical blocks, well dressed and accurately fitted, showing good masonry.

Two of the largest of the wall stones are 5 feet long and 3 feet wide, with an estimated thickness of 2 feet. As it would take several men to carry one of these stones from the quarry to its place in the wall, they might be called megaliths.

The fine spring at the base of the cliff below Fire House was evidently used by the inhabitants for drinking water, and the trail from here to a gateway in the outer wall is still well marked. As one climbs from the spring to the top of the plateau the way passes between the cliff and a flat stone set on edge and pierced with a hole about 5 feet above the pathway. This stone was evidently a means of defense; behind it the warriors may have stood peering down upon their enemies through this orifice. Near it are pictographs of unknown meaning.

The circular form of Fire House (fig. 1) and its well-constructed surrounding wall are more characteristic of eastern than of western pueblo masonry. This round type[4] is found from southern Colorado on the north to the neighborhood of the Zuñi settlements on the south; it has not been reported from the region on both banks of the Rio Grande. Roughly speaking, circular ruins correspond, in their distribution, with a line extending north-south midway between the eastern and western sections of the pueblo area—a limitation that can hardly be regarded as fortuitous. Its meaning we may not be able to correctly interpret, but the fact calls for an explanation. The type is old, the modern pueblos having abandoned this form. The area where circular ruins occur corresponds, in a way, to that inhabited in part by the modern Keres, none of whom, however, now dwell in circular towns. Provisionally we shall consider the Keresan pueblos as the nearest of all descendants of those who once inhabited villages of circular or oval form, a generalization substantiated by the existence of words of Keres language in many old ceremonies among all the pueblos.

There is a sharp line of demarcation between the zone of circular ruins and that inhabited by the pueblos along the Rio Grande, but on the western border these circular buildings extend as far west as the Hopi country.

In attempting to connect the oval form of Fire House with the rectangular form of Sikyatki we are met with the difficulty of architectural dissimilarity. Fire House is circular, Sikyatki is rectangular. If the descendants of the inhabitants of Fire House later constructed Sikyatki, why did they make this radical change in the form of their dwellings? They may have constructed a habitation en route before they reached Sikyatki, and this village may have had a form like Fire House. On the Hopi plateau above Sikyatki there are two conical mounds visible for a long distance as one approaches East Mesa from the mouth of Keam’s Canyon, which should be considered in this connection. These mounds, called Kükütcomo, are connected in Hopi legends with those of Sikyatki at the foot of the mesa on which they stand, and the buildings they cover are said once to have been inhabited by the Coyote (Fire?) clan of eastern kinship. They have not been excavated completely but several rooms have been opened up enough to show that they are round towers or kivas with rooms annexed to their bases. They resemble, in fact, circular ruins and may well have been the home of some of the people who abandoned Fire House. They must be considered in discussing the reliability of the legend, for they are the only circular houses yet reported from the Hopi country. The reason why this form of house was abandoned can not be determined with any certainty, even though some of the clans from Fire House may have built the round towers above Sikyatki. The only other round room known to me in the Hopi country, besides Kükütcomo, is one in a ruin in the Oraibi Valley mentioned by Victor Mindeleff (op. cit.). The reference is very meager and on account of its exceptional character should be verified. Assuming the observation as correct it may be said that this so-called circular room lies embedded in a mass of rectangular rooms and not as kivas in the inhabited Hopi pueblos in the plazas free from houses.

The legends of the Snake people of Walpi who came from the San Juan near Navaho Mountain, probably Betatakin or Kitsiel, distinctly state that their ancestors built both round and square or “five-cornered” houses. The rooms referred to are believed to be kivas, since another legend declares the earliest snake ceremonies were performed in circular rooms. After visiting Fire House the author desired greatly to find other oval ruins between it and the zone of circular ruins, but his efforts were not successful.