MINDELEF¥ ] CHARACTER OF THE MASONRY 161 
adjacent stones forming a wall partly plastered, or plastered in patches. 
Plate LIx, which shows the interior of a room in ruin 10, will illustrate 
this. Here the process has been carried so far that the wall is almost 
plastered, but not quite. In plastered walls the process was carried a 
step farther, and the surface was finished by the application of a final 
coat of mud made quite liquid. The interior plastering of kivas was 
always much more carefully done than that of any other walls. Owing 
to blackening by smoke and recoating, the thickness of the plastering 
in kivas can be easily made out. Often it is as thin as ordinary paper. 
Plate LX shows walls in which an abundance of mud mortar was used, 
and the effect is that of a plastered wall. The difference between these 
walls and those shown in plate LVILis only one of degree, the wall shown 
in plate L1x being of an intermediate type. No instance occurs in the 
canyon where a coating of mud was evenly applied to the whole surface 
of a wall, in the way, for example, that stucco is used by us. It seems 
probable, therefore, that the application of plaster as a finish grew out of 
the use of stone spalls for chinking, and its prevalence in modern as com- 
pared with old structures is suggestive. It is not claimed, however, that 
because we have examples of the intermediate stages in De Chelly that 
the process was developed there. The step is such a slight one that it 
might have been made in a hundred different localities at a hundred dif- 
ferent times or at one time;, but it is well to note that in any given group 
of ruins or locality it is likely to be later than masonry chinked with 
stones. Surface finishing in mud plaster is the prevailing method at 
the present day, and well-executed masonry of stone carefully chinked 
is almost invariably ancient. The use of surface plaster is largely 
responsible for the deterioration of stonework that has taken place 
since the beginning of the historic period. The modern village of 
Zuni, which dates from the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
although built on the site of an older village, is essentially a stone- 
built village, though that fact would never appear from a cursory exam- 
ination, so completely is the stonework covered by surface plaster. 
In Tusayan (Moki) walls have been observed in progress of erection. 
The stones were laid up dry, and some time after, when the rains came 
and pools of water stood here and there in pockets on the mesa top, 
mud mortar was mixed and the interstices were filled. This method 
saved the transportation of water from the wells below up to the top 
of the mesa, a task entailing much labor. Doubtless a similar method 
was followed in De Chelly, where the stream bed carries water only dur- 
ing a partof the year. But stone was also actually laid in mud mortar, 
as shown in plate LI, which illustrates a rough type of masonry. 
It is probable that the practice of chinking grew up out of the scar- 
city of water, when walls were erected during the dry season and fin- 
ished when the rains made the manufacture of mud mortar less of a 
task. The rough wall shown in the illustration is the outside of an 
interior wall of a kiva, and it was probably covered by the rectangular 
16 ETH—11 
