CONCLUSION

In the preceding pages an attempt has been made to trace the chronological sequence of pottery symbols in Hopiland by pointing out distinct epochs in cultural history and correlating the sociology of the tribe. This takes for granted that the pottery symbols characteristic of this people are directly connected with certain clans. There have from time to time been sudden changes in symbols, or previous designs have suddenly disappeared and others have taken their places, as well as a slow development of existing symbols into more complicated forms. There persist everywhere survivals of old prepuebloan symbols inherited from the past and a creation of new products of Hopi environment not found elsewhere.

The author will close this paper with a brief theoretical account of the unwritten culture history of Hopi, part of which explains certain pottery symbols. If we take that segment of southwestern history extending from the earliest to the present, we find evidences of the existence of a prepuebloan culture existing before terraced houses were built or circular kivas had been used for ceremonial purposes. This epoch was antecedent to the construction of the great walled compounds of the Gila, illustrated by Casa Grande. At that epoch known as the prepuebloan there extended from Utah to the Mexican boundary and from the Colorado to the Rio Grande a culture architecturally characterized by small fragile-walled houses not united or terraced. These houses were sometimes like pit dwellings, either partially or wholly subterranean. When above ground their walls were supported by upright logs in which canes or brushes were woven and covered with mud, the roofs being made of cedar bark or straw overlaid with adobe.

The pottery of this early prehistoric epoch was smooth, painted mainly with geometric patterns, corrugated, or indented. Rectilinear or curved lines constituted the majority of the superficial decorations and life designs were few or altogether wanting. In addition to these architectural and ceramic characteristics, this prepuebloan cultural stage was distinguished by many other features, to mention which would take us too far afield and would be out of place in this article. Evidences of this stage or epoch occur everywhere in the Southwest and survival of the archaic characters enumerated are evident in all subsequent epochs.

The so-called “unit type” or pure pueblo culture grew out of this early condition, and was at first localized in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, where it was autochthonous. Its essential feature is the terraced communal house and the simplest form of the pueblo, the “unit type,” first pointed out by Dr. T. Mitchell Prudden—a combination of dwelling houses, with a man’s house or kiva and a cemetery. The dwellings are made of stone or clay and are terraced, the kiva is subterranean and circular, embedded in or surrounded by other rooms. The “unit type” originated in Colorado and, spreading in all directions, replaced the preexisting houses with fragile walls. Colonists from its center extended down the San Juan to the Hopi country and made their way easterly across the Rio Grande and southerly to the headwaters of the Gila and Little Colorado, where they met other clans of specialized prepuebloan culture who had locally developed an architecture of Great House style characteristic of the Gila and Salt River Valleys.

The essential differences between the terraced pueblo and the previously existing fragile-walled house culture are two: The terraced architecture results from one house being constructed above another, the kiva or subterranean ceremonial room being separated or slightly removed from the secular houses.

An explanation of the origin of the terraced pueblo is evident. This form of house implies a limited site or a congestion of houses on a limited area. An open plain presents no limitation in lateral construction; there is plenty of room to expand in all directions to accommodate the enlargement which results as a settlement increases in population. In a cave conditions are otherwise; expansion is limited. When the floor of the cavern is once covered with rooms the only additions which can possibly be made must be vertically. In protection lies the cause of the development of a terraced architecture such as the pueblos show, for the early people constructed their fragile-walled habitations in a cavern, and as an enlargement of their numbers occurred they were obliged to construct the terraced pueblos called cliff-dwellings, with rooms closely approximated and constructed in terraces. In the course of time these cliff-dwellers moved out of their caverns into the river valleys or to the mesa summits, carrying with them the terraced architecture, which, born in caverns, survived in their new environment. This explanation is of course hypothetical, but not wholly without a basis in fact, for we find survivals of the prepuebloan architecture scattered throughout the Southwest, especially on the periphery of the terraced house area, as well as in the area itself. The ancient terraced house architecture is confined to a limited area, but around its ancient border are people whose dwellings are characterized by fragile-walled architecture. These are the survivals of the prepuebloan culture.

The environmental conditions along the San Juan and its tributaries in Colorado and New Mexico render it a particularly favorable culture center from which the pure pueblo type may have originated, and although observations have not yet gone far enough to prove that here was the place of origin of the unit type, and therefore of pueblo culture, there are strong indications that a fable of the Pueblos, that they came from the caves in the north, is not without legendary foundation so far as their origin is concerned.

The term “cliff-dwelling,” once supposed to indicate a distinct stage of development, refers only to the site and is a feature inadequate for classification or chronology. All cliff-dwellings do not belong to the same structural type. There is little similarity save in site between Spruce-tree House on the Mesa Verde, and Montezuma Castle in the Verde Valley; the former belongs to the “pure pueblo type,” the latter to another class of buildings related to “compounds” of the tributaries of the Gila and Salt River valleys.