52 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 41 



yet determined. As seems to be true of the other rock-inscriptions 

 just mentioned, some of those near Spruce-tree House are religious 

 symbols, some are totems, while others are mere scribblings. 



These pictographs are so rude that they give little idea of the 

 artistic possibilities of their makers, while many are so worn that 

 even the subjects intended to be depicted are doubtful. 



The walls of some of the rooms in the Mesa Verde cliff-dwellings 

 still show figures painted while the rooms were inhabited. Among 

 these the favorite designs are of triangular form. 



The walls of the secular rooms and kivas of Spruce-tree House 

 were formerly covered with a thin wash of colored sand which was 

 well adapted for paintings of symbolic or decorative character. The 

 colors (yellow, red, and white), were evidently put on with the hands, 

 impressions of which can be found in several places. In some cases, 

 as with the upper part of the wall painted white and the lower part 

 red, the contrast brings out the colors very effectively. The walls of 

 some of the rooms are blackened with smoke. 



Among the designs used are the triangular figures on the upper 

 margin of the dados and pedestals of kivas. Figures similar in form, 

 but reversed, are made by the Hopi, who call them butterfly and 

 raincloud symbols. 



Birds and quadricpeds. — Nordenskiold (pp. 108-9) thus writes of 

 one of the ancient paintings : 



The first of them, fig. 77, is executed in a room at Sprucetree House. Here 

 too the lower part of the mural surface is darlc red, and triangular points of 

 the same colour project over the yellow i^Jaster ; above this lower part of the 

 wall runs a row of red dots, exactly as in 'the estufa at Ruin 9. To the left two 

 figures are painted, one of them evidently representing a bird, the other a 

 quadruped with large horns, probably a mountain sheep. [Elsewhere, as 

 quoted on p. 5. Nordenskiold identifies these figures as "two birds."] The 

 painting shown in fig. 7S is similar in style to the two just described. 



In this room the dado bears at intervals along its upper edge the 

 triangular figures already noticed, and rows of dots which appear to 

 be a symbolic decoration, occurring likewise on pottery, as an exami- 

 nation of the author's collection makes evident. 



Square -figures. — On the eastern w^all of the same room in which 

 occur the figures of a bird and a horned mammal there is a square 

 figure on the white surface of the upper wall. This figure is black 

 in outline ; j^art of the surface bears an angular meander similar to 

 decorations on some pieces of pottery. Similar designs, arranged in 

 series according to Mindeleff's figures, form the decoration band of 

 one of the kivas in Chelly canyon. 



The significance of this figure is unknown but its widespread dis- 

 tribution, especially in that region of the Southwest characterized by 

 circular kivas, adds considerable interest to its interpretation. 



