Page:Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.djvu/251

 of council, and for the performance of their religious rites, are still found at all the present occupied pueblos in New Mexico. There are six at Taos, three at each house, and they are partly sunk in the ground by an excavation. They are entered through a trap-doorway in the roof, the descent being by a ladder.

Outside the front wall closing the court, and about thirty feet distance therefrom, are the remains of a low wall crossing the entire front and extending beyond it. The end structures were about sixty-five feet long by forty feet wide, while at the center was a smaller structure, fifty-four feet long by eighteen wide. All its parts were connected. It was evidently erected for defensive purposes; but it is impossible to make out its character from the remains. One wing is several feet longer than the other, and the wall on the court side is about twenty feet longer than the opposite exterior wall, thus showing that they used no exact measurements.

There were no fire-places with chimneys in this structure. There are none in the ruins in Yucatan and Central America. It is a fair inference, therefore, that chimneys were entirely unknown to the aborigines at the time of their discovery. They have since that time been adopted into the old pueblo houses from American or Spanish sources. They are placed in one corner of the room. We saw recently at Taos two chimneys and two fire-places in one and the same room, one for cooking and the other for a fire to warm the room; proof conclusive that they were not to the chimney born. They were in an apartment of one of the principal chiefs

In a number of rooms are recesses like niches left in the wall, about two feet six inches wide and high, and about eighteen inches deep. These furnished places to set household articles in, in the place of a mantel or shelf. We afterwards saw niches precisely similar at Taos, and thus used.

It remains to consider the number of rooms or apartments contained in this great edifice. It is plain that it was built in the terraced form, the second story set back from the first, the third from the second, and so on to the last, which was a single row of apartments, on the top somewhere, but not necessarily on the back side. Pueblos were not entirely uniform in this respect. The edifice at Taos recedes in front and rear and even upon the sides. This may have been built in the same way, but it can neither