MINDELEFF. | KIVA BUILDING. 119 
is called Kitdauwi—the House Song. The chief then selects four good- 
sized stones of hard texture for corner stones, and at each corner he 
lays a baho, previously prepared, sprinkles it with the mixture with 
which he has deseribed the line of the walls, and then lays the corner 
stone upon it. As he does this, he expresses his hope that the walls 
“will take good root hold,” and stand firm and secure. 
The men have already quarried or collected a sufficient quantity of 
stone, and a wall is built in tolerably regular courses along each side 
of the excavation. The stones used are roughly dressed by fracture; 
they are irregular in shape, and of a size convenient for one man to 
handle. They are laid with only a very little mud mortar, and carried 
up, if the ground be level, to within 18 inches of the surface. If the 
kiva is built on the edge of the cliff, as at Walpi, the outside wall con- 
nects the sides of the gap, conforming to the line of the cliff. If the 
surface is sloping, the level of the roof is obtained by building up one 
side of the kiva above the ground to the requisite height as illustrated 
in Fig.21. One end of the “Goat” kiva at Walpi is 5 feet above ground, 
the other end being level with the sloping surface. When the ledge 
on the precipitous face of the mesa is uneven it is filled in with rough 
masonry to obtain a level for the floor, and thus the outside wall of 
some of the Walpi kivas is more than 12 feet high, although in the 
interior the measurement from floor to ceiling is much less. 
Both cottonwood and pine are used for the roof timbers; they are 
roughly dressed, and some of them show that an attempt has been made 
to hew them with four sides, but none are square. In the roof of the 
“Goat” kiva, at Walpi, are four well hewn pine timbers, measuring 
exactly 6 by 10 inches, which are said to have been taken from the 
mission house built near Walpi by the Spanish priests some three cen- 
turies ago. The ceiling plan of the mungkiva of Shupaulovi (Fig. 25) 
shows that four of these old Spanish squared beams have been utilized 
in its construction. One of these is covered with a rude decoration of 
gouged grooves and bored holes, forming a curious line-and-dot orna- 
ment. The other kiva of this village contains a single undecorated 
square Spanish roof beam. This beam contrasts very noticeably with 
the rude round poles of the native work, one of which, in the case of the 
kiva last mentioned, is a forked trunk of a small tree. Some of the 
Indians say that the timbers were brought by them from the Shumopavi 
spring, where the early Spanish priests had established a mission. 
According to these accounts, the home mission was established at 
Walpi, with another chapel at Shumopavi, and a third and important 
one at Awatubi. 
One man, Sikapiki by name, stated that the squared and carved 
beams were brought from the San Francisco Mountains, more than a 
hundred miles away, under the direction of the priests, and that they 
were carved and finished prior to transportation. They were intended 
for the chapel and cloister, but the latter building was never finished. 
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