MESA VERDE Rules and Regulations 1920

FAR VIEW HOUSE, A MESA VERDE PUEBLO.¹

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¹By Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, Chief of the Bureau of Ethnology.

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The archeological investigations of the last few years have shown that the prehistoric people of this plateau erected buildings called pueblos of the same structural character as those in the cliffs, but on top of the mesa. The mounds indicating these buildings take several forms, and as a rule are associated in villages or clusters. Through one of these villages runs the Government road from Mancos to Spruce Tree House. This village is known by the name Mummy Lake mounds, or the Moki Lake group, and is situated 4-1/2 miles north of Spruce Tree House. Mummy Lake is a prehistoric reservoir; its name is not appropriate, for no mummies have ever been found in its neighborhood and it contains water only a portion of the year. South of this reservoir there are 16 mounds indicating as many ruined pueblos, varying in size, but in no case showing walls standing above ground marking the shape or character of the buried houses. Far View mound is situated on the southeast margin of this village, and at the beginning of the work upon it differed little from the other 15.

The results of three months' excavation of this mound transformed it into a rectangular pueblo 113 feet long by 100 wide, resembling buildings long known at Aztec, N. Mex., and on the Chaco Canyon far to the south.

A comparison of houses built in cliffs throughout the world indicates that there is no special uniformity or distinguishing feature in them. The cliff houses of China partake of the characteristics of Chinese buildings; those of Greece of the habitations of the Greeks. The excavation of Far View House shows that it is structurally the same as Spruce Tree House. A cliff house in a Mesa Verde canyon is a pueblo built in a cave. We may say, therefore, that probably buildings on the Mesa Verde, whether in cliffs or on mesa tops, are homogeneous, a conclusion long believed but demonstrated two years ago by the uncovering of Far View House. This pueblo is called Far View House because of its magnificent outlook. From its top, looking southward, the vision includes portions of four States; looking directly south are the hazy mountains of New Mexico, with the wonderful pinnacle known as Ship Rock, from its resemblance to a ship under full sail. On the western horizon are the Blue Mountains of Utah. To the southwest, silhouetted against the sky, rises Sleeping Ute, a name equally appropriate on account of its resemblance to the prostrate figure of an Indian. In the immediate foreground is a dense forest of cedars and other trees, to which Mesa Verde owes its name.

A half mile before he approaches Mummy Lake the visitor can see, from the Government road, the walls of Far View House with a background of cedars situated in the middle of a sagebrush clearing, and in its immediate neighborhood heaps of stone and soil. These overgrown mounds with depressions in the center represent the appearance of Far View House, the only one of the group yet excavated. The rooms were almost filled with accumulations of débris. Whence came this débris? The quantity is too large to be ascribed wholly to fallen walls, for if we regard this catastrophe as the only source, it would be necessary to suppose the walls were once built to a height beyond all proportion to their lateral dimensions. Moreover, an examination of this débris shows that it is stratified by alternating layers of sand and fallen walls or adobe mortar and stone. This sand did not come from the building; it must have blown in from the surrounding plain, and any one who is familiar with the sandstorms of that region can appreciate the depth of sand which might accumulate in a short time. Its abundance implies that the surface of the land in the neighborhood was devoid of trees, sagebrush, or other vegetable growth.

The conclusion is logical that if there were no sagebrushes the farms cultivated by the aborigines were near by. From indistinct evidences we can see traces of ditches leading from Mummy Lake through which the farmers may have irrigated their lands either directly or secondarily from smaller reservoirs near the mounds. The native springs are far down the sides of the canyon, and it is not improbable that the potable water or that used for cooking, masonry, and other purposes may have been drawn from these reservoirs, which, together with irrigating canals, through the lapse of time have been clogged by accumulations of sand.

The external features of Far View House are apparent as we approach its walls; mounting to the top of the highest wall we can best observe the general plan. This pueblo is rectangular in shape, consisting of concentrated rooms with a court surrounded by a wall annexed to the south side. On its southeast corner, a little less than 100 feet away, lies the cemetery, from which have been taken skeletons of the dead with their offerings of food bowls and other objects such as was the custom of these people to deposit in the graves of their dead.

At its highest point on the north wall the pueblo had three stories, but on the southern side there was but a single story. This building was terraced, one tier of rooms above another. In the corner of the interior of the highest room may still be seen the ancient fireplaces and stones for grinding corn set in their original positions used by the former inhabitants. There are no external windows or passages, except on the south side where midway in length is a recess in which was placed a ladder in order to be hidden from view. The inhabitants evidently used the roof of the lowest terrace for many occupations. A bird's-eye view shows that all the rooms, now roofless, fall into two groups.

In the center of this mass of rooms there is a circular chamber 32 feet in diameter, resembling a well, around which the other rooms appear to cluster. Three of these surrounding rooms are circular and much smaller than the central, arranged with two on the left and one on the right side. In structure these rooms are identical with that of the large central room. They have mural banquettes and pilasters that once supported a roof. These circular depressions are ceremonial rooms, to which is applied the word kiva taken from the Hopi language. All four kivas of Far View House are identical in construction with the kivas of Spruce Tree House and Cliff Palace.

Bird's-eye view of Far view House.

The rooms surrounding these circular ones vary somewhat in form but are as a rule rectangular, the shapes of those near the kivas being triangular to fill the necessary spaces. The contents of the rectangular rooms show that they were inhabited. Artifacts were found and indications of various industries as well as marks of smoke from their fireplaces appear on the walls. From the nature of this evidence there is no doubt that Far View House was once inhabited by the people living in the same way as those dwelling contemporaneously in Spruce Tree House.

The court added to the pueblo on its south side is inclosed by a low wall. Here were probably performed, in ancient times, the many religious dances and festivals.

Although the inhabitants of Far View House were ignorant of what we would call letters, or graphic means of recording events or their thoughts, they left engraven in their walls significant signs sometimes called "masons' marks." These simple symbols whether found in cliff houses or in pueblos have a close similarity which may be adduced as evidence of relationship in the thought of the people who made them. They are too imperfect to be regarded as primitive forms of writing.

Far View House is only one of 16 pueblos of the Mummy Lake villages. Looking over the area covered with sagebrushes and dotted with mounds, the mind is able to apprehend the size of the population in the neighborhood. Over a dozen buildings of the same type as Far View House formerly stood among the fields of corn. These fields were watered by irrigating ditches from the prehistoric reservoir a quarter of a mile away. There are other villages of the same character within sight. Looking across Soda Canyon to the northeast the eye lights on a large rock called Battleship Rock, on the southern side of which, sheltered by it from the north winds, is a sage-bush clearing in which are several mounds. Battleship village was the nearest neighbor to Mummy Lake village, and we can almost trace the trail across Soda Canyon to this village and imagine the dusky visitors going from one to the other in prehistoric times.

The village in the lee of Battleship Rock is practically the same as that at Mummy Lake, but there are many other more distant neighbors dotting the surface of the mesa. There are several cliff houses in Navajo Canyon west of Far View House. Southwest of the pueblo, winding through the forest, is an ancient Indian trail which extends to Spruce Tree House. Along this trail we may well believe the inhabitants of the Mummy Lake village came in contact socially and in trade with larger cliff houses.

We do not know whether the language of the two people was identical; our knowledge of their sociology is vague; the only difference between their habitations is that one is built in a cliff under a protecting roof, while the other was constructed under the open sky. So far as the houses are concerned, both in their forms and details of construction, they belong to the same type. They have the same round subterranean rooms, roofed in the same manner. Except that in Far View House they are larger, the square rooms of both show identical masonry, plastered in the same way; identical culinary and other implements occur in both. Perhaps the most detailed resemblances come to light when we examine the pottery, its technique, and its symbolic decorations. The inhabitants of both places were clever potters. They manufactured three distinct kinds of pottery. The largest number of specimens which have come to light belong to what is called corrugated ware, on which the decoration is brought about by indentations, either covering the surface of the jar uniformly or arranged in geometric patterns. Another variety of ware, called from its color "black and white" in which the object was first covered with a white slip as a ground on which were painted designs, is also common to both communities. The designs themselves are identical. Scattered among these two forms of pottery occur fragments of a less frequent type, a red ware, the exterior of which is embellished with black figures. The technique and decoration of all ceramic objects thus far brought to light from cliff houses and Far View House belong to these groups and no others; and this resemblance is one of the strongest claims that can be urged for the identity of the culture in habitations apparently widely different. We might add to these evidences of uniformity other objects, like stone implements, and fabrics of various kinds, basketry, and various objects of ceremonial nature, all of which confirm the evidences taught by likeness of buildings that the people were practically in the same culture and inhabited synchronously.

The existence of a trail connecting these two centers of population would imply that cliff dwellings and pueblos on the Mesa Verde were simultaneously inhabited; but how far back in prehistoric times they were built and when deserted has not been determined. We can not say from data now at hand when this took place, but we can bring to our aid a few scanty survivals from the past, notwithstanding documentary history affords no help. The aborigines who lived near these ruins when discovered in 1883, belong to the Utes, a Shoshonean stock who disclaimed all knowledge of the people who constructed these buildings. They avoided them as uncanny and even now can only with difficulty be induced to enter them. They have dim legends of conflicts between the earliest Utes and the cliff dwellers, and if these can be relied upon the date of the evacuation of the cliff houses might be evident, if we knew when the Utes entered the country. Unfortunately, however, this date is not known.

Much more definite but still obscure are certain legends existing among the pueblos, especially the Hopi, that their ancestors formerly lived in cliff houses and migrated, for some unknown reason, to their present homes. Statements in pueblo legends connecting pueblo and cliff houses are supported by the character of life, and the material culture of the Hopi, as we knew them up to the present generation. Far View House shows that the inhabitants of cliff houses are kin to pueblos. Two lines of research are open to the student to enlarge his information bearing on this relation. It is desirable to extend our knowledge of the horizon of the cliff-dwelling culture, and to trace step by step the pueblos along the trail of culture migration until it vanishes at the modern pueblo. We can also investigate survivals among modern pueblos which are preserved especially in ceremonies and compare the objects still cherished as heirlooms in the different priesthoods and compare them with similar objects excavated from these ruins. When these two methods of research have led to logical conclusions we will be able to determine that part of the history of the cliff dwellers on which documentary history can shed no light.

The painstaking, detailed work in the last few years on the Mesa Verde shows the desirability of still further similar work. Far View House belongs to a widespread type in the pueblo area. It represents one of the highest types of architecture of the prehistoric natives of the United States.