ANTHROPOLOGY; J. W. FEWKES 
497 
THE MESA VERDE TYPES OF PUEBLOS 
By J. Walter Fewkes 
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY, WASHINGTON. D. C.i 
Communicated, June 14, 1917 
The excavation of a mound in the Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, 
by the Smithsonian Institution, at the request of the Interior Depart- 
ment, during the summer of 1916, uncovered a building called Far View 
House belonging to a type which is morphologically the same as that of 
adjacent cliff dwellings. In form Far View House differs from its nearest 
large neighbor. Spruce Tree House; its outHne is rectangular while 
that of a cliff dwelling, like Spruce Tree House, follows the irregular 
walls of the cave in which it lies. So close is its Hkeness in other points 
that we may say that the main difference between the two is that one 
is constructed in a cave sheltered by an overhanging roof, while the other 
is built under the open sky, without this protection; both are pure 
examples of the same type. 
The importance of site has been magnified by some archaeologists, 
and it must be confessed that the resemblance of the modern pueblo type 
to that of a cliff dweUing, is not very close. The accepted belief in an 
identity of cliff dweller and pueblo, largely determined by legendary 
and somatological evidences, is supported by architectural features of 
the Mesa Verde type, which is the purest form of pueblo construction. 
The former failure of house structure to adequately show this identity 
was due to the fact that modern pueblos belong to a mixed or highly 
modified type. Far View House is nearer in time as well as in form to the 
cliff dwelHng, being unchanged by foreign influences. A comparison 
of it with typical cHff dwellings shows good evidences that community 
houses erected on sites so different are practically identical in details 
of construction and practically contemporaneous. 
The type of pueblo illustrated by Far View House is now extinct and 
we have reason to believe that it antedated the beginning of the seven- 
teenth century. It is therefore a true unmodified expression of the 
aboriginal mind, representing a stage in the development of south- 
western architecture preceding the modern type. 
The feature that distinguishes the community building of our south- 
west from other aboriginal dwellings north of Mexico is the arrange- 
ment of rooms in stories, one above the other. Of course in its simplest 
form it has but one story; the multistoried form is characteristic of the 
highest developed condition of the eastern or pueblo area. It is pro- 
nounced in the Mesa Verde type when there are two forms of rooms 
