70 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 70 



tecs is very different; the habitations of Mexican tribes resemble 

 those of the Gila. The forms 1 of ceremonial chambers differ, one 

 being rectangular mounds or pyramids, the other circular, generally 

 subterranean. 



Rather than seek the origin of the house builders of the San Juan, 

 or the parent Pueblos, from Mexican sources, the author believes 

 the custom of building stone houses in the pueblo region was not 

 derived from any locality not now included in the pueblo area, but 

 it developed as an autochthonous growth, the earliest stages as well 

 as the most complex forms being of local origin. Incoming Indians 

 may have introduced ideas of foreign birth but they did not bring in 

 the mason's craft. That custom developed in the Southwest, where 

 we find the whole series from a single stone house or a cave with 

 walls closing the entrance to the most highly developed architec- 

 tural production north of Mexico. There are cliff-dwellings in many 

 other localities in the world but there are nowhere, except in the 

 region here considered, cliff-dwellings with circular kivas constructed 

 on this unique plan. It is generally supposed that a type of room 

 called "small house" was the predecessor of the multiple commu- 

 nity dwelling throughout the Southwest. This type, defined as a 

 simple four-walled, one-story building with a flat roof, is widely 

 spread in New Mexico and Arizona. The strongest arguments in 

 favor of its greater antiquity are possibly its simplicity of form and 

 the character of accompanying ceramics — corrugated, black and 

 white, and red pottery. Characteristic small houses of the Mesa 

 Verde and McElmo Canyon belong to the same type of pueblo as the 

 largest extensive villages which are more complicated than the so- 

 called small house. It is what the author has called the pure type 

 which is structurally different from the "small house," the so-called 

 archaic form of the mixed pueblos of the Rio Grande. This unit 

 type is likewise unlike the small house of the Little Colorado, includ- 

 ing those of the Zuni Valley and the Hopi Wash, although the Hopi 

 kivas show the influence of the Mesa Verde culture in the persist- 

 ence of the ceremonial opening in the floor called the sipapu. 



A cluster of small houses or the village such as we find at Mummy 

 Lake on the Mesa Verde is composed of several scattered members, 

 each containing for the religious and secular life the "pure type" 

 rooms constructed on the same plan. In a village like the Aztec 

 Spring House several unit buildings are united, forming one com- 

 munity house larger than the rest, which was the dominant one of 

 the village, the remaining houses being smaller and scattered. 

 Aztec Spring, Mitchell Spring, and Mud Spring villages show a 

 similar consolidation of units with outlying smaller houses, and the 

 number of units in such a union is believed to be indicated by the 



1 Temples of Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent Sun God, are circular buildings like towers. 



