346 ZUNI CREATION MYTHS. [eth.ann 13 



of such a doorway, then stoopiug Avith his blanket or basket lofid, pass 

 through without inconvenience or the necessity of uuloadiag. 



Nearly all of these features— so suited to, and some of them evidently 

 so unavoidable witli, a people building eyrie-like abodes high up ou 

 limited sloping ledges in pockets of the cliffs — were, although they were 

 totally unnecessary to the dwellers in the half-round or double half- 

 round towns of the i)laius, where space was practically unlimited and 

 topographic and other conditions wholly different, nevertheless charac- 

 teristic of these also. 



Not only were the external walls of these old villages of the plains 

 semicircular, as though built in conformity with the curved rock walls 

 of the hollows in the cliffs, but they were continuous. That is, in all 

 the rounded town ruins, except those which seem to have been recon- 

 structed in more recent times, tlie outer walls were built first as great 

 semicircular inclosures, hollow artiticial cliffs, so to say, and afterward 

 the house walls were built up against them inside, not into them, as 

 they would have been had these outer and tlie inner walls Ijeen built up 

 together. Moreover, not only were the ground x^lans of these towns of 

 the plains semicircular, as though built iu conformity with the curved 

 rock walls of hollows iu the cliffs in ancestral fashion, but the stoi-e- 

 roonis were also still tucked away in the little tUiring spaces next to 

 these now outer and surrounding walls, instead of being placed near 

 the more convenient entrances fronting the courts. The huts or sheds 

 for the turkeys, too, were placed not in the inclosures of the courts, 

 but against and outside of these external Avails of the villages ; and 

 while many of the dead were buried, as in the cliff houses, under the 

 floors of the lowermost rooms, others of them, almost always men, and 

 notably victims of Avar or accident, Avere still buried out beyond even 

 the turkey huts. So both the turkey huts and some of the graA'es of 

 these round A'illages retained the same j)()sitions relative to one another 

 and to the "rearward" of the dwellings that had Aery naturally been 

 given them in the cliff A'illages; for in these, being behind the houses 

 and in the rear of the caves, they occupied the most protected areas; 

 while iu the round A'illages, being behind the houses, they were thrown 

 quite outside of the villages, hence occupied the 2uost exposed positions, 

 which latter fact Avould appear inexi)licable suve by considering it as 

 a survival of cliff-town usage. 



Tlie kivas, or assembly rooms of the round A'illages, were iilaced gen- 

 erally iu front of the houses facing the courts, as of old they had been 

 built iu the mouths of the caverns, also iu front of the houses facing 

 the canyons. Moreover, tliey were, alth(mgh no longer in the way, 

 wholly or iu part subterranean, that is, sunk to the leAel of the court 

 or plaza, as iu the cliff towns they had been built (except where crowd- 

 ing rendered it necessary to make them two-storied, as iu some cases) 

 up the front slopes only to the height of the general ca\'e floor or of 

 the lowermost house foundations. 



