MESA VERDE
Rules and Regulations
1920 		NPS Logo

SPRUCE TREE HOUSE.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION.

The total length of Spruce Tree House is 216 feet, its width at the widest part 89 feet. There were counted in the Spruce Tree House 114 rooms, the majority of which were secular, and 8 ceremonial chambers or kivas. Spruce Tree House was in places three stories high; the third-story rooms had no artificial roof, but the wall of the cave served that purpose. Several rooms, the walls of which are now two stories high, formerly had a third story1 above the second, but their walls have now fallen, leaving as the only indication of their former union with the cave lines destitute of smoke on the top of the cavern. Of the 114 rooms, at least 14 were uninhabited, being used as storage and mortuary chambers. If we eliminate these from the total number of rooms we have 100 inclosures which might have been dwellings. Allowing 4 inhabitants for each of these 100 rooms would give about 400 persons as an aboriginal population of Spruce Tree House. But it is probable that this estimate should be reduced, as not all the 100 rooms were inhabited at the same time, there being evidence that several of them had occupants long after others were deserted. Approximately, Spruce Tree House had a population not far from 350 people, or about 100 more than that of Walpi, one of the best-known Hopi pueblos.

1On the plan of Spruce Tree House, from a survey by Mr. S. G. Morley, the third story is indicated, by crosshatching, the second by parallel lines, and the first has no markings.

CLASSIFICATION OF ROOMS.

Visitors to Spruce Tree House will find that there are two or three types of rooms in the Mesa Verde cliff villages. One type is evidently a living room, rectangular or quadrilateral in shape, with well-plastered floor, in one corner of which is commonly a fireplace. Another type, called kivas, has a circular form, is subterranean, and, like all religious chambers, preserves ancient characters, which are highly instructive.

Sketch plan of Spruce Tree House.

SECULAR ROOMS.

The rooms of Spruce Tree House are topographically divided into two groups by a court or street, running east and west, situated about midway between the north and south ends of the village. This street is entered from the plaza in which kiva G is situated and has many fireplaces. In the northern division of the ruin there are five kivas1 and in the southern section three. The majority of the secular rooms, comprising the oldest, are situated in the northern division. The row of rooms bordering the street on the south end of the northern division contains some of the best walls in Spruce Tree House. The roofs and floors are well preserved, and the walls show the best masonry in the whole ruin. The varied coloring of the plaster indicates that it was done at different times. It may well have been that this was the most aristocratic part of the village; certainly the houses here were constructed by the most clever masons and are now the best preserved. Their roofs and floors are in as fine condition to-day as when the place was inhabited. They have lateral doorways and well-made windows opening into the street. Entrances through upper or second-floor doorways appear in some cases to have been accomplished by means of foot holes in the side of the wall, which are now visible. Notched logs were placed along the street to be used by visitors. The rooms are dark and were probably sleeping chambers, the fireplaces in the courts indicating that much of the cooking was done in the adjacent plaza and court.

1There is a numerical relationship between the population and the number of kivas which has not yet been satisfactorily worked out.

The rooms of Spruce Tree House are well furnished with doorways, both lateral and vertical, the latter being very few in number. Some of the lateral openings are rectangular in form, slightly narrowed above; others are T-shaped. Many examples of the latter have the lower part filled in with masonry, reducing them to rectangular openings, and a few are entirely walled in, shutting off all entrances, a circumstance that would indicate that these rooms were abandoned, while yet others were inhabited.

The sills of these doors which have a solid stone threshold are often much worn, showing frequent use. The lintels are commonly slabs of stone, but they may likewise be made of split sticks set in mortar. Similar sticks are likewise sometimes let into the side of the doorways. The tops of many of the openings were partially arched over with mud, making a semicircular jamb that holds in place the flat stone which closed the opening. To secure in place the stone slab which closed the entrance the inhabitant used a stick that was held in place by eyelets made of osiers, one on each side. One of these doors was restored in its original form.

The second tier of rooms of plaza D, shown by the projecting ends of rafters, had a balcony, a small section of which can still be seen at the north end. Long poles formerly extended above these projecting beams which they connected, and these poles supported wattlings and cedar bark covered with adobe. Along this platform the dwellers in rooms in the second story passed from doorway to doorway, and by it they were enabled to enter their own rooms. The evidences are that there were two balconies, one above another, at this point, but all traces of the floor of the highest of these except a few ends of rafters have disappeared. In a wall under this balcony, as was not uncommon in some cliff dwellings, there is found a stone projecting from its face, which served as a step to reach the lowest doorway.

In one corner of a room back of plaza H there is a stone box or closet, the sides of which are formed of slabs set upright, on the upper edges of which is luted in place a cover having a square hole cut in one corner. This stone is not level, but inclines slightly outward from the wall. The use of this closet is unknown. A somewhat similar stone bin occurs in the northeast corner of plaza C, but, unlike it, has no covering slab, and is situated in the corner of a plaza instead of a room. It seems natural to regard it as a corn bin. The meaning of the stone inclosure in one corner of plaza G is unknown.

CIRCULAR ROOM.

The most interesting room in the south division is circular and stands at the right of the visitor as he follows the street from kiva G to the rear of the cave. It would at first sight seem from the shape of this room and the number and arrangement of holes in its wall that it was a bastion for defense. But these orifices admit of an explanation quite different from portholes. They may be the openings through which the sun priest watched the setting sun to determine the times for ceremonies. This room is somewhat isolated from the others and is furnished with rectangular openings like windows in front and rear; but, as these openings are small and not easily passable, the probability is that the entrance was from above.

The ground outline of another circular room, which may possibly have been a tower, the existence of which escaped all previous observers, was traced at the south end of the ruin just beyond kiva H. From its position this room was believed to be a bastion for defense, so placed as to command the entrance to the village from its south end. The broken wall and fireplace of this room were repaired.

WARRIORS' ROOM.

One of the problematical rooms of Spruce Tree House lies in the northern division, back of plaza C, in the row east of its kiva. This small room has a lateral doorway, the sill—as are others—somewhat raised above the level of the plaza. The remarkable feature of this room is a banquette extending around its three sides, the remaining side, or that opposite the door, being the cliff or rear of the cave. This room resembles in certain particulars one in Cliff Palace, described by Nordenskiöld, but differs from his description in certain important details of structure. Its construction is so exceptional that one could hardly call it a living room, and it is too elaborately made for a storage chamber. There is a shallow vertical passageway in the south corner, near where the banquette joins the side of the cliff, which has some unknown meaning. Nordenskiöld, in discussing a similar room in the Cliff Palace, appears "to regard it as marking the transition to the rectangular estufa of the Moki Indians." As he points out, it differs "from the estufas in the absence of the characteristic passage and also of the six niches. Furthermore, they often contain several stories, and in every respect but the form resemble the rectangular rooms." It rarely happens that secular rooms are built above kivas; in fact, such a condition would be ceremonially an impossibility. The meeting places of warriors are exceptional in this regard, and from this and other reasons this chamber is considered to be a room of the warriors or an assembly place for councils. This room adjoins that in which three child "mummies" are said to have been found and from which the author exhumed the skeleton of an adult.

DETAILS OF CONSTRUCTION.

In the middle of plaza C there is a rude ware vase set in the floor with opening level with the surface. This is probably the cavity where offerings were ceremonially deposited, and corresponds in a general way with shrines in the middle of the Hopi plazas, one of the best known of which is the so-called sipapû used in the Walpi snake dance. The rooms at the south end of the ruin follow a ledge slightly elevated above the general level. Here are also small inclosures or bins, constructed of stone, that remind one of storage cysts. Below these on the horizontal surface of the cliffs there are broad depressions worn in the rock by rubbing stone weapons, like axes, and narrow grooves showing the impression of pointed implements. Here are also several good fireplaces, from the smoke of which the top of the cave has been considerably blackened. It was necessary to repair one of the storage cysts, which had been almost completely destroyed.

It was customary for the inhabitants of the cliff houses to lay an irregular wall, without mortar, on the top of other walls. One of the high walls at the south end of the ruin has a collection of these stones, the use of which has led to considerable speculation. These rude walls serve as wind or snow breaks.

CEREMONIAL ROOMS OR KIVAS.

Spruce Tree House has eight kivas. These kivas are circular in form, subterranean in position, and in structure essentially alike. Their structure is characteristic of those elsewhere on the Mesa Verde, in the McElemo, San Juan, and Chaco Canyons. All Spruce Tree House kivas lie in front of dwelling, except one (A), which fills an interval between the back wall of the cliff and buildings before it. On this and other accounts this kiva is believed to be one of the oldest in the village. As this kiva has double walls, evidently those first built did not please the builders. The present and latest constructed kiva is circular and lies inside an older one, which has an oval shape. Both of these structures were excavated and put in thorough repair.

CONSTRUCTION OF A KIVA.

Each kiva has two sections, a lower and an upper. The lower part has walls about 3 feet high, ending in a bank, on which at intervals there are six square buttresses which separate corresponding recesses and support the beams of the roof. Between these buttresses are left recesses, formed by the outside wall, which rises to the height of the roof. This lower wall, like all others, was plastered and shows marks of fire or smoke but not of a general conflagration. In the lower wall were found niches or small cubby-holes a few inches square, which were receptacles for paint, meal, or small objects. Each buttress has a peg on its top projecting into the kiva just under the roof; and in the surface of the banquette in kiva C there is set a small, roughly made bowl, the rim of which is on the level of the bank.

The floor of the kiva is generally plastered, but in kiva E the solid surface of a rock was cut down on the west side several inches as a part of the floor. In the floor is a circular pit, F, filled with wood ashes, which served as the fireplace. About halfway from this depression to the opposite wall of the room there is in the floor of every kiva a small hole, G, lined with a neck of a roughly made bowl. This opening, which is barely large enough to insert the hand, represents symbolically the ceremonial entrance to the underworld and is the same as that which the Hopi called the sipapû. Around this hole, marking the place on the floor where altars were erected in ancient ceremonies, were performed archaic rites, and through it the priests addressed the gods of the underworld, even believing that they could communicate with the dead. The nature of ceremonies about the symbolic entrance to the underworld will be found by consulting the descriptions of the Hopi kiva rites elsewhere published by the author. All sipapûs and other features of structure of the kiva floors were put in good condition.

Between the kiva fireplace and the adjacent side of the room there is set in the floor an upright slab of stone, e, about 2 feet high, which is often replaced by a rectangular wall.1 The side of the kiva facing this screen has a rectangular opening that communicates with a horizontal passageway and opens into a vertical flue, the external orifice of which is in the plaza or outside the outer wall of the kiva. The upright stone or wall served as a deflector, which distributed the fresh air supplied to the kiva from outside the room by the flue above mentioned. This air entered the kiva through the vertical and horizontal passageway and was deflected by the upright stone around the room on the level of the floor. The smoke rose from the fireplace and passed out the kiva through the hatch in the middle of the roof, fresh air being supplied to take the place of the heated air and smoke by the ventilator.

1This screen, d, in Spruce Tree House kiva, is not curved, as shown in the diagram given by Nordenskiöld of another kiva.

There are other openings in the circular wall of the kiva at the level of the floor, some of which are large enough to admit the body, and communicate with tunnels ample in size for passage. In the floor of one of these there are steps, and by means of these passageways one could pass under the plaza from the kiva to an adjacent room. A good illustration of these passageways, as shown in the accompanying plan, is found in e, kiva E. A person can enter a vertical passage in the corner of room 35 and descend by use of steps to a short tunnel that takes him through the opening into the kiva. There is a similar passageway which opens externally in the middle of plaza C. It can not be that the openings and passages above described were the main entrances, but rather private doorways for priests on ceremonial or other occasions; the chief entrance was probably by means of a ladder through a hatchway in the middle of the room.

The structure of the kiva A is most remarkable, differing from the other seven ceremonial rooms of the Spruce Tree House. When first seen it had the appearance of one kiva within another, the first or larger being of oblong shape with remnants of a banquette showing two pedestals on the north side; the second or inner kiva, being almost circular, was apparently the last occupied. In constructing the circular wall of that last mentioned the builders apparently utilized the southwest part of the larger room and those pedestals or buttresses that were situated in this section. Kiva A, as previously stated, is the only one built close under the overhanging rim rock, and is the only one with buildings in front of it. The roof of this kiva apparently formed a kind of plaza surrounded on three sides by houses, the wall of the cave forming the fourth.

There were never, apparently, any rooms above this kiva, but on one side a room of the second story is supported by a column, an exceptional feature in pueblo construction. The foundations of this wall are two logs curved to conform with the wall, and under the middle of these is the stone pillar.

TRAVEL GUIDE MAP OF MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK
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Last Updated: 16-Feb-2010