FEWKEs] ANTIQUITIES OF MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK l5 



ledges somewhat higher there are small granaries each with a hole 

 in the side, probably for the storage of corn. 



It will be noticed that the terraced form of buildings, almost uni- 

 versal in modern three-story pueblos and common in pictures of 

 ruins south of the San Juan, does not exist in Spruce-tree House. 

 The front of the three tiers of rooms 22, 23, as shown in plate 3, is 

 vertical, not terraced from foundation to top. AVliether the walls of 

 rooms now in ruins Avere terraced or not can not be determined, for 

 these have been washed out and have fallen to so great an extent that 

 it is almost impossible to tell their original form. Rooms 25-28, for 

 instance, might have been terraced on the front side, but it is more 

 reasonable to suppose they were not ; " from the arrangement of doors 

 it would seem that there was a lateral entrance on the ground floor 

 rather than through roofs. 



Balconies 



Balconies attached to the walls of buildings below rows of doors 

 occurred at several places. On no other hypothesis than the presence 

 of these structures can be explained the elevated situation of entrances 

 opening into the rooms immediately above rooms 20, 21, 22. In fact, 

 there appear to have been two balconies at this place, one above the 

 other, but all now left of them is the projecting floor-beams, and a 

 fragment of a floor on the projections at the north end of the lower 

 one, in front of room 20. These balconies (pi. 3) were apparently 

 constructed in the same way as the structure that gives the name to 

 the ruin called Balcony House; they seem to have been used by the 

 inhabitants as a means of communication between neighboring rooms. 



Xoidenskiold writes: '^ 



The second story is fnrnisbed aloii^ tlio wnll .iust mentioned, with a balcony; 

 the joists between the two stories project a couple of feet, long poles lie across 

 them parallel to the walls, the poles are covered with a layer of cedar bast, and, 

 finally with dried clay. 



" Nordenskiold on the contrary seems to make the terraced rooms one of the points of 

 resemblance between the cliff-dwellings and the great ruins of the Chaco. He writes : 



" On comparison of the ruins in Chaco Caiion with the cliff-dwellings of Mancos, we 

 find several points of resemblance. In both localities the villages are fortified against 

 attack, in the tract of Mancos by their site in inaccessible precipices, in Chaco Caiion by a 

 high outer wall in which no doorways were constructed to afford entrance to an enemy. 

 Behind this outer wall the rooms descended in terraces towards the inner court. One side 

 of this court was protected by a lower semicircular wall. In the details of the buildings 

 we can find several features common to both. The roofs between the stories were constructed 

 in the same way. The doorways were built of about the same dimensions. The rafters 

 were often allowed to project beyond the outer wall as a foundation for a sort of balcony 

 (Balcony House, the Pueblo Chettro Kettle). The estufa at Hungo Pavie with its six 

 quadrangular pillars of stone is exactly similar to a Mesa Verde estufa (see p. 16). The 

 pottery strewn in fragments everywhere in Chaco Cafion resembles that found on the Mesa 

 Verde. We are thus not without grounds for assuming that it was the same people, at 

 different stages of its development, that inhabitated these two regions." — The Cliff Dwell- 

 ers of the Mesa Verde, p. 127. 



" Ibid., p. 67. 



