30 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY I bill. 51 



in which old entrances are walled up or even buried and old passage- 

 ways covered with new structures. Similar reconstruction is common 

 in Hopi pueblos, where it has led to enlargement of rooms and other 

 variations in form. Among the several examples of such secondary 

 building in Cliff Palace may be mentioned a long wall, evidently 

 the front of a large building, which serves as a rear wall of several 

 rooms arranged side by side. The obvious explanation of such a con- 

 dition is that the Avails of the small rooms are of later construction. 



As above mentioned the foundations of many walls are of larger 

 stones, and the masonry here is coarser than higher up, which has 

 led some authors to ascribe this fact as due to two epochs of construc- 

 tion. But this conclusion does not appear to be wholly justifiable, 

 although there is evidence in many places that there has been re- 

 building over old walls and consequent modification in new con- 

 structions, by which older walls have ceased to be necessary, a co.^ 

 dition not unlike that existing in several of the Hopi pueblos. In 

 this category may be included the several doors and windows tha<^ 

 have been filled in with new masonry or even concealed by ncAV wall.-. 

 From the fragile character of certain foundations of high walls it 

 would appear that it was not the intention, when they were laid, to 

 erect on them walls more than one story high; the construction of 

 higher stories upon them was an afterthought. Evidences occur of 

 repair of breaks in the walls and corners by the aboriginal occupants, 

 one of the most apparent of which appears at the end of the court 

 in the southern wall of room 59. 



Adobe Bricks 



The walls, as a rule, were made of stone ; indeed it is unusual to find 

 adobe walls in cliff -dwellings of the Mesa Verde. In prehistoric 

 buildings in our Southwest, evidences that the ancients made adobe 

 bricks, sun-dried before laying, are very rare. Bricks made of clay 

 are set in the Avails of the Speaker-chief's House and w^ere found in 

 the fallen debris at its base. These bricks Avere made cubical in form 

 before laying, but there is nothing to prove that they Avere molded 

 in forms or frames, nor do they have a core of straAv as in the case 

 of the adobes nsod in the construction of Inscription House in the 

 Navaho National Monument, Arizona." The use af adobes in the con- 

 struction of cliff-house Avails has not been previously mentioned, 

 although Ave find references to " lumps of clay " in the earliest his- 

 toric times among Pueblos. Thus the inhabitants of Tiguex. accord- 

 ing to Castaneda, were acquainted Avith adobes. "They collect,'' saj'^s 

 this author, "great heaps of thyme and rushes and set them on fire; 

 Avhen the mass is reduced to ashes and charcoal they cast a great 



See Bulletin 50, Bureau of American Ethnology. 



