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Updated: May 13, 2025
The heavy walls of the lower ruin are immediately under the upper cave. Back of them the cliff presents an almost smooth face of rock, 35 feet high and slightly overhanging. On this rock face there are marks which show that formerly there were upper stories, the rooms of which are outlined upon it. The rock surface was coated in places with a thin wash of clay, doubtless to correspond with the other walls of the rooms, but this coating was necessarily omitted where the partition walls and roofs and floors abutted on the rock. This is shown in plate XLVII. Although the marks are now so faint as to be easily overlooked, at a certain hour in the day, when the light falls obliquely on the rock, they can be clearly made out. At a point about 50 feet east of the kiva the structure was three stories higher than it is now. The roof of the upper story was within 4
There is a house chief, a Kiva chief, a war chief, the speaker chief or town crier, and the chiefs of the clans who are likewise chiefs of the fraternities; all these making up a council which rules the pueblo, the crier publishing its decisions. Laws are traditional and unwritten.
These men are naked except that they wear masks, strange and grotesque, and great flaring headdresses in many colors. Our party from the kiva stand before this line of men, and the bald-headed priest harangues them in words I cannot understand.
It is purely a religious ceremony, an elaborate supplication for rain, and is designed to propitiate the water god or snake deity. Preliminary ceremonies are conducted in the secret Kiva several days preceding the public dance. The Kiva is an underground chamber that is cut out of the solid rock, and is entered by a ladder.
The requirement that the kiva should be under ground, or partly under ground, was a more stringent one than that it should be circular, and with the rude appliances at their command the Tusayan builders could accomplish practically nothing unless they utilized natural cracks and fissures in the rocks.
This story is sufficient to impress the children that there is no escape for them if they betray the confidence reposed in them, for the Kōk-kō can compel the rocks to part and reveal the secrets. A repast is now served to the priests and the boys and others in the kiva.
There are other examples of this character in the canyons, but not so large as the one illustrated. Here we have the usual arrangement of rooms along the cliff, with a kiva in front of them. There were altogether not over 10 or 12 rooms, and they were probably occupied by one family. Ruins of this type are generally well protected by an overhanging cliff.
West of the kiva and on the extreme edge of the cliff are the remains of two small apartments, a trifle below the surface of the ledge and with a 3-foot wall on the south. These are too small for habitations, and were used probably for the storage of corn.
Quick as a flash he is caught directly behind the head and tucked away in the sack with his other objecting brethren. Every variety of snake encountered is brought in and placed in the sacred kiva.
After entering the kiva the Käk-lō viewed all those assembled and said, "Let me see; are all my people here? This curious creature is the mythical plumed serpent whose home is in a hot spring not distant from the village of Tkāp-quē-nā, and at all times his voice is to be heard in the depths of this boiling water.
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