Station 3. In the corner of the court to your left are corn grinding
bins. Women knelt with their heels against the wall and ground corn,
dried nuts, berries and roots on the large flat stone, the metate, with
the small hand stone, the mano.
The circular room directly ahead of you is one of two found in this
dwelling. Circular rooms were not common but they have been found in
several ruins.
[Illustration: _The Second Court. Main street section._]
Note the passageway or “street” which provided access to rooms at the
back of the cave in this part of the dwelling.
[Illustration: _Ground plan of a kiva._]
Sipapu
Pilasters
Banquette
Firepit
Deflector
Ventilator Shaft
Step into the courtyard and look into the kiva. The name kiva is a
modern Hopi Indian word meaning ceremonial room. Judging by present day
Pueblo Indian custom, generally only men would be members of kiva
societies which performed religious ceremonies for bringing rain, good
crops and general well-being to the village. Women undoubtedly assisted
in some ceremonies. When no rituals were being held, the kiva probably
was used as a clubroom and workroom by men.
The _ventilator shaft_ brought fresh air into the kiva. The _deflector_
was a baffle to keep the air from blowing directly across the _firepit_
in the floor. The fire provided light and warmth. The _sipapu_
(see-pah-pooh) was a symbolic opening from the underworld of the gods
and spirits. The bench, or _banquette_, was a shelf or storage space.
The _pilasters_, of which there are generally six, were roof supports.
Entrance to the kiva was by means of a ladder through a hatchway in the
roof.
If you want to go into a kiva, climb down the ladder in front of the
next courtyard. Notice the cribbed roof. This is a restoration copied
from originals found in place in other ruins.
Station 4. Behind the rooms in this part of the dwelling is a large
enclosed area which was used as a trash room. The villagers also kept
some of their domesticated turkeys penned up in it. The main village
trash dump was the talus slope on which you are now standing.
The black stain on the cave roof is smoke.
Notice the wall decorations on the second floor room to the left. It was
made by plastering colored clay on the walls. Many rooms were once
decorated inside like this one.
[Illustration: _The Third Court_]
[Illustration: _Ground plan of Spruce Tree House_]
Refuse Room
Kiva (8)
Refuse Area
[Illustration: _Spruce Tree House about A.D. 1260. (Museum
diorama)_]
Station 5. Spruce Tree House 700 years ago was a thriving village. If
you could have visited it you would have seen women busily cooking over
firepits in the courtyards, others grinding corn, weaving baskets or
making pottery. Men who were not tending their mesa-top fields might
have been building a new room, making or mending their tools or
performing an age-old ceremony in one of the kivas. You would have seen
children playing and old people resting against the low wall across the
front of the dwelling as they basked in the warm sun dreaming of their
younger days. There would also be dogs and turkeys wandering through the
village and picking over the trash dump for bits to eat. Unfortunately,
this all came to an end shortly before A.D. 1300.
[Illustration: uncaptioned]
Compare the illustration with the dwelling to locate the following:
A. These are doorways. Some are T-shaped, some are rectangular, but we
don’t know why the two types. Notice that some of the doorways were
closed with stone slabs.
B. These original timbers supported a balcony as well as the floors in
the rooms. Balconies made it easy to get into the upper rooms. Balconies
and rooftops were reached by ladders.
C. Most of the cooking was done outside in the courtyards over firepits
like this one. Very few of the rooms had firepits in them.