SHELTERS, DWELLINGS, AND ARCHITECTURE
The Amerind of North America has generally been considered a shiftless
and indolent being, but the preceding pages have shown, I think, that
this estimate is an error, and the following chapters, together with
the present one, will even more conclusively demolish that false
assumption. The Amerind to be sure was not a white man, but it must
not be forgotten that the constant holding of the white man’s nose to
the grindstone is not so commendable as it is often said to be, for it
is not choice with him but necessity born of his ways of living and
his great numbers. Put him in comparatively small numbers on a vast
continent rich and fertile and abounding in game, and it is not likely
that he would shut himself up in a factory or in an office, where he
is only a counting machine. The Amerind was as industrious as his
environment demanded. Doubtless had his development not been interfered
with by the Discovery, he might have arrived in time at the same
condition of pressure that compels us to labour incessantly.
Almost everywhere on this continent are discovered numerous evidences
of Amerind industry and toil. From the brush shelter of the Pai
Ute of Arizona to the vast stone structures, richly ornamented, of
Yucatan, is an immense range, and within these limits are to be
found about every kind of a refuge from the elements that mankind
has been able to devise. Mud, boughs caves, wood, adobe, stone,
ice, snow, wicker-work, wattling, skins, in fact, every material and
every possible hole, existing in nature, have been utilised by the
Amerind, and the materials have been given every variety of shape. In
nothing, perhaps, has his struggle with environment, and the moulding
effects of the environment, been more clearly exhibited than in the
forms and materials of the dwellings he has been compelled to invent.
Other evidences of his perseverance and exertion are discerned in
great aqueducts, in long irrigating canals, in reservoirs, in huge
earthworks, and enormous mounds that sometimes rival in magnitude the
giant constructions of Egypt.
The Amerind dwellings may be divided into three general
classes,—temporary, portable, and fixed. The two classes, temporary and
fixed, only are usually recognised by ethnologists, but it has seemed
to me proper to add the third class, because of the wide use of the
portable tipi, and other forms of tent. The temporary houses, those
abandoned on moving camp and seldom occupied again, may be represented
by the Pai Ute wikiup; the portable, carried from place to place for
years, by the tipi of the Dakotas; the fixed, or those which are
occupied either for an extended period or periodically, by the stone or
adobe house of the Pueblos, or the wood house of the Iroquois, or the
wood and earth house of the Eskimo.[170]
[Illustration: PAI UTE WIKIUPS, NORTHERN ARIZONA
From photograph by the Colorado River Expedition, 1872
]
Outside of a natural cave or rock shelter, the wikiup of the Pai Ute
exhibits about the lowest type of house used by man. It is said the
chimpanzee makes a rude hut of boughs and branches, but even that could
scarcely be less simple than the Arizona wikiup. This is composed
merely of several branches arranged in a semi-circle, or rather more
than a semi-circle, eight or ten feet in height, their tops together,
and covered with boughs of cedar or pine or any other convenient
brush. About one third of the circumference is open to the south, and
opposite this side the fire is built a few feet away. The Pai Ute is
surrounded by remains of excellent stone dwellings constructed long ago
by Amerinds who are believed to be of the same general stock, but he
has never tried to improve his wikiup of his own accord. The Utes, his
kindred on the north, live in good tipis, but the Pai Ute appears never
to have noticed the fact. The Mokis, also allied to him, live not far
to southward in excellent houses, yet he has never attempted to emulate
them.
[Illustration: MOKI KISI CONSTRUCTION]
In the kisi construction of the Mokis we may perhaps see the beginning
of even the wikiup. The kisi is a sort of windbreak and sun-shelter
lightly constructed of boughs and made in two ways, one called kishoni,
being simply poles stuck in the ground in the arc of a circle with
the concave side towards the north, and interlaced with twigs and
branches to form a shade. The other kind is built by planting several
posts with crotches at their tops in the ground in the form of a
parallelogram and laying other posts or poles across from crotch to
crotch and covering these with poles to form a platform or roof.
Against the whole, on the south side, poles and branches are erected
to form a shade. These affairs are put up in the fields to protect the
crop tenders when there is no convenient cliff or ledge whereon to
erect a better structure of stone. Doubtless out of these shelters,
now seen in the field structures, originally grew the firm adobe and
stone house, by one step or improvement after another, and probably all
house construction had some such simple beginning. In a forested area,
however, the easy construction of a comfortable house out of poles and
bark would delay any development of a durable stone or adobe structure;
the adobe, indeed, would not be durable in a humid climate. Protection
and subsistence dictated the region a tribe or a stock should occupy,
and the region usually determined the character of the house or
shelter. House building, in its beginnings, is largely a result of
environment, and was developed or modified accordingly. The tribes that
were compelled to live in a sterile, dry country, where game and wood
were both scarce, were forced to provide themselves with different
food and different shelter from those which occupied a well-wooded
country abounding in game. A few skins and poles, in the latter case,
would quickly produce a house. In the arid region, however, man was
not provided with such convenient material. His shelter from the sun
cost him much labour and he was obliged to transport his necessary wood
long distances. Additions to the shade to make it more comfortable were
therefore obtained by piling up stones or scraping together the mud
after a rain, and these operations being repeated, a development of
skill was the inevitable result; skill which eventually produced a wall
all round the sun-shelter, with the beams of the latter resting upon
them instead of upon posts.
[Illustration: PRIMITIVE AMERIND LADDERS]
[Illustration: A NAVAJO HOUSE]
It seems, therefore, altogether probable that stone and mud house
building originated in arid regions; but in a region treeless, like
our great plains, the inevitable outcome in the line of a shelter was
the portable tipi (teepee), because there bison hides were at hand for
covering, but poles of the proper sort were difficult to secure and
were carried along. In the forest, neither portable tents nor stone
houses were necessary. It would only be when population was dense
enough to destroy the game and timber, or when a people were forced to
an arid region, that the stone house would develop. The Iroquois was
a forest Amerind, and he built a house of wood that was excellent in
construction and answered his purpose admirably. The Navajo occupying
an arid region has been content with a rude shelter of boughs and
branches or with boughs or poles covered with mud. They have never
profited by the example of their Moki neighbours, and built substantial
houses,—one reason, and the chief one, being that their habit of never
occupying again any shelter where death has occurred has precluded it,
for they do not care to bestow great labour on a structure that they
may be called upon any time to abandon. There are then other causes
besides ability, or inability, to build substantially that determine
the character of the Amerind house.
[Illustration: A SWEAT HOUSE]
Bandelier states that the Pimas “dwelt in scattered hamlets, the houses
of which combine to-day the mud roof of a typical New Mexican pueblo
with the temporary framework of frail branches characteristic of the
roaming savage.”[171] The roof is dome-shaped, but it is similar in
material to the Pueblo mud roof, so that there we have a sort of a
cross between the Moki field shelter, already mentioned, and the Navajo
hut or hogan. The stock from which the present Pimas descended are
supposed to have built the remarkable structure in Arizona known as
_Casa Grande_, found in ruins by the first explorers. Tribes alter
their methods of building, either from summer to winter or at different
epochs. The Omahas at one time made lodges of wood, at another of
earth, and at still another time they dwelt in tipis of skin. If a
stone-house-building tribe should migrate to a region where neither
loose flat stones nor adobe clay could be readily obtained, they would
be forced to use timber.[172] The Zuñi languages and traditions point
to the occupancy by the Pueblos in early times of brush houses like
those of the Pai Utes. The Mohaves live in low huts of branches covered
with mud.
The communal principle of living pervaded America and largely
determined the size and character of the dwellings. A number of
families usually lived together, in the same house, or in a group of
rooms or houses. The “long-house” of the Iroquois, called by them
_hodénosote_, and the clustered fortress-houses of the Pueblos, are
good examples of the results of the practice of the communal principles
adhered to by most of the Amerinds. It is also believed by some of the
best authorities, like Bandelier and Morgan, that the Mexican and Mayan
houses were largely due to the same cause.
Among the Omahas the tipis were usually grouped according to
gentes.[173] Tipi and wigwam are frequently used by us as synonymous,
and in some dictionaries a picture of a tipi is made to represent a
wigwam.[174] This is an error due to unfamiliarity with different forms
of Amerind dwellings. The tipi is generally a portable structure while
the wigwam is always fixed, and the latter is also of a different
shape. Tipi is a Dakota term and wigwam is Algonquin. Tipi is really
the plural for “house,” the singular being “ti,” and “pi” a termination
indicating plurality.[175] It is constructed by arranging a number,
sometimes as many as twenty or thirty, long poles, previously tied
together near their tops, in a circle of about ten or fifteen feet
diameter. This conical frame is then covered with bison hides sewed
together in one sheet, or in modern days with canvas, shaped properly
and laced or pinned together along the middle third of the junction of
the covering mantle. The upper third is left loose, and its pointed
ends are extended up and out by means of outside poles stuck into
pockets in their extreme upper corners, according to the direction of
the wind, to let the smoke escape from the fire built in the middle
of the interior. If the wind blows straight at these flaps they are
brought close together. Sometimes an extra skin is adjusted at the top
so that it can be placed on any side to accomplish this object. The
lower third is left open for a doorway, another skin being adjusted
before it with a stick to spread it near its upper end, which end is
attached to the tent. The bottom of the tent cover is held down by
stakes or pins driven into the ground. In case of high winds, stones or
other weights are placed on the bottom edge of the skins to keep them
down. In summer the Omahas, and other tribes of the Dakotas, erected,
when convenient, an elliptical lodge covered with bark, the roof being
rounded and the construction being generally similar to the Algonquin
elliptical wigwam. It was not more than seven feet high, while the
tipi is twelve to twenty or more. These tribes also sometimes built
earth lodges, chiefly for summer use, the roofs of which resembled in
construction those of the Pueblo houses, though they were conical. A
number of posts were set up in the ground to support in their crotches
the transverse beams upon which numerous slender poles, about two
inches in diameter, were laid to reach almost to the top where a hole
for the exit of smoke was left. Against the outer series of posts
all around slabs of wood were set up and the whole was then covered
with earth a foot or two thick after matting and a layer of grass, or
grass alone, was placed on the rafters or roof poles. This lodge was
circular, the roof being conical, and it was entered through a covered
way about ten feet long and five feet wide, the outer opening of which
was protected by hanging bison hides. The supporting poles or posts
were arranged in two concentric circles, in large lodges, the inner set
being higher than the outer. Compartments within opening toward the
fire were formed of willow matting, or skins.
[Illustration: AN OMAHA TIPI]
The regular tipi was decorated in accordance with tribal customs.
Dorsey has published some careful notes on this as on other matters
connected with the tribes of the Dakota stock, and Catlin has also
given descriptions. The decorations were often the result of a vision.
If a man had a vision of the aurora he depicted it on his robes and
tent, the latter having a band of paint around the bottom, above which
was a zigzag border from which, on one side, three stripes were drawn
to the top of the tent, four on the other, and one in the rear. If he
had a vision of the night or of some other “superterrestrial object,
he blackened the upper part of his tent and a small portion on each
side of the entrance.” Sometimes a star was also indicated, and night
was represented by a black band above the middle or at the bottom. A
tent similar to the Dakota tipi is in wide use among the Amerinds.
Morgan states that the Dakotas were living in bark-covered houses when
first discovered, in villages, in the present state of Minnesota,
and that when they were driven “upon the plains by an advancing
white population, but after they had become possessed of horses,
they invented a skin tent eminently adapted to their present nomadic
condition. It is superior to any other in use among the American
aborigines from its roominess, its portable character, and the facility
with which it can be erected and struck.”[176] While this is probably
accurate as concerns the Dakotas, it is likely that other tribes
invented a similar tent for themselves, before the appearance of the
Dakotas on the plains.[177] Three tipis among the Omahas were sacred,
and sheltered three sacred objects, the Sacred Pole, the Sacred White
Buffalo-Cow Skin, and the Sacred Bag. These are all now in the Peabody
Museum at Cambridge. They were built like the common tipi.
[Illustration: A SEMINOLE DWELLING]
The wigwam of the Algonquins was built in two general ways, using bark
or mats for covering. One form is made by planting elastic poles in the
ground and bringing their tops together, and binding the whole with
horizontal poles. It is unlike the tipi, because it is not portable,
because the poles are flexible, and because the sides curve out from
bottom to top instead of being straight lines. It is covered with
birchbark. It is from ten to sixteen feet in diameter on the ground,
and from six to ten feet high. The fire was built, as in the tipi, in
the middle of the floor in a slight depression, and the usual outlet
for smoke was left at the top. “Such a lodge,” says Morgan, “would
accommodate, in the aboriginal plan of living, two and sometimes three
married pairs with their children.”[178] The Menominee-Algonquin form
of wigwam was made by planting in the ground about three feet apart,
approximating the form of an ellipse, strong saplings some two inches
in diameter, leaving at each end an opening for a doorway. The poles
are then bent over toward each other and tied in an arch with strips of
bark. Horizontal poles are tied on to the upright ones for stiffening,
and the frame is then covered with bark or mats overlapping each other
like shingles. The usual smoke outlet is left in the top. A mat curtain
takes the place of a door. There were seldom, or never, regular doors
in any Amerind houses on the continent before the Discovery, the
opening being closed by curtains or mats. Another Menominee shelter,
described by Hoffman, was made by “putting five or six saplings on each
side of a parallelogram; the ends are left open, and the top of each
sapling on a given side is then bound down over its opposite fellow to
form a roof somewhat resembling a wagon-top. Horizontal saplings are
then bound around the framework to make the structure secure, and over
all are laid, longitudinally, a series of long strips of pine bark the
upper pieces overlapping those below, while a large piece is placed
over the highest part of the roof, which thus sheds the rain or melting
snow.... The bedding is spread on the ground and usually covers the
entire floor.”[179]
The eastern portion of the continent below Labrador, being
well-forested, the Amerind houses there appear to have been entirely of
wood, or sometimes of wood and mud combined. For this reason nothing
of any of them, except occasional earth rings, is to be found and,
so far as remains of houses are concerned, our wonderful, surpassing
Moundbuilders appear to have had no houses. Turning to other Amerinds,
however, who occupied the country when the whites arrived, we glean a
fair idea of what the houses of the Mississippi valley may have been
at their best. They varied in design in the same locality, of course,
according to the tribe, in the same way that I have mentioned that in
the South-west we find to-day Amerinds living in the most primitive
form of dwelling not many miles away from others living in high types.
Some of the Mississippi valley houses were doubtless excellent
structures though built of wood, or of wattling plastered with
mud. Many of the mounds, squares, and circles were connected with
buildings, generally forming the foundations for dwellings or other
structures as in other parts of the continent.[180] In other words,
they were often platforms for houses. The reasons for building a house
on a platform raised above the surrounding lands might be many; one
simple one was a desire to keep the floor dry in wet weather. The floor
was earth, and earth on a level during long rains got uncomfortably
damp if not wet. It would be natural in building, after such lessons,
to elevate the floor of the house, which was done by rearing a platform
of earth. This gave good drainage, and besides in a malarial region
would be more healthful, and furthermore added to the defensive
qualities. The habitations being built upon platforms, it would not
do to build sacred structures on low ground. Man seldom looks down
upon his spiritual constructions. Hence the higher the sacred building
could be placed, the more sacred it seemed, and the huge flat-topped
mounds of the Mississippi valley and Mexico were the result. Some of
the Florida Amerinds were still living in dwellings reared on platforms
of this kind, and so were others in the Southern United States, at the
time of the first visits of the whites. The mounds, as a rule, are on
the bottom lands along river courses, though in places where there are
higher terraces these have frequently been chosen. Thomas quotes the
following passage from Garcilasso: “The town and the houses of the
cacique Ossachile are like those of other caciques in Florida.... The
Indians try to place their villages on elevated sites; but inasmuch
as in Florida there are not many sites of this kind where they can
conveniently build, they erect elevations themselves in the following
manner: They select the spot and carry there a quantity of earth, which
they form into a kind of platform two or three pikes in height, the
summit of which is large enough to give room for twelve, fifteen, or
twenty houses, to lodge the cacique and his attendants. At the foot
of this elevation they mark out a square place, according to the size
of the village, around which the leading men have their houses....
To ascend the elevation they have a straight passageway from bottom
to top, fifteen or twenty feet wide. Here steps are made by massive
beams, and others are planted firmly in the ground to serve as walls.
On all other sides of the platform the sides are cut steep.”[181]
Thomas quotes further from Garcilasso: “The chief, whose name was also
Guaxule, came out with five hundred men to meet him and took him in the
village (pueblo) in which were three hundred houses, and lodged him in
his own. This house stood on a high mound (cerro) similar to others we
have already mentioned. Round about was a roadway sufficiently broad
for six men to walk abreast.”[182] Again he quotes Le Page Du Pratz,
who visited the Natchez in 1720: “As I was an intimate friend of the
sovereign of the Natchez he showed me their temple, which is about
thirty feet square, and stands on an artificial mount about eight feet
high, by the side of a small river.”[183] There was also still another
reason for building on mounds or elevated platforms; the reason, or
at least one great reason, why the Mayas and Mexicans built on them,
namely the desire to protect the foundations. In Louisiana the Taensas,
in the time of La Salle, built of “sun-baked mud mixed with straw,
arched over with a dome-shaped roof.”[184] Now a structure of this
kind if reared on ordinary ground would soon be destroyed by the rains
and moisture sapping its foundations, but by placing it on an elevated
platform, where its footing would be comparatively dry, it would endure
a long time. A sacred house would be likely to be so placed, if not
others.
[Illustration: MISSISSIPPI VALLEY METHOD OF USING JACAL CONSTRUCTION,
ACCORDING TO THOMAS]
[Illustration: CLIFF OUTLOOK, CANYON DEL MUERTO, ARIZONA]
Every tribe had some kind of a sacred structure, the Omahas carrying
from place to place the three sacred tents referred to. The sacred
structures, too, were generally of the same style as the house of the
chief. Each village of the Natchez had a house devoted to the dead,
besides others dedicated to different sacred objects. The death-house
was oval, “having a circumference of one hundred feet—a simple hut
without a window, and with a low and narrow opening on the side for
the only door.”[185] Here were “garnered the choicest fetiches of the
tribe, of which some were moulded from clay and baked in the sun.
There, too, were gathered the bones of the dead; there an undying fire
was kept burning by appointed guardians as if to warm and light and
cheer the departed.”[185] “Hard by the temple, on an artificial mound
of earth, stood the hut of the Great Sun; around it were grouped the
cabins of the tribe.”[185]
It seems unnecessary to give any further space to show that the mounds
that have aroused so much discussion and romantic writing were, many of
them, the foundations for various structures reared by Amerinds as we
know them.
Morgan advanced a theory that the hollow square earthworks were the
foundations for long buildings, at one and the same time dwellings
and a part of the defences, the interior area being used for a work
place, children’s playground, etc. Many Algonquin houses were made
of a parallelogram shape, with straight sides about eight feet high
and a rounded roof. These houses were fifty or more feet long, and
the matting with which they were covered could be readily removed
to let in the sun and air. As a rule the villages were surrounded by
palisades. The Iroquois, as well as most other Amerinds, lived in
permanent villages, which were at first stockaded. They used three
kinds of houses; a triangular lodge made of poles with bark for a
covering, used in hunting, and the _ganosote_ or smaller bark house
constructed in the same way as the third kind, the _hodénosote_ or
“long-house,” which was built to accommodate a number of families.
This was sometimes a hundred feet long, and from it came the name
_Hodenosaunee_ by which the great League of the Five (Six) Nations was
known to the world and to themselves. It was made by planting poles in
the ground and binding others across them to make a strong frame of
the shape of a parallelogram, upon which a roof of triangular pattern
was built out of poles covered with bark. Sometimes the roof was round
like that of many Algonquin tribes, and that of the ganosote was very
frequently round. The height of the sides was about ten feet. The
ganosote was about fifteen by twenty feet and fifteen feet high, with
inside a kind of double berth built against the longer walls like the
berths in a ship. It would accommodate eight persons. The entrance
was closed by skins or by bark hung on wooden hinges. The covering
was bark held in place by an outer set of poles tied through to the
inside ones. The long-house was divided into a number of chambers
six or eight feet wide with a passageway through all from end to end
where the doors were. “Between each four apartments, two on a side,
was a fire-pit in the center of the hall, used in common by their
occupants.... Raised bunks were constructed around the walls of each
apartment for beds.”[186] These structures constituted the village
which was surrounded by a palisade, sometimes a double or triple row.
The houses were placed without arrangement; and when the league grew
powerful the palisade was dispensed with. The Lenapé “constructed small
wattled huts with rounded tops thatched with the leaves of the Indian
corn or with sweetflags.... In summer light brush tents took the place
of these.”[187]
[Illustration: HALL OF COLUMNS, MITLA
Holmes’s Archæological Studies in Mexico
Photograph by A. V. Armour
]
[Illustration: TRANSVERSE SECTION (SOMEWHAT GENERALISED) SHOWING
CONSTRUCTION OF PALENQUE BUILDINGS, YUCATAN
_f_, trefoil opening through medial wall; _g_, _h_, two principal
varieties of roof comb
W. H. Holmes
]
[Illustration: SOME DETAILS OF PUEBLO HOUSE ARCHITECTURE
A TRIANGULAR SIPAPU OR SACRED KIVA ORIFICE
PUEBLO ROOF CONSTRUCTION
SOME MOKI ROOF DRAINS
]
On the North-west coast the native houses are usually built of cedar
slabs. These slabs are split out of the wide trees[188] and the walls
are obtained by securing them in an upright position to a frame about
ten feet high. On this rests the roof of split shakes, bark, or boards,
laid on rafters which are supported in the middle by two long, heavy
beams, running the entire length of the house, and themselves borne up
by four huge posts, often carved with totemic emblems. The general
outward appearance of these houses is much like an ordinary low
one-story house or barn of our own, except that in the middle of the
roof there is a large square hole for a smoke outlet, the fire being
made on a patch of sand or earth that forms a square about nine by ten
feet in the middle of the room, the size depending on the dimensions
of the house. They are usually about thirty or forty feet square,[189]
the interior forming one large room, sometimes having a platform on
one or two sides or all the way round about six feet wide and two feet
high. This is divided by thin partitions into small compartments,
which are covered about six feet above the floor with a ceiling of
thin boards. A curtain in front makes a room of it. These houses vary
somewhat in the different localities, but the type is about the same
from the Puget Sound region to Yakutat Bay. Some of the Sound Amerinds
give but one pitch to the roof. Many of the natives now build a house
of sawed materials and roof it with shingles so that their modern
villages, like the one at Sitka, present outwardly few Amerind signs,
as they usually have chimneys, too, instead of smoke holes. Where
they have the latter, boards are stuck up above the ridge to form a
windbreak, or a more perfect arrangement for preventing back draught is
applied in the shape of a large solid shutter so pivoted in the middle
line that it can be tilted from one side of the ridge to the other.
Among some tribes there are several smoke holes with adjustable boards
that can be worked from below with a pole. The entire front gable of
a chief’s house or an assembly house is often ornamented with a huge
totemic design, painted on smooth boards that fill the whole space.
In front of the house stood the tall pole bearing the totems of the
inmates carved, one above another, with a full relief totem adorning
the top. Small houses were built to hold the boxes containing the ashes
of the dead, and the roof was sometimes surmounted with a totem carved
in wood, or the totem was erected on a small pole nearby, or placed
under the roof.
[Illustration: MOKI NOTCHED DOORWAY, SO MADE THAT LARGE BUNDLES COULD
BE TAKEN IN
The transom was probably at first a smoke outlet
]
In all the constructions of the Amerinds of the North-west coast we
perceive the powerful influence of surroundings on a primitive people.
The region abounds in superb cedars with a grain so fine and straight
that the logs can be readily split into slabs a couple of inches thick,
that are admirable material for building purposes. Then there are
plenty of young straight hemlocks, firs, and cedars for rafters and
framework, so that these Amerinds, like those of the cliff region of
the South-west, had their building material almost ready made. Being
largely fishermen, they were not well supplied with skins, so that it
was not easy to make pole lodges covered with them, as was the case
with many Amerinds of the interior, where trees were absent or hard to
split and where skins were plenty.
[Illustration: A ZUÑI CHIMNEY, MOKI THE SAME]
[Illustration: ONE FORM OF MOKI CHIMNEY HOOD]
In California a variety of houses was built, as there are many
different stocks and conditions. The Yokuts made them of tule mats in
the shape of an “A” tent with a door at the front. A half dozen or more
of these were placed in a row and above them a flat sun-shelter of
branches laid on a platform of poles supported by crotched posts set in
the ground. Others build a hut of slabs or bark brought to a point and
open on one side, like a tipi cut in two. Others again live in wikiups
made by covering a square framework with boughs, leaving one side open.
When the side of an Amerind hut is left open in this way, the opening
always faces the south, except in hot weather, when it generally faces
the other way. Another California tribe lives in earth lodges entered
from the top through a hole or hatch with steps on the outside. This
lodge was made by excavating a couple of feet and putting this earth
on the covering framework, for a roof. In the mountains where wood was
plenty they frequently used no earth at all, showing how quickly they
adapted themselves to circumstances. The Modoc “excavates a circular
space from two to four feet deep, then erects over it a rounded
structure of poles and puncheons, strongly braced up with timbers,
sometimes hewn and squared. The whole is warmly covered with earth, and
an aperture left atop, reached by a centre pole. Before the coming of
the whites secured them against the constant assaults and incursions
of their enemies, their dwellings were slighter, consisting generally
of a frame of willow poles, with tule matting overspread.”[190] Another
tribe of the Pacific Slope, the Makhelchel, build cabins “of slender
willow poles set upright in the ground, with others crossing them
horizontally, forming a square lattice-work.”[191] The Yokaya have a
lodge or dwelling composed of a “huge framework of willow poles covered
with thatch, and resembling a large flattish haystack.” The Karok
“excavate a round cellar, four or five feet deep and twelve or fifteen
feet in diameter. Over this they build a square cabin of split poles
or puncheons, planted erect in the ground and covered with a flattish
puncheon roof. They eat and sleep in the cellar ... and store their
supplies on the bank above next to the walls of the cabin.”[192] The
Maidu make a hut of slabs placed together in something the shape of a
tipi, with a low, square projection for an entrance.
Passing northward to the Aleuts, we find “houses built with the floor
somewhat below the level of the outside soil, the walls of whale-ribs,
sticks of wood, or upright stone walls, covered outside with mats,
straw and finally turf.... The roof was formed by arching whale-ribs,
or long sticks of driftwood, matted, thatched, and turfed like the
sides, with a central aperture. A platform, somewhat raised, around the
sides of the house afforded a place for sitting and sleeping. Later
each village had a large house or _kashim_, which served as a common
work-shop, and a lodging for strangers, as well as for a town-hall
for their discussions and festivals.... Still later, in a period not
greatly antedating the historic, the Aleuts began to build large
communistic dwellings with features peculiar to themselves, without
doors, and entered by the hole in the roof, the inmates descending
on a notched log placed upright. These large yourts were divided,
by partitions of wood, stone, or matting, into small rooms like the
state-rooms of a steamer, but without doors; open toward the center of
the yourt, and each accommodating one family.”[193]
It will be noted that we have again changed materials of construction;
and why? Because the Aleutian Islands are devoid of timber, devoid of
good building stone that an Amerind could get at, and he resorted
therefore to what there was—driftwood, whale-ribs, turf, etc.[194] The
house called by the Russians _barabára_ seems to have been originally
made of turf even to the roof, and I saw examples in the summer of 1899
at Unalaska and on St. Paul Island. The turf or sod was cut into slabs
and laid up like stones.
[Illustration: GROUND PLAN OF ESKIMO SNOW IGLU]
Continuing northward we reach the vast treeless arctic regions, where
cold is the great enemy, and the reader wonders what man can do here in
the way of architecture. He has done considerable; amongst other things
he devised the only true arch found on the continent, and constructed
one of the most admirable and unique dwellings in the world. This he
built out of the snow which fell about him and prevented him from
securing other material. The invention of the snow house by the Eskimo,
or Innuit, as they call themselves, was one of the greatest triumphs
over environment man has ever accomplished. I refer, of course, to the
perfected snow house, the dome-shaped _iglugeak_, commonly called by
us _igloo_ or _iglu_. _Iglu_ is the Innuit generic term for “house,”
the distinctive name for snow house being _iglugeak_. This snow house
is begun by selecting a suitable deep drift that is compact enough to
permit homogeneous blocks to be taken from it, with the snow-knife,
which is a bone tool shaped like a short sword. Latterly steel saws are
employed when they have them. In the pit formed by removal of blocks
of snow the builder works at his walls, the bottom of the excavation
finally forming the floor of the house. The first block is bevelled
down to a wedge shape with the point toward the beginning, and the
worker goes on round his circle, and when he comes again to the wedge
his wall rises upon the first portion and continues thus in a spiral
fashion to the top, constantly narrowing till at last one block fills
the opening. It takes two to adjust this, though one may build a
small house successfully to that last point. By building spirally and
therefore continuously, there is always support on two sides for the
last block laid. The edges are slanted at the same time to bring the
tiers gradually toward the centre. Joints and holes are filled with
snow, though a small hole is left at the top for ventilation. As the
heating of this house is done with lamps there is little smoke. For
camping purposes a small snow house is built, seven feet diameter and
five feet high, in about two hours. When made for permanent use the
house is about twelve feet high and fifteen feet diameter. Plenty of
light comes through the snow, but a window of ice or seal intestine
is often placed over the entrance, which is reached by a more or less
extended passage, with vaults for storage, by the way.
[Illustration: SECTION OF SNOW IGLU]
But though this house is so cleverly built, and is warm, and proof
against everything but mild weather, the Innuit, if he can, will build
a permanent winter house of drift wood, stones, earth, and sod and
whale-ribs. These from the outside look like mounds of earth, and as
soon as warm weather comes are nothing but wet cellars, which the
inhabitants quickly abandon for the time, erecting with their walrus
and seal skins a summer tent, called a _tupek_ or _topek_. The Point
Barrow tupek is something like a tipi, without a smoke hole, as the
fire is built outside when they can secure wood to build one. All the
Alaska Innuit now use canvas tents of the “wall” pattern, when they can
procure them.
The Amerind of the interior of the northland, where timber grows,
utilises it and the skins of the animals he kills. The Nenenot about
Hudson Bay occupy, all the year round, a tent almost identical with the
Dakota tipi.
[Illustration: AN ALASKA ESKIMO WINTER HOUSE, POINT BARROW
Interior and sections p. 221
]
No construction on the continent shows more skill than the Innuit
snow iglu. The winter houses, of snow or other material, are usually
occupied by two or more families. Many interiors of snow houses are
lined with the summer tent covering to prevent the drip of the walls
from falling on the occupants.
[Illustration: INTERIOR GROUND PLAN OF A MOKI HOUSE]
As the polar regions developed the snow-house; forest regions, bark
and mat houses; barren plains, portable tents; so arid regions, where
disintegrating cliffs furnished an abundance of flat slabs of stone,
evolved stone houses, and broad dry valleys or plains lacking cliffs,
timber, or large game, but yielding good clay soil, produced houses
of mud or adobe; or, according to conditions, such combinations of
these materials as were easiest and most practicable. It is next in
order to review the houses of the arid regions constructed of stone,
adobe, jacal, cajon, pisé,[195] etc., and the cavate lodges. To do
full justice to the subject of houses would require a separate volume,
but enough may be given here to present a general view. The occupied
villages of the South-western United States are similar to the ruins
found throughout that region, and the cliff-dwellings, which some
writers would clothe with mystery, as has been mentioned, were no more
mysterious than the occupied dwellings of the Moki; or any other Pueblo
village, which, fortunately, remains inhabited by the builders.[196]
The cliff-dwellings were constructed in cliffs simply because it was
expedient to build them there and not because the builders were a race
apart from other Amerinds. The canyons where the cliff-dwellings occur
have bottom lands that are fertile and easily irrigated, both by stream
water, and after the Pueblo fashion, by guiding shower waters with hoes
amongst the corn. This in itself was a sufficient object for building
in the canyons, and the huge, natural conchoidal alcoves that occur
in the faces of the prevailing formation were attractive places to
build in for several reasons, one of which may have been protection
from assault and the weather, and another the frequent presence of
springs at the back of these cavities. These springs have almost
vanished, in many cases have entirely disappeared, owing to slightly
drier conditions now prevailing. But I have frequently noticed at the
back part of many of the cavities that had no ruins, or few ruins, to
cover it up, a moisture that might at times increase to a dripping, or
even flowing, that would furnish enough water for the daily supply of
a considerable Amerind village. The construction is the same as other
Pueblo houses of stone.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF WOOD AND EARTH IGLU]
[Illustration: AN ALASKA ESKIMO WINTER HOUSE OF WOOD AND EARTH, POINT
BARROW]
[Illustration: STONE STEPS AT ORAIBI]
The inhabited pueblos, like the ruins, usually consist of a number of
rooms built adjoining or on top of each other, like a lot of square
boxes placed in rows or in a pyramidal pile, or like a series of steps,
with the total height at the back often straight down. One or two
single-room houses are first built, and then additions are made from
time to time till the pile grows to a considerable height; three or
four stories.[197] Groups of these groups built near each other form
courts between. The lower tier of rooms, in olden times, was not
entered from the ground, but from the roof through a hatchway, a ladder
leading up on the outside and down on the inside. The upper rooms, or
houses, were entered from the roofs of the lower ones; that is, the
roofs of the lower rooms formed the floors of the upper ones, and also
balconies in front of the rooms. I occupied for a time one of these
upper rooms in Tewa, on the “East Mesa” at the Moki towns, and I found
the roof in front of my door a delightful place, commanding a view of
the whole mesa and a hundred miles beyond. I could also reach the top
of my house easily, by a sort of stairway formed on the edge of the
prolonged wall that separated me from my neighbour, and as this was the
summit of the village my view was superb. Such stairways are common in
all the villages. The ladders by which the various roofs are reached
are now much like our own, but rudely made, and the upper ends are
often very long, extending in many cases far above the house-top. The
walls, about a foot thick, are of stone slabs laid in adobe mortar,
and are generally built up by the women, who take their own time to
the work, adding a few stones whenever they feel like it. Beams of
small tree-trunks, six to eight inches in diameter, form the basis of
the flat roof.[198] They are laid across the top of the walls and the
ends, if too long, usually allowed to project beyond. These are covered
with smaller poles laid about a foot apart, and on these are spread
slender willows or reeds, with a layer of grass or twigs next, on which
a layer of adobe mortar is laid and earth trodden down on top till it
is firm, when a finish is made with another coat of adobe mortar. A
slight pitch is given to the roof. No plumb-line, level, or square was
used by the Amerinds anywhere on the continent so far as is now known.
Sometimes the floors are paved with irregular flat sandstone slabs, but
in most houses the floor is formed by a coat of adobe mortar which is
patched and renewed as needed. Moccasined feet are not hard on such a
surface, but my heavy soled shoes were the despair of the owner of my
habitation. The hand is used as a trowel. The chimney is usually at one
corner, and did not exist in America previous to the sixteenth century.
A hood is built down from the roof to within about three or four feet
of the floor, to catch the smoke, and outside the chimney is built
up about three feet, sometimes with stones, but more frequently with
large earthen pots with the bottoms knocked out. The hood is formed
of sticks plastered with adobe mortar. Doorways were formerly of the
notched variety[199] closed by a curtain, and the hatchways were closed
by a mat of reeds. In later times the doorways have become like our
own, and doors, too, have been made out of sawed boards. My door at
Tewa was hung on hinges and had a latch and string. Glazed windows have
also been adopted in many houses. The Rio Grande pueblos are built
of adobe bricks, and so, largely, is Zuñi, but there is little adobe
in the Moki towns, except in the form of plaster and mortar. The Rio
Grande pueblos were largely constructed of adobe when first visited in
1540. The Pueblo Amerind frequently abandoned his village for one cause
or another and built a new one elsewhere, so while his village may be
called a permanent one it was not much more so than villages of the
Algonquins and Iroquois.
[Illustration: CLIFF-DWELLING, EASTERN COVE OF MUMMY CAVE, CANYON DE
CHELLY, ARIZONA]
[Illustration: HOUSES IN WALPI, ONE OF THE MOKI TOWNS, ARIZONA
In this are well seen the plastered and unplastered walls of stone,
the ladders of ascent, the “end wall” steps, the notched doorway,
with transom, the projecting roof beams, a rabbit-skin robe hanging
on the wall above the right-hand ladder, and also on the left the
entrance to a passageway through to another court
Photograph by U. S. Geological Survey
]
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF A GROUP OF CAVATE LODGES, ARIZONA]
[Illustration: PLAN AND SECTIONS OF A CAVATE LODGE]
[Illustration: DIAGRAM SHOWING POCKET AT BACK OF SOME CAVATE LODGES
It was probably a receptacle for water which dripped slowly from
the rock in wet seasons
]
Besides houses, some of the Amerinds of the South-west dwelt in
shelters excavated wholly or in part in the face of a cliff or
mountain, or hill. There are four localities where these cavate lodges
occur in numbers, the northern Rio Grande valley, the San Juan River
valley, the San Francisco mountain region, and the Rio Verde valley
in Arizona. There are in these places thousands of cavate lodges.
They average in size two or three rooms, sometimes communicating
by a ledge, sometimes, often, in fact, with excavated connections.
Some of the Verde group[200] are cut back a long distance into the
rock—forty or fifty feet. The rooms are both oblong and circular, about
seven feet high and ten by seventeen feet in size, or eight or ten
feet diameter, according to the shape. There were no chimneys, the
fire-pits being near the entrances. Nor were there any windows, the
doorway being the only opening to the outside. Floors were levelled by
filling depressions with adobe clay and low ridges were built up of
the same material, probably to keep the inmates off the bottom, which
must have sometimes been damp. Poles or willows laid across the ridges
with skins on them would have made a flooring. Depressions at the back
walls appear to have been made to hold water, and doubtless at times
there was a “seepage” of considerable amount, as I have suggested
regarding the open conchoidal caves occupied by the Cliff-dwellers.
What appear to be stepping-stones are found in some entrances, as
if water at times flowed out. The Verde group are in a soft grey
sandstone, the Rio Grande in tufa, the San Francisco in cinder hills.
These cavate dwellings are simply another form of Amerind residence
due to necessity or expedience.[201] In other places there are some
that were undoubtedly merely farming outlooks, occupied only during
the crop season, just as there are cliff houses for this purpose, and
also houses erected singly in open valleys. But many cavate lodges were
actual residences for a period of years, owing to circumstances of
one kind or another. The Cliff-dwellers may still be found among the
Tarahumaris of northern Mexico. Schwatka describes some who “had walled
up the outward face of a cave nearly to the top, leaving the latter for
ventilation.” Many small cliff-dwellings in other places were so made
to allow the smoke to escape. That is, the wall along the outer edge
of the cavity was not carried quite up to the rock above, so that the
smoke could drift out. There was, therefore, no roof over the dwelling,
but it was sheltered by the overhanging rock. Many more examples of
this adaptation of the dwelling to circumstances might be added.
There are ruins scattered all over the South-west, many of which were
built by the same set of Amerinds, and do not represent a vanished
population. Still, I believe that the population was at one time much
greater than it was when our acquaintance with it began. Internecine
wars resulting from a diminution of water-supply; diseases introduced
by the whites; and also the attacks and absorption of tribes by the
wilder Amerinds, being some of the causes of the diminution. It would
not be possible to describe even all the prominent ruins here, but
I will mention several. Beginning easterly of the Rio Grande, we
find the Pecos Ruins first of importance. There are also remains of a
large adobe Catholic church and a convent here, not finally and fully
abandoned till about 1840. The ruins consist of two chief buildings
on a low table, surrounded by an artificial wall. The buildings were
in the form of rectangles, with courts within, one 55 by 440 feet,
and the other 170 by 350 feet. In places, they were three or four
stories high, terraced, Pueblo fashion. The construction was slightly
different from the ordinary, as the upper floor and roof beams rested
mainly on heavy upright posts set into the walls, and not directly
on the walls themselves. The whole framework was thus independent of
the enclosing walls, very much as our modern steel frame buildings
are. The walls were of sandstone slabs, and were from one to two feet
thick. Another group of important ruins, and about the finest specimens
of the stone buildings of the ancient Pueblos, is that of the Chaco,
in north-western New Mexico.[202] There are eleven chief ruins, and
many smaller ones. The principal ruins were once houses three, four,
or perhaps five stories high, all built of sandstone slabs and blocks
obtained from the débris of the cliffs. Some of the walls are still
standing to the height of thirty or forty feet. All are not uniform in
the way the stones are laid, the variation being due to building at
different times, and to a variation of the available supply of slabs.
The stones were usually laid so closely, and so carefully chinked with
spalls, that the outside of the walls resembles a smooth mosaic; though
adobe mortar and rubble were freely used in the interior. Lintels,
as was generally the case throughout America, were of wood. The date
of the abandonment of these buildings is not known. They were first
mentioned by Gregg, in 1844.[203]
[Illustration: THEORETIC ROOF CONSTRUCTION OF MITLA
W. H. Holmes
]
[Illustration: CEILING OR ROOF PLAN
GROUND PLAN OF A KIVA AND CEILING PLAN OF ANOTHER
The entrance is by ladder through the hole in the ceiling, which is
also the smoke outlet. The floor is paved with slabs of stone, and
is about 12 inches higher at the right-hand end. There are places
on each side for the looms, blankets being woven in the kivas. The
fireplace is the black square. At the left is the plank containing
the sacred orifice called the sipapu. The foot of the ladder rests
on the edge of the raised portion of the floor
]
[Illustration: CHACO RUINS MASONRY
From _Report_ of Hayden Expedition; 2 and 3 not found in modern
Pueblo architecture
]
[Illustration: From Hayden _Report_]
There were many round towers of stone in the South-west, also the work
of the Pueblos. Some stand alone but most of them are near other ruins.
Often they were built with two or three concentric walls from two to
five feet apart. A double-walled tower on the Mancos had an outer
diameter of forty-three feet. Some of them may have been watch-towers,
but those connected with other buildings were perhaps religious
structures, or were used somewhat as the kiva[204] is to-day. The kiva
is a room now usually square, in part, or wholly, below the general
surface of the locality, used as a kind of club-house, council-house,
lounging place, and meeting place for members of the society to which
it belongs; and also a lodging place for the men; women are generally
excluded. In Zuñi, the kivas are rooms on the ground floor. Many
ancient kivas were round.
[Illustration: RUIN CALLED CASA GRANDE, ARIZONA]
Adobe brick and adobe clay in various forms were largely employed by
the South-western and Mexican Amerinds, and there are evidences that
some tribes in the Mississippi valley also used it. In the Rio Grande
valley the adobe is made into large bricks, sun-dried and laid up with
a mortar of the same material. Otherwise the villages are much the
same as those described. One of the best modern examples of the adobe
construction is the village of Taos in north-eastern New Mexico. (See
illustration page 3.) Another method of employing adobe is seen in the
famous ruin called _Casa Grande_, near Florence, Arizona, which our
government recently repaired so that it will endure for a considerable
time. This was made by the cajon method; that is, the adobe mud was
rammed into large chests or boxes of wicker, without top or bottom, and
when the material was sufficiently dried to hold its shape the frame
was removed and the operation repeated till the wall was finished. The
ruin referred to is only one of a number that were still standing in
an area of about sixty-five acres in 1744, when Father Sedelmair saw
them. He described the present ruin as having four stories, but only
three are now distinguishable at the highest part. Its age is unknown.
Its builders are supposed to have been the ancestors of the present
Pimas, though probably there was considerable difference in the matter
of culture. Father Kino, in 1694, was the first European to see the
place and it was a ruin then. It was doubtless a communal dwelling like
all the other large structures of the Amerinds of this region. Its size
on the ground is forty-three by fifty-nine feet. Partitions three or
four feet thick divide the interior into five rooms, the middle one
having higher walls than the rest. The adobe blocks are two feet high,
three to five long, and three or four across, and are almost as hard
as sandstone while dry. There may have been upper stories of plastered
wattled posts. Another famous ruin similar to this is the _Casas
Grandes_ in Chihuahua, Mexico. It is built in much the same way as
_Casa Grande_, and there are more buildings there standing. Probably
there were at one time a great many structures of this kind in that
region, and there may be others still standing in less explored parts.
In the Salt River valley many of the buildings were of a somewhat
different type again, as concerns their wall construction.[205] The
Hemenway Expedition excavated a great many sites and found that the
walls were often adobe rammed in between two series of posts wattled
with reeds and cross-braced with sticks, the outer part of the wattled
frames being plastered with adobe mortar. The thinner walls were
constructed with only one line of wattled posts plastered on both
sides, after the manner of the Mexican construction known as jacal,
which is a set of poles fixed in the ground and then plastered on one
or both sides with mud. The upper stories of some of the Rio Grande
structures in the early times were made of wood probably plastered
this way, which explains why in the southern part of New Mexico there
are not now found higher standing walls of ruins or evidences of
several stories.[206] Examples also have been seen in South-western
Colorado, where a kind of wicker-work was built on the top of a wall
and plastered on both sides. In the Salt River ruins the existence of
the wood-work was indicated by the cavities left by its decay. There
were also other structures built without the wattled frames. The
cajon and pisé construction are very much alike, one being a Spanish
and the other a French term, except that any pounded or rammed earth
construction might be pisé, while the cajon is distinctly made by
ramming earth into a box.[207] Therefore the _Casa Grande_ would be
a clear example of cajon, while the Salt River construction of adobe
rammed between the wattled frames would be pisé; and the plastered
wicker-work would be jacal. The pisé and cajon method is very old all
over the world. It is still to be found in France and England. In
France the pisé box is about three yards long, one yard high, and about
half a yard wide. The readiness with which the Amerind took advantage
of his resources in the architectural line is again apparent in these
great adobe structures of the Amerinds of northern Mexico and the
South-western United States. It is not sensible, therefore, when some
style of construction is discovered differing from that which we have
been accustomed to see, to ascribe it to some mysterious race.
[Illustration: TRANSVERSE SECTION OF AN ORDINARY YUCATEC BUILDING
_f_, capstones of corbel vault; _l_, roof crest or comb. Such a
building stood on the top of a mound
W. H. Holmes
]
[Illustration: W. H. Holmes
FORMS OF THE MAYA CORBEL VAULT]
In southern Mexico they erected extensive cities or pueblos because
there they were more crowded together than anywhere to the northward,
but these cities were essentially the same as the more simple towns in
the northern country. At Tlascala “the houses were built, for the most
part, of mud or earth; the better sort of stone and lime, or bricks
dried in the sun. They were unprovided with doors or windows, but in
the apertures for the former hung mats fringed with pieces of copper,
or something which by its tinkling sound would give notice of anyone’s
entrance. The streets were narrow and dark.”[208] This extract from
Prescott might picture a New Mexican pueblo instead of one of the towns
encountered by Cortez which have been often so romantically described.
The copper on the mats was probably more for Amerind ornament than
for the purpose stated by Prescott. While in some respects the Aztec
towns may have been more elaborate than the New Mexican towns, there
was probably not much difference in their method of construction. “The
principal buildings and temples of the city were covered with a hard
white stucco which glistened like enamel in the ... morning sun.”[209]
This was perhaps a wash of gypsiferous clay similar to that used by the
Mokis, or it may have been similar to the zahcab of the Mayas, which
was a singular and abundant white earth used by them as a stucco. It
was found in pockets.
[Illustration: GROUND PLANS OF YUCATEC BUILDINGS
W. H. Holmes
]
“The dwellings of the common people were also placed on foundations
of stone which rose to the height of a few feet, and were then
succeeded by courses of unbaked bricks, crossed occasionally by wooden
rafters.”[210] These rafters were the projecting ends of the poles,
as in the Pueblo country. The adobe houses in Mexico are now often
built on stone foundations, for it is the foundation that is sapped
and undermined by the rains. The upper walls of adobe stand well in a
climate of that sort. Prescott says of the houses of the “dignitaries”
and of the “principal nobles” that “They were low, indeed; seldom of
more than one floor, never exceeding two. But they were spread over
a wide extent of ground; were arranged in a quadrangular form, with
a court in the centre,”[211] all of which sounds suspiciously like
a communal dwelling, as Morgan maintains the Aztec houses were. The
Aztecs were crowded around the lake of Mexico, and also built out
over the water on piles. Houses raised above the water or ground were
nothing unusual in America. Some of the North-west coast Amerinds
built dwellings which were “raised and supported near thirty feet from
the ground by perpendicular spars of very large size” with “access
formed by a long tree in an inclined position from the platform to the
ground, with notches cut in it by way of steps about a foot and a half
asunder.”[212]
[Illustration: KWAKIUTL HOUSE FRONT
The thunder-bird lifting a whale. The beak was carved and fastened
on
Construction: wood—split cedar planks, tree trunks, and poles. Site:
edge of the sea
]
So far as the Aztec houses are concerned, “None of the Spanish
descriptions,” asserts Morgan, “enable us to realise the exact form
and structure.... But for the pueblos, occupied or in ruins, in New
Mexico, and the more remarkable pueblos in ruins in Yucatan and Central
America, we would know very little concerning the house architecture of
the Sedentary Village Indians.”[213]
Morgan believes all were joint tenements, but in this he may be
mistaken, for the life of the Aztecs seems to have passed to a point
somewhat higher than that of the New Mexican Amerinds, and a further
development of Aztec life certainly included a further development of
their house-life also.
Within a day’s journey of the City of Mexico, Saville investigated some
interesting ruins of an old “temple” erected, according to a tablet
found there, in 1502, the signs on the tablet representing a rabbit and
ten dots, or ten _tochtli_, corresponding to this date. It was built
of rubble stone covered in many places inside with stone carving that
had been painted.[214] There were also ornaments in stucco. The outer
walls are nearly six feet thick. It is on the top of a high, cliff-like
mountain difficult of access, near the Mexican town of Tepoztlan.
Another splendid ruin near this is the Temple of Xochicalco. See
illustrations, pages 23 and 31.
[Illustration: NORTH-WEST COAST HOUSES AND TOTEM POLES
Haida House
_p o p_ shifting wind break over smoke hole
End left open to show construction.
Dotted lines give section of floor.
_m_, totem pole; _c c_, bench; _b_, fireplace; _k_, smoke hole;
_g g_, house posts
]
The greatest group of architectural remains on this continent is that
of the Maya region, mainly in Yucatan. For a full description of many
of these buildings the reader is referred again to the admirable work
of Maudsley. The Mayas were the greatest architects as well as the
greatest artists and greatest in almost everything of all the Amerinds,
and if Goodman is correct in his rendering of some of their chronology
they occupied the region more than ten thousand years.[215] Mound-like
foundations supported the buildings, which generally rose as from a
terrace, though sometimes the mound was very high and very steep, with
small space around the building crowning it. At Copan,[216] which was
in ruins before the Spaniards arrived, there is a great main terrace
from which mounds rise, the latter bearing the buildings. The casing
of the mound and the walls of buildings are of nicely dressed oblong
stones usually without mortar. The joints were not broken here, nor in
other Maya work. The mound slopes were terraced at five-foot intervals
and the steps were about five feet high. The so-called “triangular
arch” probably existed here as it did at the other Maya ruins. It
was made by advancing the courses, several feet above the base of an
opening, gradually toward each other till they met above, where a large
slab was usually laid across to bind the whole together. The ceilings
or roofs of many rooms in Maya ruins were wholly made this way. It has
also been called a corbel arch, though it is, in fact, not an arch at
all. See illustrations, pages 210, 235, and 237. There was no arch
in Amerindian architecture besides the one the Eskimo constructed in
his snow hut. The rooms are generally long and narrow in all the Maya
structures and no windows existed. The Maya inability to span wide
spaces was the cause of the narrow rooms and buildings. At Uxmal the
two main rooms of the so-called Governor’s Palace are sixty feet long
and only eleven to thirteen feet wide. The walls of all the structures
are very thick, though certain walls, as the rear ones, are usually
thicker than the others and have no openings, the latter, as a rule,
being along one, two, or three sides. This was a probable survival of
earlier defensive constructions similar to the communal fortresses of
the Puebloan type as particularly exemplified in the ruins of the Chaco
in New Mexico, where there were no rear openings. See ground plans,
page 232. At Palenque are some fine examples of the Maya construction.
The largest is called the palace and is 180 feet wide, 228 feet long,
and 25 feet high, with fourteen doorways on the side and eleven at the
ends. It was one story in height, as were all Maya buildings. There is
a vast amount of carving and stucco modelling around them. One of the
most unique constructions is that called the “Temple of the Cross,”
number one, or two, or three, by different explorers, there being two
structures much alike. See note 2, page 184. This is on top of a high
mound, and is fifty feet front, thirty-one feet deep, and about forty
feet high. The roof was something like our gambrel type, being the
same all around without gables, with a level platform about three feet
wide along the ridge, from which arose a peculiar stone and stucco,
latticed, superstructure in two stories, the first about seven and the
second about eight feet high. See illustrations, pages 210 and 235.
There was abundant stucco ornamentation over the exterior, and on each
side of the entrance was one of the figures referred to in the last
chapter.
[Illustration: RUIN OF EAST FAÇADE AND IGLESIA, “PALACE” CHICHEN-ITZA,
YUCATAN
Holmes’s _Archæological Studies in Mexico_
]
[Illustration: ELEVATION OF KWAKIUTL HOUSE]
[Illustration: VIEW IN THE MOKI TOWN OF MISHONGNAVI, ARIZONA
Construction: stone slabs laid in adobe mortar. Site: barren summit
of a mesa. The ladders were pulled up in time of danger
]
The mortar used is said to have been a cement made of one part slaked
lime to two parts of zahcab. This was used by all the ancient Mayas
and is used still in that country. It is, however, doubtful if slaked
lime was known to the ancients. There is no evidence of it. At Mitla
is yet another type of house ascribed to the Zapotecs.[217] It is in
the Mexican State of Oaxaca. The human figures and animal carvings and
forms seen in the Yucatan ruins are absent. The rooms are the same,
long and narrow, with no openings except the doors. One of the most
unusual features is a great hall 12 by 121 feet, with six round stone
columns standing at intervals of about fifteen feet down the middle.
See illustrations, pages 9 and 209. These average about twelve feet
high and nine feet in circumference. The walls are forty-eight inches
thick, of roughly broken stones laid in courses in plenty of adobe
mortar, the outer parts of all the buildings being faced by slabs of
stone containing the ornamentation, which is wholly geometrical. Some
adobe brick walls are forty-six inches thick. The columns are out of
the common because they are single stones, but built up piers are often
used in Pueblo architecture, and the North-west coast Amerinds use the
column in wood very frequently to support their large longitudinal
rafters. One of these which I sketched in an Alaskan house at Cape Fox
is given in the illustration, page 162. The roofs at Mitla were wooden
beams covered with earth and stone slabs. See illustration, page 230.
There are other ruins all through Honduras and Nicaragua and the rest
of Central America. Squier says: “In Honduras, as also in San Salvador,
I heard of remains and monuments equal to those of Copan in extent and
interest.”
At the time the Spaniards came into Yucatan the Amerinds, according to
Herrera, were dwelling in timber huts thatched with grass or something
similar. The dense unexplored forests of the Yucatan region are
filled with ruins which have never been seen by white men, at least
that is the supposition of archæologists like Saville and Charnay.
The Maya house was divided, according to Landa, from side to side by
a wall with doors, the back part being sleeping quarters. The front
portion was whitewashed or painted in designs and was open the whole
length, with low sheltering eaves. In the rear there was a doorway
leading from that part. A lengthwise division into two main parts was
a characteristic of almost all the Maya buildings now found in ruins.
The structures were generally wide and shallow, and subdivided into a
great many rooms. It is more in the ornamentation of the buildings and
the stone roofs than in anything else that they differ from structures
farther north. The interior masonry is frequently a rubble, with
the dressed and carved stones on the outside as a facing. Bandelier
thinks that some of the stone walls in New Mexico are quite as well
constructed as some in Mexico proper. But however this may be, there
is nothing north of the City of Mexico that compares in architectural
excellence with the Yucatan structures, albeit in some respects there
is a strong resemblance between the latter in plan and conception, and
the Pecos and other northern ruins.
The communal principle of living had much to do almost everywhere with
the size and character of the Amerind houses. Situation was determined
by expedience and necessity; material of construction by environment.
Throughout the continent the Amerind was a village dweller, and except
in the Far North and on the northern Californian and North-west
coasts he was generally a tiller of the soil, growing, often in large
quantities, maize, beans, squashes, cotton, and some other products
according to locality. His large communal buildings were in part
fortresses to protect the families against marauding Amerinds of a less
prosperous and cultivated type, and against the occupants of other
towns, for in general it may be said that there was little political
cohesion in the various tribes, though the Aztecs and Iroquois are
examples of exceptions that arose from time to time.
There is nothing in any of the remains, so far developed, that
indicates foreign influence, prior to the Discovery. Every
architectural work on the continent is purely Amerindian or modified by
contact with other races subsequent to 1492.
[Illustration: ESKIMO HORN DIPPER]
[Illustration: HORN ARROW STRAIGHTENER]