Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/335

 KIDDER] HISTORIC RUINS IN SAN JUAN VALLEY, N. M.

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��and by the steepness of the cliffs, while from the mesas they are protected by high defensive walls without openings. None of the groups appear to have contained more than twenty ground-floor rooms. In addition to the normal pueblo-type rooms, there are within the defense walls of each settlement a number of ruined log structures closely resembling modern Navajo hogans (fig. I7). 1 The masonry of the stone-built rooms and of the defense walls is poor, the construction being of irregular blocks of sandstone, seldom carefully shaped and only vaguely coursed (fig. 18). The interiors of rooms, however, where protected by roofs still intact, are neatly and smoothly coated with white plaster. Door-ways are relatively large. In one house there was noted a fireplace of the "hood" type, 2 a feature not found, as far as I know, in any prehistoric ruin. Many of the roofs of the rooms are still in place and show very clearly the use of metal axes. The cut surfaces are such as could not possibly have been made with any kind of stone implement ; there were also found a number of heavy hewn planks of a type quite un- known in pre-Columbian buildings of the Southwest. The amount of

WOod Used throughout these dwell-

ings is indeed remarkable and is

doubtless due to the possession of efficient cutting tools. In pre- historic buildings most roofs are made of slim poles, reeds, or bark, supported by two or three heavy beams; in these rooms, on the other hand, the roofs are of good-sized logs or hewn planks laid side by side (fig. 18), a process which would have involved an enormous amount of labor if stone axes had been employed for felling and trimming. Further evidence that these buildings are

1 This plan is drawn from memory, the field notes having been lost; it is only meant to show the relation to each other of the houses, hogans, and defense wall.

2 See Victor Mindeleff, "A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola," Eighth Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 169 and fig. 66. The Gober- nador example is identical with the left-hand specimen there figured.

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FIG. 17. Sketch-plan of Rum II, Gob- ernador Canon.

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