The ruins of the Verde region closely resemble those of Tusayan, and
seem to support the claim of the Hopi that some of their ancestors
formerly lived in that region. This is true more especially of the
villages of the plains and mesa tops, for neither cave-houses nor
cavate dwellings are found in the immediate vicinity of the inhabited
Tusayan pueblos. The objects taken from the ruins are similar to those
found universally over the pueblo area, and from them alone we can not
say more than that they probably indicate the same substratum of
culture as that from which modern pueblo life with its many
modifications has sprung.
The symbolism of the decorations on the fragments of pottery found in
the Verde ruins is the same as that of the ancient pueblos of the
Colorado Chiquito, and it remains to be shown whether the ancestors of
these were Hopi or Zuñi. I believe it will be found that they were
both, or that when the villages along the Colorado Chiquito[29] were
abandoned part of the inhabitants went to the mesas of Tusayan and
others migrated farther up the river to the Zuñi villages.
Two centers of distribution of cliff houses occur in our Southwest:
those of the upper tributaries of the Colorado in the north and the
cliff houses of the affluents of the Salt and the Gila in the south.
The watershed of the Rio Grande is, so far as is known, destitute of
this kind of aboriginal dwellings. Between the two centers of
distribution lie the pueblos of the Little Colorado and its
tributaries, the home of the ancestors of the Hopi and the Zuñi. The
many resemblances between the cliff houses of the north and those of
the south indicate that the stage of culture of both was uniform, and
probably the same conditions of environment led both peoples to build
similar dwellings. All those likenesses which can be found between the
modern Zuñi and the Hopi to the former cliff peoples of the San Juan
region in the north, apply equally to those of the upper Salado and
the Gila and their tributaries to the south; and so far as arguments
of a northern origin of either, built on architectural or
technological resemblances, are concerned, they are not conclusive,
since they are also applicable to the cliff peoples of the south. The
one important difference between the northern and the southern tier of
cliff houses is the occurrence of the circular kiva, which has never
been reported south of the divide between the Little Colorado and the
Gila-Salado drainage. If a kiva was a feature in southern cliff
houses, which I doubt, it appears to have been a rectangular chamber
similar to a dwelling room. The circular kiva exists in neither the
modern Hopi nor the Zuñi pueblos, and it has not been found in
adjacent Tusayan ruins; therefore, if these habitations were
profoundly influenced by settlers from the north, it is strange that
such a radical change in the form of this room resulted. The arguments
advanced that one of the two component stocks of the Zuñi, and that
the aboriginal, came from the cliff peoples of the San Juan, are not
conclusive, although I have no doubt that the Zuñi may have received
increment from that direction.
Cushing has, I believe, furnished good evidence that some of the
ancestors of the Zuñi population came from the south and southwest;
and that some of these came from pueblos now in ruins on the Little
Colorado is indicated by the great similarity in the antiquities of
ancient Zuñi and the Colorado Chiquito ruins. Part of the Patki people
of the Hopi went to Zuñi and part to Tusayan, from the same abandoned
pueblo, and the descendants of this family in Walpi still recognize
this ancient kinship; but I do not know, and so far as can be seen
there is no way of determining, the relative antiquity of the pueblos
in Zuñi valley and those on the lower Colorado.
The approximate date of the immigration of the Patki people to Tusayan
is as yet a matter of conjecture. It may have been in prehistoric
times, or more likely at a comparatively late period in the history of
the people. It seems well substantiated, however, that when this
Water-house people joined the other Hopi, the latter inhabited pueblos
and were to all intents a pueblo people. If this hypothesis be a
correct one, the Snake, Horn, and Bear peoples, whom the southern
colonists found in Tusayan, had a culture of their own similar to that
of the people from the south. Whence that culture came must be
determined by studies of the component clans of the Hopi before the
arrival of the Patki people.[30]
The origin of the round shape of the estufa, according to Nordenskiöld
(p. 168), is most easily explained on the hypothesis that it is a
reminiscence of the cliff-dwellers' nomadic period. "There must be
some very cogent reason for the employment of this shape," he says,
"for the construction of a cylindrical chamber within a block of
rectangular rooms involves no small amount of labor. We know how
obstinately primitive nations cling to everything connected with their
religious ideas. Then what is more natural than the retention, for the
room where religious ceremonies were performed, of the round shape
characteristic of the original dwelling place, the nomadic hut? This
assumption is further corroborated by the situation of the hearth and
the structure of the roof of the estufa, when we find points of
analogy to the method employed by certain nomadic Indians in the
erection of their huts." This theory of the origin of the round form
of dwelling and its retention in the architecture of the kiva,
advanced by Nordenskiöld in 1893, has much in its favor, but the
rectangular form, which, so far as known, is the only shape of these
sacred rooms in the Tusayan region, is still unexplained. From
Castañeda's narrative of the Coronado expedition it appears that in
the middle of the sixteenth century the eastern pueblos had both
square and round estufas or kivas, and that these kivas belonged to
the men while the rooms of the pueblo were in the possession of the
women. The apparent reason why we find no round rooms or kivas in the
southern cliff houses and in Tusayan may be due to several causes.
Local conditions, including the character of the building sites on the
Hopi mesa, made square rooms more practical, or the nomadic stage was
so far removed that the form of the inclosure in which the ancients
held their rites had not been preserved. Moreover, some of the most
ancient and secret observances at Walpi, as the Flute ceremony, are
not performed in special kivas, but take place in ordinary living
rooms.
As in all the other ruins of Verde valley, circular kivas are absent
in the Red-rock country, and this fact, which has attracted the
attention of several observers, is, I believe, very significant.
Although as yet our knowledge of the cliff houses of the upper Gila
and Salado and their numerous tributaries is very fragmentary, and
generalization on that account unsafe, it may be stated provisionally
that no circular kivas have yet been found in any ruins of the
Gila-Salado watershed. This form of kiva, however, is an essential
feature of the cliff dwellings of Rio Colorado, especially of those
along its affluents in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico.
Roughly speaking, then, the circular kiva is characteristic of the
ruins of this region and of certain others in the valley of the Rio
Grande, where they still survive in inhabited pueblos.
Circular ruins likewise are limited in their distribution in the
Southwest, and it is an interesting fact that the geographic
distribution of ancient pueblos of this form is in a general way the
same as that of circular kivas. There are, of course, many exceptions,
but so far as I know these can readily be explained. No ruins of
circular dwellings occur in the Gila-Salado drainage area, where
likewise no circular kivas have been observed. Moreover, the circular
form of dwelling and kiva is distinctively characteristic of
prehistoric peoples east of Tusayan, and the few instances of their
occurrence on its eastern border can readily be explained as
extra-Hopi.
The explanation of these circular kivas advanced by Nordenskiöld and
the Mindeleffs, that they are survivals of round habitations of
nomads, has much to commend it; but whether sufficient or not, the
geographic limitation of these structures tells in favor of the
absence of any considerable migration of the prehistoric peoples of
the upper Colorado and Rio Grande watersheds southward into the
drainage area of the Gila-Salado. Had the migration been in that
direction it may readily be believed that the round kiva and the
circular form of dwelling would have been brought with it.
The round kiva has been regarded as a survival of the form of the
original homes of the nomad, when he became a sedentary agriculturist
by conquest and marriage.
The presence of rectangular kivas in the same areas in which round
kivas occur does not necessarily militate against this theory, nor
does it oblige us to offer an explanation of a necessarily radical
change in architecture if we would derive it from a circular form. It
would indeed be very unusual to find such a change in a structure
devoted to religious purposes where conservatism is so strong. The
rectangular kiva is the ancient form, or rather the original form; the
round kiva is not a development from it, but an introduction from an
alien people. It never penetrated southward of the Colorado and upper
Rio Grande drainage areas because the element which introduced it in
the north was never strong enough to influence the house builders of
the Gila-Salado and tributary valleys.