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Hopi legends of clans whose ancestors once peopled the Sikyatki ruin, but are now absorbed in the Walpi population, recount that in their western migration they built, near a deep canyon, a village which they named Fire House. These legends were first obtained from the Hopi by A. M. Stephen and recorded by Victor Mindeleff[3] who located Fire House ruin over 20 years ago. His valuable description and ground plan, the only account heretofore printed, is graphic and substantially correct. He calls attention to the characteristic or salient points which distinguish Fire House from ruined buildings in the Hopi reservation, especially its circular or oval form and the massive, well-constructed masonry of its walls.
The exact dimensions of Fire House (pl. 1) can be obtained only by excavation, but it is approximately 94 by 79 feet in greater and lesser diameter. Some parts of the outside wall are now 10 feet high, and its thickness averages 3 feet, but if the stones accumulated about its base were removed the height would be 4 or 5 feet greater. There are evidences of an external passage-way through the outer wall indicating a central court. Within the enclosure there are many indications of rooms some of which appear to be circular, but the interior is so filled with fallen walls that an accurate ground plan could not be drawn without extensive excavation. The stones forming the wall are, as a rule, cubical blocks, well dressed and accurately fitted, showing good masonry.
Two of the largest of the wall stones are 5 feet long and 3 feet wide, with an estimated thickness of 2 feet. As it would take several men to carry one of these stones from the quarry to its place in the wall, they might be called megaliths.
The fine spring at the base of the cliff below Fire House was evidently used by the inhabitants for drinking water, and the trail from here to a gateway in the outer wall is still well marked. As one climbs from the spring to the top of the plateau the way passes between the cliff and a flat stone set on edge and pierced with a hole about 5 feet above the pathway. This stone was evidently a means of defense; behind it the warriors may have stood peering down upon their enemies through this orifice. Near it are pictographs of unknown meaning.
The circular form of Fire House (fig. 1) and its well-constructed surrounding wall are more characteristic of eastern than of western pueblo masonry. This round type[4] is found from southern Colorado on the north to the neighborhood of the Zuñi settlements on the south; it has not been reported from the region on both banks of the Rio Grande. Roughly speaking, circular ruins correspond, in their distribution, with a line extending north-south midway between the eastern and western sections of the pueblo area—a limitation that can hardly be regarded as fortuitous. Its meaning we may not be able to correctly interpret, but the fact calls for an explanation. The type is old, the modern pueblos having abandoned this form. The area where circular ruins occur corresponds, in a way, to that inhabited in part by the modern Keres, none of whom, however, now dwell in circular towns. Provisionally we shall consider the Keresan pueblos as the nearest of all descendants of those who once inhabited villages of circular or oval form, a generalization substantiated by the existence of words of Keres language in many old ceremonies among all the pueblos.
There is a sharp line of demarcation between the zone of circular ruins and that inhabited by the pueblos along the Rio Grande, but on the western border these circular buildings extend as far west as the Hopi country.
In attempting to connect the oval form of Fire House with the rectangular form of Sikyatki we are met with the difficulty of architectural dissimilarity. Fire House is circular, Sikyatki is rectangular. If the descendants of the inhabitants of Fire House later constructed Sikyatki, why did they make this radical change in the form of their dwellings? They may have constructed a habitation en route before they reached Sikyatki, and this village may have had a form like Fire House. On the Hopi plateau above Sikyatki there are two conical mounds visible for a long distance as one approaches East Mesa from the mouth of Keam’s Canyon, which should be considered in this connection. These mounds, called Kükütcomo, are connected in Hopi legends with those of Sikyatki at the foot of the mesa on which they stand, and the buildings they cover are said once to have been inhabited by the Coyote (Fire?) clan of eastern kinship. They have not been excavated completely but several rooms have been opened up enough to show that they are round towers or kivas with rooms annexed to their bases. They resemble, in fact, circular ruins and may well have been the home of some of the people who abandoned Fire House. They must be considered in discussing the reliability of the legend, for they are the only circular houses yet reported from the Hopi country. The reason why this form of house was abandoned can not be determined with any certainty, even though some of the clans from Fire House may have built the round towers above Sikyatki. The only other round room known to me in the Hopi country, besides Kükütcomo, is one in a ruin in the Oraibi Valley mentioned by Victor Mindeleff (op. cit.). The reference is very meager and on account of its exceptional character should be verified. Assuming the observation as correct it may be said that this so-called circular room lies embedded in a mass of rectangular rooms and not as kivas in the inhabited Hopi pueblos in the plazas free from houses.
The legends of the Snake people of Walpi who came from the San Juan near Navaho Mountain, probably Betatakin or Kitsiel, distinctly state that their ancestors built both round and square or “five-cornered” houses. The rooms referred to are believed to be kivas, since another legend declares the earliest snake ceremonies were performed in circular rooms. After visiting Fire House the author desired greatly to find other oval ruins between it and the zone of circular ruins, but his efforts were not successful.
After having visited Fire House and verified to his satisfaction that it was a former home of a Hopi clan, as recounted in legends of that clan, the author sought still further evidence of an archeological character in the region east of Fire House, as recorded in migration stories. The area between Fire House and Jemez is extensive and rich in ruins of all kinds, open air pueblos predominating. It is too great a task to visit all of these ruins during one summer, and the work accomplished in a single month seems small, but a beginning was made in the hope that the cumulative work of many summers will make it important.
The farther we recede from the Hopi country the more obscure become their clan trails, and the more difficult it is to identify the localities mentioned in legends. The inhabitants of some of the pueblos now in ruins between Jemez and Hopi, may have died out without leaving any representatives; others, when they left their village, may have gone to Zuñi or elsewhere. In the country east of Fire House, as far as Fort Defiance, several ruins were observed, but none of them seemed to show close archeological likeness to the oval Fire House, or to corroborate the traditions of the descendants of the clans now absorbed into the population of Walpi. A large ruin near Ganado was visited, and an imperfect sketch made of its ground plan. Its walls are so much worn down by the encroachment of the stream on one side, and the road on the other, that little could be learned from superficial examination. Although it is not a circular ruin like Fire House, yet an extended excavation might reveal some interesting details of ceramic symbolism[5] which would be important.
Two cliff houses of small size were visited in Nashlini Canyon which appear to be those casually mentioned by Dr. Prudden,[6] but, so far as known, they have not been described. This canyon is one of the southern branches of the Chelly Canyon, and although not very extensive shares with it many characteristics. A trip can be made into it by automobile as far as the first cliff house.
The ruin most easily visited (fig. 2) in this canyon is on a comparatively low shelf in a shallow cave, 40 feet high, a few feet above the top of the talus. Like many other cliff houses it is divided into two parts, called the upper and the lower, according to the level they occupy. The lower is practically buried under rocks fallen from the walls of the upper house. The front wall of the upper part is well preserved and closely follows the contour of the low ridge on which it stands. The masonry is fairly good, but the floors of the rooms are buried under a thick deposit of sheep droppings, solidly packed, showing that the enclosures have been used secondarily as corrals for these domesticated animals. The partition walls of the rooms end on the vertical wall of the precipice, the face of the precipice serving as their rear wall. It thus happens that there is no recess between the back of the rooms and the rear of the cave, as commonly found in cliff dwellings. Circular rooms are absent in the upper part of this ruin, and kivas, if any, must be sought buried under the accumulated débris of the lower part. The front wall of the upper house measures 64 feet, and can be traced throughout its whole extent. At one end of the ruin there are four narrow rooms separated by partitions, each containing a grinding bin, where maize (corn) was reduced to meal. The remaining rooms are roofless, plastered, and evidently used as dwellings. In the lower series of rooms, buried beneath a mass of fallen rocks, are circular depressions, which may be ceremonial rooms; but no excavations were made in these depressions and their significance is unknown.
Another cliff house, a few miles farther up in the canyon, is almost hidden in an inaccessible recess of the cliff, but so high that it was not visited.
On the dizzy top of a cliff overlooking the canyon, near the second ruin, artificial walls were observed but not visited. An Indian guide claimed that they were towers; they are certainly so situated as to permit a wide view up and down the canyon. These walls are mentioned by Dr. Prudden.
On the walls of the canyon not far from the first ruin there is an instructive group of pictographs (fig. 3) representing human beings, some painted red, others white, standing in three lines. The majority have triangular bodies with shoulders prolonged into arms at right angles to the body; the forearms hanging from their extremities, as is common in this region. On each side of the head are lateral extensions recalling the whorls in which Hopi maidens still dress their hair, a custom that has passed out of use among the other pueblos, but is still preserved in personifying supernatural beings called Katcina maids. It appears to have been a universal custom of the unmarried women among the cliff dwellers to dress their hair in this fashion. These figures are arranged in three rows; three individuals are depicted in the upper row, four in the middle, and two in the lower row painted white, unlike the others. Below the figures are rows of dots and several parallel bars accompanied by a number of zigzag figures like lightning symbols. On the supposition that the red figures represent Indian men or women, the white figures may be white men and the dots and bars an aboriginal count, the whole representing participants in some past event.
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