CONCLUSIONS

In the preceding pages the author has considered several different

types of buildings, which, notwithstanding their variety in forms, have

much in common and can be interpreted as indicating an identical phase

of pueblo development. A comparative study of their distribution shows

us that they occur in a well-defined geographical area. In comparison

with stone buildings in other parts of the Southwestern States, this

phase shows superior masonry. It is considered as chronologically

antedating the historic epoch and post-dating an earlier, and as yet

not clearly defined, phase out of which it sprung in the natural

evolution from simple to complex forms.

These buildings express the communal thought of the builders, since

they were constructed by groups of people rather than by individuals.

Architecture representing the thoughts of many minds is conservative,

or less liable to innovation or departure from prescribed forms and

methods. These community houses express the thought of men in groups

at different times, and, so far as archeology teaches, are the best

exponents of what we call contemporary social conditions, while

pottery and other small portable objects, being products of individual

endeavor, furnish little on social organization, or general cultural

conditions of communities. Although determination of cultural areas

built on identity of pottery often coincides with those determined

by buildings, this is not always the case. Specialized culture

areas determined by highly conventionalized designs on ceramics are

localized, more numerous, and as a rule more modern. Hence a culture

area determined by architectural features may include several subareas

determined by pottery.

The author has thought it possible to differentiate two distinct epochs

or phases of house building in the upper part of the San Juan drainage,

viz. the early and the middle stages of development. There are included

in the early condition certain crude architectural efforts similar

to the non-Pueblos represented in regions adjoining the Pueblo area.

This early condition, though not clearly defined, is beginning to be

revealed by intensive studies of the so-called slab house dwellings

and isolated brush houses. Evidences of this stage have been found

in several localities, as on McElmo Bluff, or combined with walls of

what may be called true pueblo buildings. The differences between some

of the buildings of the early stage and those of the aborigines in

southern California, or of the Utes and Shoshonean tribes, are slight;

resemblances which point to relations are not considered in detail.

From their advance in house building, it has been commonly stated

that the Pueblo people were either derived from Mexican tribes or, as

was customary in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to suppose,

their descendants had made their way south and developed into the more

advanced Mexican culture as the Aztecs. These conclusions are not

supported by comparison with available architectural data observed

among these two peoples. The basal error is the mistake in considering

the earth houses of the Gila the same as pueblos. The habitations of

the Gila compounds were structurally different from pueblos, and their

sanctuaries or ceremonial rooms had not the same form or relation to

the dwellings. The Gila compounds are allied to Mexican buildings; but

there is little in common between them and pure pueblos. The same is

true of the type of stone dwellings on the Verde, Tonto, and Little

Colorado. Certain likenesses exist between the Casas Grandes of the

Gila and those of Mexico, although little relationship exists between

the temples or ceremonial buildings of the valley of Mexico and the

Casas Grandes of the Gila. The architecture of the Pueblos and the

Aztecs is very different; the habitations of Mexican tribes resemble

those of the Gila. The forms[55] of ceremonial chambers differ, one

being rectangular mounds or pyramids, the other circular, generally

subterranean.

[55] Temples of Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent Sun God, are circular

buildings like towers.

Rather than seek the origin of the house builders of the San Juan,

or the parent Pueblos, from Mexican sources, the author believes

the custom of building stone houses in the pueblo region was not

derived from any locality not now included in the pueblo area, but

it developed as an autochthonous growth, the earliest stages as well

as the most complex forms being of local origin. Incoming Indians

may have introduced ideas of foreign birth but they did not bring

in the mason’s craft. That custom developed in the Southwest, where

we find the whole series from a single stone-house or a cave with

walls closing the entrance to the most highly developed architectural

production north of Mexico. There are cliff-dwellings in many other

localities in the world but there are nowhere, except in the region

here considered, cliff-dwellings with circular kivas constructed on

this unique plan. It is generally supposed that a type of room called

“small house” was the predecessor of the multiple community dwelling

throughout the Southwest. This type, defined as a simple four-walled,

one story building with a flat roof, is widely spread in New Mexico

and Arizona. The strongest arguments in favor of its greater antiquity

are possibly its simplicity of form and the character of accompanying

ceramics—corrugated, black-and-white, and red pottery. Characteristic

small houses of the Mesa Verde and McElmo Canyon belong to the same

type of pueblo as the largest extensive villages which are more

complicated than the so-called small house. It is what the author

has called the pure type which is structurally different from the

“small house,” the so-called archaic form of the mixed pueblos of the

Rio Grande. This unit type is likewise unlike the small house of the

Little Colorado, including those of the Zuñi Valley and the Hopi Wash,

although the Hopi kivas show the influence of the Mesa Verde culture

in the persistence of the ceremonial opening in the floor called the

sipapu.

A cluster of small houses or the village such as we find at Mummy

Lake on the Mesa Verde is composed of several scattered members, each

containing for the religious and secular life the “pure type” rooms

constructed on the same plan. In a village like the Aztec Spring House

several unit buildings are united, forming one community house larger

than the rest, which was the dominant one of the village, the remaining

houses being smaller and scattered. Aztec Spring, Mitchell Spring, and

Mud Spring villages show a similar consolidation of units with outlying

smaller houses, and the number of units in such a union is believed

to be indicated by the number of circular rooms, or kivas. Thus, four

kivas might be supposed to indicate four consolidated social units.

The complete concentration of several unit pueblos into one or more

large communal buildings[56] is also found in several cases in the

area we have studied, but we must look to the great ruin at Aztec or

those on the Chaco Canyon for examples of almost complete amalgamation.

Thus these large pueblos where an almost complete consolidation has

occurred have resulted from a fusion or condensation of what might

have formerly been a rambling village composed of several separate

units. This clustering of small separated houses in a village is not

peculiar to the San Juan but exists elsewhere in the Southwest, as in

the Rio Grande region, where, however, the structure of each component

small house is different. These separate mounds do not indicate the

unit type as defined, and the Rio Grande pueblo of modern date has its

kiva separated from the house masses, which have grouped themselves

in rectangular lines or rooms surrounding courts. There are, perhaps,

examples in this region where a circular kiva is found embedded in

house masses, but these are so few in number that they may possibly be

regarded as incorporate survivals due to acculturation.

In the Gila Valley compounds, as Casa Grande, and on the Little

Colorado, the unit type is unknown. Several blocks of buildings on the

Gila are surrounded by a rectangular wall which is wanting in ruins of

the Little Colorado and its tributaries. Here one of the units may be

enlarged, following in some respects the conditions at Aztec Spring

Ruin. A surrounding wall also appears in some of the Pueblo villages

and pueblos, but when we compare one of the units of a Casa Grande

compound with that of a Montezuma Valley village, we find little in

common, the main difference, so far as form is concerned, being the

absence of a circular kiva.[57] There is nothing in a Gila Valley

compound we can structurally call a circular kiva, and no morphological

equivalent of the circular kiva in ruins on the tributaries of the Salt

and Gila. On the horizon of the Gila culture area there are no circular

kivas, due to acculturation. There are rooms analogous to kivas used

for ceremonials at Hopi and Zuñi, but they are not true kivas as

we have interpreted them in the San Juan area. Both Hopi and Zuñi

are composite people and have elements derived from Gila and Pueblo

influences, but neither belong to the pure type in the sense the author

defines it.

[56] The likeness of the Mesa Verde cliff-houses to the pueblos of

Chaco Canyon was long ago suggested by Nordenskiöld. The excavation of

Far View House proved that suggestion to be true.

[57] This subject is treated at length in my report on Casa Grande in

the Twenty-eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology.

The author has attempted to show that the structure of the houses

whose clustering composes villages in the Montezuma Valley is the

same as that of Far View House of the Mummy Lake village on top of

Mesa Verde; and that these architectural resemblances are close enough

to indicate that the villages of the two localities were inhabited by

people of the same general culture. He has proved that the pure type

of such a village as shown in Far View House was constructed on the

same plan as a cliff-dwelling, notwithstanding one is built in the

open, the other in a cave. The geographic extension of this type has

been traced into Utah. Ruined pueblos on the Chaco Canyon or at Aztec

on the Animas, which is geographically nearer the Mesa Verde, are

more concentrated but indicate the same culture. Renewed research is

necessary to determine the southern and western extension of the pure

type; the northern and eastern horizon is fairly well known.

Granting that the great ruins on the Chaco Canyon belong to the same

people as those on Mesa Verde, the question arises, Which buildings

are the most ancient, those on the Mesa Verde or those on the Chaco?

A correct answer to this question should reveal the cradle of the

culture indicated by the pure or prehistoric type of pueblo. The author

believes that the pure pueblo culture originated in the northern part

of the area and migrated southward to the Chaco Valley in prehistoric

times, ultimately affecting the people of the Rio Grande, where

sedentary people no doubt lived before written history of the area

began. The result was a mixture; the mixed population are the modern

Pueblos.

In the great cliff-houses of the Mesa Verde and the extensive pueblos

of the McElmo we find towers combined with pure types of pueblos,

either simple or complex. In the Chaco ruins these towers are not found

in this combination. To this may be added the great house type of the

McElmo, also absent in the Chaco. Here there appears to be an essential

difference on which the author ventures a suggestion, but which future

research must elucidate.

If this pure type originated in the southern tributaries of the San

Juan as the Chaco and migrated to the northern we would expect in the

latter more distinctly southern objects, as shell ornaments, turquoise

mosaics, and a great variety of pottery of a southern type.

The pure or unit type is believed to be autochthonous in the San

Juan Basin and characteristic of a middle phase of architectural

development, the highest north of Mexico. It is self-centered and has

preserved its characteristics over an extensive area, influencing

regions far beyond.

The evolution of this type took place in the region mentioned before

the fifteenth century of the Christian era. Traces of its influence

have persisted into the country of mixed pueblos down to the present

time, but the architectural skill has deteriorated and shows evidence

of acculturation[58] from sources outside the San Juan area where it

originated.

One word in regard to the adjectives, prehistoric and historic,

applied to southwestern ruins. They are relative ones and obtained

from data somewhat diverse in character. Casa Grande on the Gila was

called a ruin when first seen by the European. It was inhabited in

prehistoric times. From documentary evidence the historian learns

that certain other buildings were not inhabited at the advent of the

Spaniards, and if their statements are trustworthy these also are

prehistoric. Legends of modern Pueblos claim that certain other ruins

were inhabited houses of their ancestors before the coming of the white

man. The author sees no good reason to throw this evidence out of court

without investigation because some of the incidents in it betray late

introduction. Many other ruins are classified as prehistoric from the

purely negative, but not decisive, evidence that no objects of European

make have been found in them. The ruin Sun Temple, on the Mesa Verde,

is considered prehistoric from the fact that a tree with over 360

annual rings of growth was found growing on top of its highest wall. We

are justified in calling this a prehistoric ruin.

The evidences that villages, cliff-dwellings, castles and towers,

and other types considered in this article antedate the advent of

the white man are as follows: No historian has recorded an inhabited

building of this form in this or other regions; no objects of European

manufacture have been found in them, and the buildings and pottery

which characterize them are different from those of any inhabited when

the Spanish entered the Southwest.

The complex, which is thought to be the highest form of pueblo

architecture, is composed of the following elements united: (1) Several

“pure types”[59] representing a religio-sociological complexion of

the inhabitants; (2) towers of various forms—round, D-shaped, and

rectangular; (3) the great houses; (4) unit type in cave. In Cliff

Palace these four types occur united in a pueblo built in a natural

cave; in Mud Spring Ruin two and possibly three of these types are

found in one open-air village, more spread out as site permits. In

Aztec Spring and Mitchell Spring pueblos the arrangement is more

defined. In the cluster at the head of South Fork of Square Tower

Canyon we have all the elements united in Hovenweep House and Hovenweep

Castle. Unit type House shows the single-unit type with tower near by;

in Twin Towers we have the great house with cave pueblo and towers

separated. Several other towers isolated from other types also occur.

[58] These acculturation modifications due to Hispanic influences in

modern pueblos are too well marked to need more than a mention.

[59] The author uses the words “pure type” instead of “unit type” as a

general term to denote “one-unit types,” “two-unit types,” “three-unit

types,” etc.

The Holly Canyon group shows the types separated. The great house is

represented by Holly Castle; the towers are situated on huge bowlders.

The unit type of this group is represented by Holly House, the

foundation of part of which has fallen, covering the ruins of another

pueblo of the unit type formerly in the cave below.

The Hackberry group is also composed of three elemental types

separated; the great house is represented by Hackberry House, the unit

type by the cliff-dwelling below and by the pueblo on the opposite side

of the gulch, and the towers by isolated towers.

A similar analysis may be made of other ruins. Sometimes the component

types are united; often one type only occurs, the others being absent.

The union of all is best marked in the northern tributaries of the San

Juan, as at Aztec, and in the southern tributaries, as at Chaco Canyon

and Chelly Canyon. These pueblos, whether in the open or in caves,

belong to the pure or concentrated multiple unit type.

Some light may be shed on the probable process of consolidation of the

individual units of a community house by a comparative study of the

pueblos on the East Mesa of the Hopi. Hano, for instance, was settled

by a group of Tanoan clans about 1710 A. D. The list of Hano clans that

originally came to the East Mesa is known from legends and the present

localization of their survivors has been indicated in the author’s

article on “The Sun’s Influence on the Form of Hopi Pueblos.”[60]

In 1890 Hano was composed of four blocks of rooms, each housing one

or more clans. Earlier there were six, one of which had fallen into

disuse, a few less than the traditional number of clans. When the

colonists arrived, they settled near Coyote Spring, the houses of which

are now covered with drifted sand, but when they constructed their

village on the mesa at the head of the trail each house of a cluster

housed a clan. Increase in population, both internal and external, led

to the union and enlargement of these houses so that they inclosed

a central plaza. A similar growth has taken place in Sichomovi, the

pueblo halfway between Walpi and Hano; first single houses, then rows

of houses with terraces on the south and east sides. Some of the

original houses have been deserted and rebuilt nearer the others. Thus

at Hano the Katcina clan house was north and east of the chief kiva but

is now in the east row.

[60] Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. viii, no. 1, 1906.

In the same way we may suppose that in a consolidation of a community

dwelling several units may have drawn together and united. There is

evidence of a union of this kind in many ruins in the Southwest.

The data here published should not be interpreted to mean that the

author regards the builders of the towers and great houses here

described as evidences of a race other than the Indians. Indeed he

believes that in both blood and culture they have left survivals

among the modern Pueblos. He also does not hold that as a whole

they necessarily belonged to a radically different phase of culture,

notwithstanding the buildings they constructed show a greater variety

of form and masonry superior to that of their descendants.

The evidences are cumulative that there existed and disappeared in

a wide geographical area of the Southwest a people whose buildings

differed so much from those of any other area in North America that the

area in which they occur may be designated as a characteristic one.

The variety and type of buildings have a bearing on social

organization. A large building composed of many units is probably but

not necessarily later in time than a single house; an isolated single

house would probably be of earlier construction than a collection of

several single houses of the same character compactly arranged in a

village; a complete consolidation of several houses of such a village

into a community house would naturally be more modern than a group of

isolated single houses.

City blocks postdate hamlets. Between a stage indicated by single

houses and one characterized by consolidated building, there is a

phase in which the buildings are grouped in clusters and are not

united. We may theoretically suppose that the single house was

inhabited by one social unit as a clan or family. As the food quest

became more intensified and defense more urgent, social units, as

indicated by single houses, would be brought together, and as the

population increased the amalgamation would be more complete. This

social organization, in the beginning loose, in the course of time

would become more homogeneous, and as it did so the union of these

separate social units would have been closer; and if we combine with

that tendency the powerful stimulus of protection, we can readily see

how a compact form of architecture characteristic of the buildings here

described was brought about. The element of defense in the villages

with scattered houses does not appear to have been very important,

but might be adduced to explain the consolidation of these into large

community houses.

If the growth of the large pueblos has followed the lines above

indicated, and if each unit type indicates a social unit as well, we

necessarily have in this growth of the community house the story of the

social evolution of the Pueblo people. Clans or social units at first

isolated later joined each other, intermarriage always tending to make

the population more homogeneous. The social result of the amalgamation

of clans seeking common defense would in time be marked. The inevitable

outcome would be a breaking down of clan priesthoods or clan religions

and the formation of fraternities of priesthoods recruited from several

clans. This in turn would lead to a corresponding reduction and

enlargement of ceremonial rooms remaining. Two kivas suffice for the

ceremonies of the majority of the Rio Grande pueblos; but Cliff Palace

with a population of the same size had 23 and Spruce-tree House, a much

smaller cliff pueblo, had 8.

One can not fail to notice a similarity in sites of some of the great

houses of the McElmo to neighboring cliff habitations and a like

relation of Sun Temple to the cliff-dwellings in Fewkes Canyon in the

Mesa Verde. Possibly the purpose of these great houses and Sun Temple

was identical. Some of the great houses were probably granaries and Sun

Temple may have been intended partly for a like use. No indications of

remains of stored corn have been observed in any of these buildings,

but Castañeda[61] speaks of a village of subterranean granaries

(“silos”) in the Rio Grande country, which is instructive in this

connection.

[61] Fourteenth Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., pt. 1, p. 523. This

village is spoken of as “lately destroyed;” in other words it was a

ruin in 1540.