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Updated: June 25, 2025
The circles were adapted to open-air councils, after the fashion of the American Indian tribes. As there are two of these connected with each other, and two not connected, it is not improbable that the Mound-Builders at this village were organized in two and perhaps four phratries, and that they performed their religious ceremonies and public business in these open estufas.
We lunched on the brink of a white precipice 1,500 feet above anywhere, and saw Moki women toiling up that declivity with urns of water on their heads, and photographed naked urchins sunning themselves on the baking bare rock, and stood above estufas, or sacred underground council chambers, where the Pueblos held their religious rites before the coming of the Spaniards.
The women and children were carried off to captivity from which they never returned. At Galisteo, the men were slain, the women carried off. Rosaries were burned in bonfires. Churches were plundered and profaned. At Santo Domingo, the bodies of the three priests were piled in a heap in front of the church, as an insult to the white man faith that would have destroyed the Indian estufas.
All matters of public importance are discussed by this body in the estufa, the walls of which are usually whitewashed; but a more dismal place can hardly be imagined, not only from the dubious light which there prevails, but from the fact that it contains no furniture whatever, and no decoration. Sometimes a village will have several estufas, each being reserved for a separate clan of the tribe.
Though openly Catholic and in attendance on the Mission church, the pueblo people still practice all the secret rites of Montezuma; and in all the course of four centuries of contact, white men have never been able to learn the ceremonies of the estufas. Women never enter the estufas. Who were the first white men to see Taos?
Like all the other youth, he received the rude education which was imparted at the estufas. He showed considerable aptitude for mastering songs and prayers, after once acquiring the language of his captors. He also watched the wizards as often as opportunity was afforded, and learned many a trick of jugglery. Tyope was struck by the youth's aptitude for such arts and practices.
"Before the Spaniards forced their religion upon the people, the pueblo of Taos had the Sun for their God, and worshiped the Sun as such. They had periodical assemblages of the authorities and the people in the estufas for offering prayers to the Sun, to supplicate him to repeat his diurnal visits, and to continue to make the maize, beans, and squashes grow for the sustenance of the people.
As I have mentioned above, this arrangement is found in all the estufas. The general similarity between the kivas of De Chelly and those of the Mesa Verde region will be apparent from the above description.
Households ravaged by the visitations of the Koshare were being restored to order, the exhausted dancers were being feasted, and the estufas were being cleared of everything bearing a sacred character. Young men and boys still loitered in groups, repeating with hoarse voices the songs and chants they had lately addressed to the ruler of day.
This partition would naturally be built straight as a twofold measure of economy. All this, I need scarcely add, agrees not only with my own observations in the field but with the kind of linguistic research above recorded. It would also apparently explain the occurrence of the circular semisubterranean kí wi tsi we, or estufas.
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