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Updated: June 15, 2025
The kivas are also places for general rendezvous, and at night the men and women bring their work and chat and laugh, and in their rude way make the time merry. Many of the tribes of North America have their cult societies, or "medicine orders," as they are sometimes called, but this institution has been nowhere developed more thoroughly than among the pueblo Indians of this region.
The distribution of kivas in the ruins of De Chelly affords another indication that the occupancy of that region was quiet and little disturbed, and that the ruins were in no sense defensive structures.
In the last example the last coat was not decorated, but some of the underlying ones were. Kivas are used, principally in the autumn and winter, when the farming season is over and the ceremonies and dances take place. It is probable, therefore, that each coat of plaster means at least a year in the history of the kiva, which would indicate that some of the sites were occupied about twenty years.
The kivas are seldom true circles, being usually elongated one way or another. Some instances occur which are rectangular, such as the room shown in figure 19, which was apparently a kiva. Nordenskiöld illustrates an example which appears to have been oval by design, differing in this respect from anything found in De Chelly. Most of the kivas have an interior bench, about a foot wide and 2
The interior plastering of kivas was always much more carefully done than that of any other walls. Owing to blackening by smoke and recoating, the thickness of the plastering in kivas can be easily made out. Often it is as thin as ordinary paper. Plate LX shows walls in which an abundance of mud mortar was used, and the effect is that of a plastered wall.
We are especially interested in seeing the men and women spin and weave. In their courtyards they have deep chambers excavated in the rocks. These chambers, which are called kivas, are entered by descending ladders. They are about 18 by 24 feet in size.
When all the Kōk-kō have gone to their kivas, the ten Kō-yē-mē-shi, who reach the village after the others, go to their house, which is not one of the sacred assembly houses, but chosen from among the Sūs-ki-i-que, or people of the Wolf gens. The Kōk-kō sing and dance in their own kivas, then change about, those of the North passing to the West and those of the West going to the South, and so on.
At sunrise he is gone. The morning after the arrival of the Käk-lō, those who are to represent the Kōk-kō prepare plume sticks, and in the middle of the same day these are planted in the earth. The same night they repair to their respective kivas, where they spend the following eight nights, not looking upon the face of a woman during that period.
The presence of rectangular kivas in the same areas in which round kivas occur does not necessarily militate against this theory, nor does it oblige us to offer an explanation of a necessarily radical change in architecture if we would derive it from a circular form. It would indeed be very unusual to find such a change in a structure devoted to religious purposes where conservatism is so strong.
It has been suggested by scientists that the cliffs were cities of refuge in times of war, the caves and Great Houses were permanent dwellings. This is inferred because there were no kivas or temples among the cliff ruins, and many exist among the caves and Great Houses.
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