NO. I ARCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS FEWKES 13 



CROWN POINT RUINS 



No more interesting question in southwestern archeology awaits 

 an answer than the query : What became of the former inhabitants 

 of the Chaco ruins, one of the largest clusters of deserted buildings in 

 New Mexico ? Like the cliff dwellers of the Mesa Verde, their former 

 inhabitants have disappeared and left no clue as to where they went, 

 the date of their occupation of the ruins, or their kinship with other 

 peoples. Existing legends relating to them among supposed de 

 scendants who are thought to live in modern pueblos are fragmentary 

 and knowledge of their archeology is defective. The Hyde Expedi 

 tion made an extraordinary collection of artifacts from Pueblo 

 Bonito, the largest and formerly the best preserved ruin of the 

 group, but the excavations there have yielded little information on 

 the kinship of its inhabitants. Until we know more about the Chaco 

 Canyon ruins we are justified in the belief that there still remains 

 a most important problem for the archeologist to solve. 



In seeking the prehistoric migration trail of the Hopi before they 

 came to Fire House, the author examined ruins near Crown Point 

 identical with those of the Chaco Canyon. There are in fact two 

 ruins within a few miles of the Crown Point Indian school, one of 

 them known among the Navaho Indians as Kin-a-a (the name of the 

 other unknown to the author), which are structurally members of the 

 Chaco series. 



The ground plan of the largest, Kin-a-a, 1 is rectangular and was 

 apparently oriented north and south, the walls on the north side being 

 the highest and best preserved and those on the south possibly 

 terraced. On the south side remnants of a court or enclosure sur 

 rounded by a low wall can still be detected. The ruin is compact 

 with embedded kivas and measures approximately 150 feet long by 

 100 feet wide, the north walls rising in places to 50 feet, showing 

 good evidences of five stories, one above the other. The high walls 

 reveal rooms of rectangular shape. Situated midway in the length 

 of the north wall (pi. 4, a, b, c) is a circular chamber like a kiva on 

 the ground floor, with high walls about it. The recesses between the 

 wall of the circular room and the rectangular wall enclosing it are 

 solidly filled in with masonry, a mode of construction adopted in the 

 great ruins of the Chaco Canyon. The kiva of Kin-a-a (pi. 5, a, b), 



1 This ruin has been added to the National Monument known as the Chaco 

 group. 



The name Kin-a-a seems to have been applied by the Navaho to at least two 

 ruins. This particular Kin-a-a is possibly the ruin described by Chas. F. 

 Lummis to which Bandelier refers. 



