Page:Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.djvu/206

 the Pueblo Indians called estufas, or places where the people held their political and religious meetings."

The main building, Fig. 30, is two hundred and thirty-eight feet long, and the wing one hundred and seventy-four feet. It seems probable, from the symmetrical character of most of these structures, that the original plan contemplated an extension of the main building, the addition of another wing, to be followed by the connection of the wings with a wall, thus closing the court. These buildings were not all completed at once, but were extended and increased in the number of stories from generation to generation, as the people increased in numbers and prosperity. The plan upon which these houses were erected favored such extension. The great size of some of these structures can only be explained by the hypothesis of growth through long periods of time. The stone for building this pueblo v/as found quite near. Mr Jackson remarks that "on the side of the bluff facing the valley is an outcrop of a yellowish-gray sandstone, showing in some places a seam of from twelve to eighteen inches in thickness, where the rock breaks into thin slate-like layers. It was from this stratum that most of the material in the walls was obtained." He further remarks concerning the estufas: "In the northwest angle of the court are two circular rooms, or estufas, the best preserved one of which is built into the main building and forms a portion of it, while the other stands outside, but in juxtaposition, and is evidently a later and less perfect addition. They are each twenty-five feet in diameter. The inside walls are perfectly cylindrical, and in the case of the inner one are in good preservation for a height of about five feet. * * * There are no side apertures, so that light and access was probably obtained through the roof. These estufas, which figure so prominently in these ruins and in fact in all the ancient ruins extending southward from the basin of the Rio San Juan, are so identical in their structure, position, and evident uses with the similar ones in the pueblos now inhabited, that they indisputably connect one with the other, and show this region to have been covered at one time with a numerous population, of which the present inhabitants of the pueblos of Moki and of New Mexico are either the remnants or the descendants. * * * Beneath the ground plan [in Fig.