In the preceding pages an attempt has been made to trace the
chronological sequence of pottery symbols in Hopiland by pointing out
distinct epochs in cultural history and correlating the sociology of the
tribe. This takes for granted that the pottery symbols characteristic of
this people are directly connected with certain clans. There have from
time to time been sudden changes in symbols, or previous designs have
suddenly disappeared and others have taken their places, as well as a
slow development of existing symbols into more complicated forms. There
persist everywhere survivals of old prepuebloan symbols inherited from
the past and a creation of new products of Hopi environment not found
elsewhere.
The author will close this paper with a brief theoretical account of the
unwritten culture history of Hopi, part of which explains certain pottery
symbols. If we take that segment of southwestern history extending
from the earliest to the present, we find evidences of the existence
of a prepuebloan culture existing before terraced houses were built or
circular kivas had been used for ceremonial purposes. This epoch was
antecedent to the construction of the great walled compounds of the
Gila, illustrated by Casa Grande. At that epoch known as the prepuebloan
there extended from Utah to the Mexican boundary and from the Colorado
to the Rio Grande a culture architecturally characterized by small
fragile-walled houses not united or terraced. These houses were sometimes
like pit dwellings, either partially or wholly subterranean. When above
ground their walls were supported by upright logs in which canes or
brushes were woven and covered with mud, the roofs being made of cedar
bark or straw overlaid with adobe.
The pottery of this early prehistoric epoch was smooth, painted mainly
with geometric patterns, corrugated, or indented. Rectilinear or
curved lines constituted the majority of the superficial decorations
and life designs were few or altogether wanting. In addition to these
architectural and ceramic characteristics, this prepuebloan cultural
stage was distinguished by many other features, to mention which would
take us too far afield and would be out of place in this article.
Evidences of this stage or epoch occur everywhere in the Southwest
and survival of the archaic characters enumerated are evident in all
subsequent epochs.
The so-called “unit type” or pure pueblo culture grew out of this early
condition, and was at first localized in northern New Mexico and southern
Colorado, where it was autochthonous. Its essential feature is the
terraced communal house and the simplest form of the pueblo, the “unit
type,” first pointed out by Dr. T. Mitchell Prudden—a combination of
dwelling houses, with a man’s house or kiva and a cemetery. The dwellings
are made of stone or clay and are terraced, the kiva is subterranean
and circular, embedded in or surrounded by other rooms. The “unit type”
originated in Colorado and, spreading in all directions, replaced the
preexisting houses with fragile walls. Colonists from its center extended
down the San Juan to the Hopi country and made their way easterly
across the Rio Grande and southerly to the headwaters of the Gila and
Little Colorado, where they met other clans of specialized prepuebloan
culture who had locally developed an architecture of Great House style
characteristic of the Gila and Salt River Valleys.
The essential differences between the terraced pueblo and the previously
existing fragile-walled house culture are two: The terraced architecture
results from one house being constructed above another, the kiva or
subterranean ceremonial room being separated or slightly removed from the
secular houses.
An explanation of the origin of the terraced pueblo is evident. This form
of house implies a limited site or a congestion of houses on a limited
area. An open plain presents no limitation in lateral construction;
there is plenty of room to expand in all directions to accommodate the
enlargement which results as a settlement increases in population. In
a cave conditions are otherwise; expansion is limited. When the floor
of the cavern is once covered with rooms the only additions which can
possibly be made must be vertically. In protection lies the cause of the
development of a terraced architecture such as the pueblos show, for the
early people constructed their fragile-walled habitations in a cavern,
and as an enlargement of their numbers occurred they were obliged to
construct the terraced pueblos called cliff-dwellings, with rooms closely
approximated and constructed in terraces. In the course of time these
cliff-dwellers moved out of their caverns into the river valleys or to
the mesa summits, carrying with them the terraced architecture, which,
born in caverns, survived in their new environment. This explanation
is of course hypothetical, but not wholly without a basis in fact, for
we find survivals of the prepuebloan architecture scattered throughout
the Southwest, especially on the periphery of the terraced house area,
as well as in the area itself. The ancient terraced house architecture
is confined to a limited area, but around its ancient border are people
whose dwellings are characterized by fragile-walled architecture. These
are the survivals of the prepuebloan culture.
The environmental conditions along the San Juan and its tributaries
in Colorado and New Mexico render it a particularly favorable culture
center from which the pure pueblo type may have originated, and although
observations have not yet gone far enough to prove that here was the
place of origin of the unit type, and therefore of pueblo culture, there
are strong indications that a fable of the Pueblos, that they came from
the caves in the north, is not without legendary foundation so far as
their origin is concerned.
The term “cliff-dwelling,” once supposed to indicate a distinct stage
of development, refers only to the site and is a feature inadequate for
classification or chronology. All cliff-dwellings do not belong to the
same structural type. There is little similarity save in site between
Spruce-tree House on the Mesa Verde, and Montezuma Castle in the Verde
Valley; the former belongs to the “pure pueblo type,” the latter to
another class of buildings related to “compounds” of the tributaries of
the Gila and Salt River valleys.