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II. SUBSISTENCE AND LIVING CONDITIONS

Like all other peoples, ancient and modern, the inhabitants of
Pueblo Bonito faced the daily problems of food and shelter. They
met the latter with homemade garments and stone houses; the problem
of food, by growing what was needed. Maize, or Indian corn, constituted
at least three-fourths of their fare, but this was supplemented
by the fruits of other plants and by occasional game.[1]

That the Bonitians had fairly mastered the subsistence problem is
evidenced by their architectural achievements and by lesser products
of their industry. A group wholly absorbed in the quest for something
to eat builds no permanent home and accumulates few possessions.

While Mindeleff (1891) was studying Pueblo architecture in the
middle 1880's he witnessed the weakening of several old, deeply
rooted customs. He saw ground-floor rooms, their solid masonry no
longer needed for a defense, provided with outside doors and otherwise
transformed from storage to dwelling purposes. He saw ventilators
and portholes converted into windows and the windows fitted
with glass. Furniture, as we use the word, was then practically
unknown to the Hopi and Zuñi. Maize was their staff of life, and
each day's supply was ground daily on milling stones resting upon
the living-room floor. Food reserves were stored on shelves made
of poles, in earthen jars buried to the rim, and in slab-sided bins.
Weather permitting, the family cooking was done in the open air,
out upon the rooftops.

When I first visited the Hopi towns, 35 years after Mindeleff,
ground-floor rooms without exterior doors or windows were still to
be seen; rabbit-fur blankets had not yet been wholly superseded by
mail-order quilts; tables and chairs were still lacking in most homes,
and white-enameled bedsteads, if present, were prized for their ornamental
rather than slumberous properties. At night, sheepskins and
Pendleton blankets were unrolled upon the floor; the family slept
in groups, side by side, as had always been done. Domestic water was
fetched in jars from springs at the foot of the mesa or ladled from
surface pools where children splashed and dogs and donkeys drank.

A Pueblo village is a veritable swallow colony—a cluster of cells

occupied by individuals free to fly at will yet bound to the group by
the stout bonds of instinct and family. Unlike the swallow's nest,
however, a Pueblo home may shelter an unpredictable number. It
may consist of one room or several.

LIVING CONDITIONS IN PUEBLO BONITO

Family life in Pueblo Bonito probably differed very little from that
which Mindeleff saw among the western Pueblos in the final quarter
of the nineteenth century. Descent was unquestionably matrilineal,
as it still is; the mother, rather than the father, was head of the
household. Married daughters, with their husbands and children,
continued to live in the maternal home. All shared the same living
quarters, the same hearth and kitchen utensils. Meals were eaten
twice a day from food bowls placed directly upon the floor; fingers
served in lieu of forks. Blankets and pelts were folded as seats by
day and spread upon the floor at night. The living room was just
that—a place in which to live, eat, sleep, work, and entertain visitors.

As a rule, Bonitian homes consisted of a general living room and
one or more rooms for storage. These were on the same level and
adjoining. Interior steps and hatchways suggest also some degree of
vertical proprietorship, but we can only guess as to the extent of it.
Because the upper floors had fallen, our observations were restricted
largely to first-story rooms. A number of these, originally constructed
and utilized as dwellings, had subsequently been vacated when additional
rooms were built in front of or above them. By the time Pueblo
Bonito reached its peak, owners of most ground-floor apartments had
obviously moved to the better-lighted second, third, and fourth stories.

Old Bonitian homes look pretty casual when compared with those
in the newer sections of town. Their ruder stonework was heavily
plastered with mud; the mud was pitted with imprints of the plasterer's
fingers and sometimes studded with sandstone chips. Interior
walls were sometimes whitewashed; sandals and other designs were
occasionally scratched upon them. Ceilings were seemingly constructed
of whatever materials were nearest at the time. Cottonwood,
juniper, and pinyon were most frequently utilized for beams. Resting
directly upon these beams was a layer of brush, coarse grass, or cedar
bark as support for the adobe floor of the room directly above.

In contrast, Late Bonitian houses are neater and more regular.
They exhibit a superior skill in planning and execution. They disclose
three successive types of masonry, each of a quality to awaken presentday
admiration and each invariably hidden under a thin coat of
plaster. By way of ornamentation, the dado was often whitened or

washed with a contrasting clay or set apart by a single white band.
Sandal designs and other figures were sometimes chalked upon, or
scratched into, the plaster. Ceilings consisted of carefully selected
pine beams supporting layers of matched poles, peeled willows or
juniper shakes, cedar bark, and adobe.

For whitewash the Late Bonitians used a soft, muddy-looking sandstone.
We found several worked pieces during the course of our
excavations, including one (U.S.N.M. No. 335637) that had been
rubbed in a liquid. This fact suggested an experiment in which we
learned that the sandstone in question readily disintegrates in water
and produces a grayish pigment identical in all outward appearances
with that employed by the ancients. At least one source of it is a
clayey pocket on the south side of Chaco Canyon, on a ledge below
Sinklezin ruin. Clearly this exposure had been worked in early times.
We unearthed a quantity of the material in a room at Pueblo del
Arroyo; Pepper (1920, p. 112) found a still larger store in Room 27,
Pueblo Bonito.

Posts lashed together at intervals with willows, and the space between
crowded with chunks of sandstone and mud, substituted for
masonry walls in several Old Bonitian houses. A superior wattlework,
one in which willows were bound horizontally to one side of the
uprights and plastered over, was utilized in Late Bonitian Room 256
in order to keep a clear passage to storeroom 257, likewise divided
by wattling.

Bonitian houses differed in other ways. The average capacity of
10 Late ground-floor rooms in the southeast quarter of the pueblo
is 1,732 cubic feet; their average ceiling height, 7 feet 10 inches. An
equal number of Old Bonitian dwellings averages 1,214.8 cubic feet
and 6 feet 8 inches, respectively.

After describing walls and roof very little remains to be said of a
Pueblo house. This was Mindeleff's conclusion (1891, p. 108) upon
completion of his Hopi studies in 1890, but it applies with equal
aptness to the houses of Pueblo Bonito, built 800 years before. Among
these latter one notes an occasional fireplace, wall pocket and storage
bin, seatings of former pole shelves and clothes racks, doors of one
sort or another, and that is about all. These architectural accessories,
so to speak, help us to an understanding of the conditions under which
the Bonitians lived day after day.

Doors.—The almost complete lack of external ground-floor doorways
is a noteworthy feature at Pueblo Bonito. There was none in
the rear cliffward wall of the original pueblo. When the Late Bonitians
arrived and constructed an encompassing tier of rooms against

that old wall they provided each compartment with an outside door,
even those in the second and third stories. But it was not long before
all were securely and permanently closed. In subsequent additions
the Late Bonitians omitted exterior doorways altogether.

Solid first-story walls, with movable ladders giving access to the
rooftops, were purely a defensive measure among the western Pueblos.
They continued to rely upon it until the third quarter of the nineteenth
century when United States troops brought an end to Navaho
and Apache depredations. Not until then did the Hopi and Zuñi feel
secure enough to risk ground-floor living rooms and doors opening
upon the village square.

We have record of only seven outside ground-floor doors in Old
Bonitian houses. Each gives direct access to the courtyard. Five of
them may have been cut through when later rooms were built in
front of Rooms 306, 307, 323, 325, and 326. Those in Rooms 28 and
83 possibly were in use before the outside accumulation of blown sand
necessitated the construction of steps to reach court level.

Old Bonitian doors are somewhat oval, 23 or 24 inches wide and
about 30 inches high. Adobe mud fills the corners and conceals the
rude stonework. Sill height ranges from 12 inches to 4 feet 9 inches.
The latter figure is that for the door connecting Room 325 with its
unexcavated northwest storeroom. Below the door a section of an
8-inch log, 2½ feet long, leaned against the wall as a step, supplementing
a 1½-inch-deep toehold in the plaster 35 inches above the
floor. To facilitate access to the north door of Room 325 two posts
were set in the floor, one fronting the other, forming steps 18 and
33 inches high, respectively.

A metate endwise in the floor provided a 15-inch step for the door
of Room 320. In Room 296, two protruding wall stones served a
like function. Our tabulation shows steps were required to reach 15
first-story Old Bonitian doors, but this total includes only seven in
rooms excavated by the Hyde Expedition.

Late Bonitian doors are nearer the floor, larger, and more rectangular.
Their lintels consist of selected pine poles, frequently eight in
number, of uniform diameter, peeled, and bound side by side. Where
the masonry had broken away it was noted that the outermost poles,
at least, ordinarily extended 2 feet or more on each side of the door
and thus were concealed within the stonework as the walls were rising.
Steps, if any, were posts, wall recesses, protruding stones, or blocks
of plastered masonry.

In the southwest corner of ground-floor Room 245 a cleverly contrived
door gave oblique access to the second story of Room 246.

The sill, 3 feet 11 inches above the floor, was reached by aid of a post
step 2 feet high; within the doorframe a 16-inch masonry step with
hewn-plank tread halved the remaining distance. Few Bonitian housewives
succeeded so well in lessening indoor distances.

Doors diagonally through the corner of a room are peculiar to
the fourth and final phase in local architecture. We counted seven,
all but one being in the second story. That exception, connecting
Rooms 257 and 258, obviously was an afterthought, since its construction
blocked a former ventilator between Rooms 258 and 259.
Rooms 225B and 242B had two corner doors each. Pepper (1920,
p. 316) places one in the northwest corner of 99B. It is quite possible
other diagonal doors have disappeared with crumbling masonry.

T-shaped doors likewise were essentially a Late Bonitian feature.
Of 32 T-doors on our list, 17 appear in walls of third-type masonry
and 12 in those of fourth-type. Only one was noted in a second-period
wall, and that was on the east side of closet-sized Room 332, extensively
altered when Kiva U was built. We found only two T-doors
in Old Bonitian houses, and one of them, in the east wall of Room 323,
was so conspicuously framed in third-type stonework as to suggest
that it was cut through at time of construction of the room or rooms
that preceded Kiva Z.

Of our 32 T-shaped doors, 23 appear in the first story, 8 in the
second, and 1 in the third. There may well have been others, since
lost with collapse of the upper walls. Most of those still visible
originally faced one of the courts, but a few, like those in the west
walls of Rooms 226 and 227-I and that connecting third-story Rooms
174 and 175, must always have been internal. Our T-doors vary
considerably in size. That in Room 332 has a width of 18 inches for
the lower portion, 30 inches for the upper, and stood perhaps 4 feet
high. The now-blocked T-door in the southwest wall of Room 88
measured 28 and 49 inches in lower and upper width, respectively,
and was more than 6 feet high. It was contemporaneously duplicated
in the front walls of Rooms 89 and 90, next on the east. Nine T-doors,
including three in the second story, measure 45 inches or more in
maximum width.

It is a curious fact that all except the T-door in Room 109B, and
possibly that in 174C, had been carefully closed with masonry. In
most instances the blocking had been piecemeal: first, reduction to
the customary rectangular form by filling in the shoulders; perhaps
further reduction by raising the sill; then conversion into a window
or cupboard; and eventually complete closure. Our observations
provide no clue to the original purpose of T-shaped doors. The oftquoted

theory that they were designed to permit a burden bearer to
enter before putting down his load finds little credence with me, for
I have seen many individual burdens carried on human backs to open
doorways in Walpi, Oraibi, and Zuñi. In each instance the load was
put off outside and left there while the carrier went in unencumbered.

Storeroom doors at Pueblo Bonito were invariably equipped with
secondary lintels and slanting jambs to support a stone door, but all
others apparently remained open. During his study of Pueblo architecture,
Mindeleff (1891, p. 182) noted small poles built into doorways
a few inches below the lintel proper and assumed they were
intended to support blankets or rabbit-skin robes in cold weather.
Similar poles, singly or paired, had been provided for many of the
doors in Pueblo Bonito, but the space between them and the primary
lintels was usually filled with masonry. We observed nothing, neither
free poles nor wall pegs at lintel height, to suggest utilization of
hangings for winter protection.

Ventilators were, or once had been, present in many Bonitian
rooms, especially storerooms. Considering only those specifically
mentioned in our own field notes, tabulation shows 182 in 89 rooms.
Twelve of the rooms are Old Bonitian, nine on the ground floor and
three in the second story. Together, they have 29 ventilators, of which
11 appear in the three second-story chambers. One room alone, 317,
originally had three ventilators in its first-story northwest wall and
seven in the corresponding wall of the second story. But all 10 were
subsequently closed, presumably when Late Bonitian Room 114 was
constructed outside.

In 50 fourth-period houses we count 110 ventilators, as follows:
41 in 23 ground-floor rooms; 59 in 21 second-story rooms, and 10
in 6 third-story rooms. Here, as elsewhere, the vents lie well up
toward the ceiling and average about a foot square. A majority occur
in former storerooms, but in the course of time nearly all had been
either reduced in size or blocked entirely. Occasionally a former
door, neatly sealed and plastered over, had been left with a sort
of transom.

Windows, in our sense of the word, were unknown to the builders
of Pueblo Bonito. Whatever light entered their dwellings came
through the front door and diminished progressively as it passed
inward from one room to another. An occasional transom in an otherwise
blocked door admitted a modicum of both light and air, but a
torch must have been necessary when the innermost storerooms
were visited.

Fireplaces.—There were more than 300 ground-floor rooms in

Pueblo Bonito. Our data show 59 hearths in 48 of them. Sixteen
Old Bonitian dwellings have a total of 20 fireplaces. Of 39 Late fireplaces
recorded, 31 appear in rooms of third-type construction. Circular
or oval hearths predominate over quadrangular; the ratio of
slab-lined to masonry-lined is nearly 5 to 1. Firedogs were encountered
in only four instances, all in Late Bonitian homes: tow of 3
sandstone blocks each, one of 5, and one of 2 only. In this latter
case the fireplace rim doubtless served as a third support for roundbottomed
pots. Because houses lacked chimneys, walls and ceilings
were usually smoke-stained and sooted.

Pepper (1920, p. 299) describes a hearth in the middle floor of
Room 92 (second story of 97) with only a thin layer of dried adobe
mud separating it from the brush ceiling of the room below. The
omission even of such simple safeguards as stone slabs undoubtedly
caused many a second- and third-story fire. In 1882 the upper rooms
of Hopi homes still had their floor hearths although the family cooking
was done principally on the roof of the first story (Mindeleff,
1891, p. 104).

Clothes racks.—Anticipating the modern Zuñi practice, our Bonitians
sometimes built in, at time of construction, single poles for
suspension of surplus blankets and wearing apparel. These poles invariably
crossed the lesser dimension of the room. Although we
observed the seatings for only seven examples, many others unquestionably
were once present. All seven occurred in Late Bonitian
rooms, and five of these, 200, 203, 204, 209, and 299, are of secondtype
stonework and stand in the outermost tier at the north arc of the
pueblo. The seatings averaged 5 feet 2 inches above the floor and
varied from 16 to 20 inches from the end walls. Racks suspended
from ceiling beams in the Hopi manner (Mindeleff, 1891, p. 110)
would leave no trace.

Pole shelves.—We have record of 16 pole shelves in first- and
second-story rooms originally built for storage or subsequently converted
to such use. Twelve of them are in 10 Late Bonitian houses.
The poles, 3 to 11 or more in number, had their ends firmly embedded
in the side walls at time of construction. Because masonry had been
dislodged when these poles were wrenched loose, it was not always
possible to determine the exact number.

Pole holes in the walls of Room 264 mark the positions of two
shelves each 4 feet 6 inches above the floor. That at the north end
was 7 feet in depth while the south shelf was only 5. Together, these
two pole shelves occupied 12 feet of the total room length, 17 feet
4 inches. Comparable storage facilities assuredly were provided for
third- and fourth-floor dwellings.

In Room 299 a former clothes rack 5 feet 2 inches above the floor
and 3 feet from the west wall had been converted into a shelf merely
by resting upon it a number of sticks and embedding their rear ends
in the west-wall masonry. Ceiling height here is 9 feet 9 inches.

In contrast, our records show only four pole shelves in Old Bonitian
houses and each clearly was a postconstruction feature. For example,
in Room 320 two peeled pine poles had been placed 5 inches
apart with their ends resting upon the sills of the south ventilators
and there fixed in position when the two openings were closed with
masonry. Again, at the west end of Room 298B and 3 feet 9 inches
above the floor, several building stones were removed to permit the
seating of five parallel poles whose ends were then anchored with
sandstone chips and adobe mud. A 3-pole shelf 22 inches deep was
introduced by like means into Room 315.

Lesser shelves, cupboards, and wall pegs.—In the east corner of
Room 293, where the third-type northeast wall meets the older southeast
side, a triangular shelf was formed simply by extending three
small poles across the angle. Triangular spaces above corner doorways,
an occasional projecting stone, a board set into the wall masonry, and
even irregularities left during reconstruction—all afforded a measure
of security for small objects and so were utilized as shelves.

Doors and ventilators no longer needed were closed with masonry,
usually in a manner to leave a recess on the side facing the quarters
still occupied. These recesses vary in depth from 2 to 24 inches and
are almost always neatly plastered. Lesser cupboards within the wall
masonry were left at time of construction or created subsequently by
removal of several building stones. Such receptacles often had hewn
boards for lintel or sill. Of 115 wall recesses and cupboards, irrespective
of shape or size, at least 26 are identifiable as blocked doors,
25 as blocked ventilators. All but 12 occur in Late Bonitian houses.

Slender implements such as spindles, drill shafts, and planting
sticks doubtless were thrust for safekeeping between adjacent ceiling
poles just as they are in present-day Pueblo homes. We found necklaces
and other ornaments among the fallen roof timbers of more than
one kiva.

As hangers, willow branches and antler prongs quite likely were
used more commonly than our evidence suggests. We have, for
instance, record of but 18 wall pegs, only 2 of which appear in an Old
Bonitian house and, in this case, in the same room. The east and
south walls were favored, only one peg having been noted on the
north side.

Fixed work (?) slabs.—At least one dressed sandstone slab was

embedded flush with the adobe floor in each of six Late Bonitian
houses. We have no clue to their purpose; none bore any revealing
mark and nothing was concealed beneath. One example (U.S.N.M.
No. 335898), of fine-grained sandstone smoothed on three edges and
one face, occupied the middle floor of Room 291. It measures 9½
inches wide by 11½ inches long by 1½ in maximum thickness and
appears to be part of a tabular metate. Its one unsmoothed edge had
been neatly dressed with stone hammers.

A tabular milling stone, 22½ inches wide by 26 inches long, lies
embedded in the floor of Room 300B 6½ inches from the east wall
and 8 inches from the north. Since the room itself is only 3 feet
8 inches wide, the mill in its present position could not possibly have
been used for grinding meal.

Benches, intentional and unintentional, were noted in a number
of rooms. Some resulted from constructional carelessness. When a
prepared foundation proved wider than necessary the difference appears
as an offset. Such an offset might be wider at one end than
at the other; it might, or might not, extend the entire length of the
wall. In either case the irregularity, if above floor level, became an
accepted fact and usually was turned to advantage.

In Room 309 a bench 9 inches wide and 7 inches high extends the
entire width of the chamber, 12 feet 9 inches. It had been plastered
and replastered until its 15 successive coats totaled 2 inches. At each
end a block of plastered masonry formed a lesser but superposed
shelf. In the southeast corner of Room 327 the plastered east and
south walls are abutted by a masonry bench 25 inches long, 28 inches
high, 7 inches wide at one end and 16 inches at the other. Similarly,
a triangular bench only 14 inches high but 4 feet 4 inches wide and
35 inches in maximum depth, occupies the southeast corner of
Room 333.

The rude masonry bench across the east end of Room 300 is a postHyde
Expedition relic. Jack Martin, who had freighted for Richard
Wetherill, said that Wetherill used this closet as a smokehouse. In
corroboration, there are nails in the ceiling beams and pendent baling
wire, recent smoke stains on walls and ceiling, nails in the door lintel
for support of a blanket. Room 299, next on the north, likewise
bristling with nails and wire, is unquestionably the "general storeroom"
mentioned by Pepper (1920, p. 27), for his figure 4 shows
the expedition's dining room and kitchen under construction against
the outer wall of Room 14b.

Storage rooms and bins.—Rear rooms, especially ground-floor rear
rooms, were ordinarily used for storage. They were dark and as a

rule indefinitely floored. By way of contrast, Room 320 was paved
with sandstone slabs, while 296 and 298 were carpeted with woodpile
chips and juniper bark. Storeroom doors invariably were provided
with secondary jambs and lintel against which a fitted stone slab
could be leaned from the outside. Nowhere did we observe incontestable
evidence that such a slab had been sealed in place with
adobe mud.

Bins occur both in storerooms and in living rooms. Some were
constructed of masonry; some of wattlework; still others were excavations
under the floor. In Room 85 Pepper (1920, pp. 270-286)
found a number of masonry bins, rudely built but provided with doors
and roofed over. In Room 78 (ibid., fig. 108, p. 261) he uncovered
a large painted water jar, buried to its middle, and two dug pits designed
to be closed with stone slabs at floor level. The four old cooking
pots we discovered under the floor of Room 128 (pl. 51, lower)
had been placed there for storage purposes. One still held a quantity
of grass seed.

During excavation of Room 266 we unexpectedly discovered five
subfloor storage pits. They averaged 4 feet 6 inches deep and 3 feet
6 inches in maximum diameter. Each was olla-shaped and its orifice
so situated that it could be covered and perhaps sealed without interfering
with normal activities in the room. Pits and bins together, our
compilation shows perhaps 13 in 5 Old Bonitian houses; 20 in 12
Late Bonitian rooms.

Mindeleff (1891, pp. 209-210) describes wall cupboards and slabsided
Hopi bins for storage of beans and small grains and, for like
purpose, a water jar buried to its neck in a masonry bench at Zuñi.

In 1881 Bourke (1884, p. 298) saw in a house at Mishongnovi
"great stores of blue and white corn, piled up separately; dried pumpkins
in long twisted strings hanging from the rafters; . . . muttontallow
in bladder casings, gourd water-jugs, . . . baskets, . . . stone
mortars, sheep pelts, rabbit-skin mantles, . . . pottery and blankets,
. . . and a supply of tortoise-shell and gourd rattles, masks, headdresses,
sashes, and other appurtenances of their dances."

From Zuñi Mrs. Stevenson (1904, p. 352) wrote a briefer but
equally clear picture: "A Zuñi storage room contains a promiscuous
mass of material ranging from objects of the most sacred character
to those of little or no value."

Such practices merely reflect an inheritance from the more-distant
past. There can be no doubt the Bonitians, like yesterday's Zuñi and
Hopi, endeavored to keep in reserve at all times at least a year's
supply of maize and other foodstuffs. This buttress against the possibility

of drought was stored in various ways and in various places
just as comparable reserves were stored in the western pueblos 800
years later.

Furniture and furnishings.—Built-in shelves, hearths, and cupboards
have already been discussed. It remains now to present such
data as we have on movable furnishings. And that is indeed a simple
task, for in all the rooms of Pueblo Bonito we found but one piece
of furniture—a stool made from a section of pine log (pl. 66, B).
This was on the floor of Room 268 and measures 9¾ inches in diameter
by 9½ inches high. Both ends, cut with stone axes and smoothed
with sandstone abraders, remain slightly convex.

In 1883 neither the Hopi nor Zuñi considered chairs and tables
necessary house furnishings. "Small stools are sometimes seen,"
writes Mindeleff (1891, p. 213), "but the need . . . does not seem
to be keenly felt . . . Though movable chairs or stools are rare,
nearly all of the dwellings are provided with the low ledge or bench
around the rooms." If this disregard for physical comfort seems
beyond our understanding we have only to recall that chairs were
likewise unknown in the average English home until near the end of
the fifteenth century.

Lacking tables, the Bonitians served meals from one or more
earthenware bowls set out upon the living-room floor. The daily piece
de resistance undoubtedly was a stew or some sort of gruel. There
were no forks and no knives except blades of flint and obsidian. The
family simply seated itself or squatted about the food bowl—men and
boys on one side, women and children on the other—and dipped in
fingers or a scoop improvised from a bread crust or a sherd of
squash rind. It was want of tables rather than shortage of tableware
that placed the Bonitians behind contemporary Europeans in mealtime
etiquette. Even our New England forefathers ate with their
fingers. The 2-tined fork was still a novelty as late as 1700, when
wooden and pewter dishes held the cornmeal mush or the boiled meats
and vegetables that comprised the daily fare in most Colonial homes
(Dow, 1935, pp. 28-41).

Many of the earthenware vessels described in a following chapter
are of a size to suggest intended individual use. Gourd ladles and
spoons made of wood or mountain-sheep horn doubtless were at
hand. We found none in Pueblo Bonito, but they are known from
cliff dwellings of approximately the same age.

Among blown sand and fallen masonry near the floor of Room 225
we unearthed what I believe to be part of a cradle (pl. 9, B). The
relic consists of a bent willow frame over which reeds have been

looped and bound. If my identification be correct, this is the only
one of its kind. We had a right to expect something more elaborate
from a Late Bonitian dwelling; something approaching, in form and
execution, the hooded P. III cradle recovered in the Kayenta country
by Guernsey (1931, p. 105).

Bonitian beds, to judge from remnants found with burials, consisted
of one or two thin rush mats, nothing more. For covering
there were daytime cotton garments, turkey-feather robes, and perhaps
the tanned hides of deer, antelope, and mountain sheep. Hides
and robes served also by day as living-room seats and may have been
hung over otherwise open doorways during inclement weather.

At least 3 of the 10 bodies interred in Room 320 had been laid upon
mats. Two rested side by side upon a mat made of bulrushes (Scirpus
acutus Muhl.) three-fourths of an inch wide in their present compressed
condition, fastened together at 5-inch intervals by twined
strings. The eastern edge of that burial mat partially overlay another
composed of young willow shoots 36½ inches long and less than
one-fourth inch in diameter, laid tip to butt, square cut at both ends,
with all knots abraded. The willows had been carefully peeled except
those comprising four transverse bands. Thirteen warps of 3-ply
string were threaded through holes punched 1¼ inches from each end
and at 3-inch intervals. Paraffined in the field and rolled upon a metal
cylinder for safer transportation, this mat has since been sewed to
heavy muslin with black thread (U.S.N.M. No. 335288).

A second willow mat, with nine warps only and no decorative band,
lay across the middle floor (pl. 10, A). Here, again, the damp fragile
shoots began to warp and crack, even while our photograph was being
made and, despite a hurried application of preservative, it was impossible
to remove the specimen intact. It had measured 35½ inches
wide by 53½ inches long. The larger portion, likewise stitched to
muslin with black thread, is shown on plate 10, B. These two are
the only mats in our collection not composed of some species of rush.

One fragment shows an assemblage of quarter-inch reeds, laid
parallel and sewed together in the manner described above. Ten
pieces are twilled: six in over-two-under-two technique and four in
over-three-under-three. None has a design, plain or colored, so far
as I can determine. In these 10 fragments strip width varies from
one-eighth to three-eighths inch. Plate 11, figure b, shows broad
and narrow strips alternating. Two scraps, figures f, h, have a double
selvage, joined at the inside edge. One side is formed by parallel body
elements; the other, by those at right angles. Woven in upon its
fellows, over-two-under-two, each element was folded back and to

the right from the outer edge of the border and severed at the inner
margin.

Another fragment (U.S.N.M. No. 335312, orig. No. 1406) exhibits
a selvage wherein the plaited elements were doubled back over a string,
like a ring-basket rim, and there bound by twined cords. Plate 11, a,
shows three short sections of braided rush leaves formerly tied together
by a fine 2-ply string. Each piece measures three-eighths inch
wide and a trifle over one-eighth in thickness; each is flattened on
both sides. The three may not, of course, represent a sleeping pad
at all, but one made of rush leaves united in this manner would appear
at first thought to offer more comfort than any other we have
considered.

When Pepper first entered Room 33, a small first-story chamber
in the old northwest quarter, he observed the end of a "burial-mat"
protruding from the accumulated sand. He described it as "made
of thin osiers fastened together at three points by means of a twostrand
cord which passed through holes provided for the purpose"
(Pepper, 1909, p. 236). Another magnificent specimen, 5 feet 3
inches by 6 feet, removed from an adjacent room in 1897, is now
preserved in the Robert S. Peabody Foundation for Archaeology at
Andover, Mass. My notes[2] describe it as composed of unpeeled willow
shoots, square-cut at the ends and threaded upon nine warp cords
spaced 2 inches from each end and at intervals averaging 7¼ inches.
Each cord is knotted at its extremities and on either side of the
individual transverse elements.

These mats, together with cold hearths, broken food bowls, and
other evidence from the ruins, tell us how the Bonitians lived, ate,
and slept. Theirs seems a severe, unadorned existence. The Spartan
simplicity of their homes again reminds one of Mindeleff's (1891,
p. 108) pithy summation of Pueblo architecture: "When the walls
and roof . . . have been fully recorded, little remains to be described
about a Pueblo house."

Housewives pursued their daily tasks out of doors when possible—
making pottery, preparing food, tending babies, etc.—on the terraced
rooftops or in the courtyard below. Naked children romped, like
happy puppies, all over the place. In out-of-the-way corners of the
yard, shelters of cottonwood boughs were occasionally provided for
summertime comfort. Two such arbors are marked 286 and 310 on
our ground plan, figure 2.

Floor sweepings, kitchen refuse, and waste from household industries

were thrown into the nearest abandoned room or carried outside
the village to the community dump. Personal convenience rather than
any thought of sanitation dictated the place of deposition. Repeatedly
we found fragments of a given vessel in two or more rubbish piles;
fragments of one basket-molded bowl were retrieved from an abandoned
kiva in the East Court and from the surface of the east refuse
mound.

SUBSISTENCE

Pueblo Bonito was built and occupied by farmers. Their livelihood
depended upon cultivated plants, and these, in turn, were subject to
a capricious climate. If winter snows sufficed, seeds germinated and
broke the surface; if summer rains fell at the right time and in the
right place, plants grew to maturity. But summer rains in Chaco
Canyon are vagrant. They might drench one farm and leave the next
dry; they might come too late or not at all. To meet these uncertainties,
Bonitian farmers located their fields in the paths of rainwater
running off higher land, or in areas where low earth dams impounded
such transient floods and thus multiplied the result of local precipitation.
This "floodwater" method of irrigation is still widely practiced
by Southwestern tribes; it is the method profitably employed today
by Navaho families throughout the Chaco country.

We may confidently identify the Bonitians as floodwater farmers
because they had no choice. There has never been a permanent stream
in Chaco Canyon. The valley fill, made up of soil transported and
deposited by runoff during countless rainy seasons, presumably supported
a lush vegetation of native grasses and shrubs in the days of
Pueblo Bonito. Cottonwoods and willows followed a shallow, intermittent
channel down the middle of the canyon. We take for granted
that Indian gardens flourished wherever sufficient moisture could
be provided.

Today, 800 years later, an entirely different aspect presents itself.
The once prosperous village stands in ruins, surrounded by barren
fields. An arroyo 30 feet or more in depth and 100 to 300 feet wide
has gutted the valley and lowered its water table beyond reach of
indigenous vegetation. In consequence, the abundance and variety
of plant life are greatly diminished. Without a ground cover to check
runoff, storm waters quickly drain into the arroyo, deepening and
widening it in the process. As this gully system expands year after
year it is repeating the devastation caused by an earlier arroyo, in
existence when Pueblo Bonito was inhabited. By gradually washing
away their farms, that earlier arroyo may have forced the Bonitians
to vacate Chaco Canyon. Now, with another erosion cycle well advanced,

A, Willow mattress, as found, on the floor of Room 320. (Photograph by O. C. Havens,
1924.)

Plate 10

B, Part of the willow mat seen in A, stitched on muslin for preservation.

Plate 11.—Fragments of matting woven of rush leaves.

Plate 12

Tom Chischilly-begay in his cornfield.

(Photograph by O. C. Havens, 1925.)

Hopi rabbit hunter with throwing club.

(Photograph by O. C. Havens, 1924.)

Plate 13.—Chischilly-begay's floodwater farm in Kinbiniyol Valley showing (A, B)
damage by uncontrolled floods, and (C) the family preparing pumpkins and squashes for
winter use. (Photographs by O. C. Havens, 1925.)

the canyon is once again being deserted. Few Navaho
continue there today.

At the turn of the century, however, many more families lived
within a couple of hours' horseback ride, for Holsinger reports that
the Hyde Expeditions employed about 100 men in excavation of
Pueblo Bonito. Hogan sites and vestiges of former garden plots
remain today as evidence of a larger past population. We examined

a dozen or more forgotten fields, all different yet somewhat alike.
They may be 20 years old or 200. They are once-cleared areas onto
which storm waters were guided by a series of low earth ridges. The
number of such ridges, their extent and grouping, was clearly suggested
by the immediate surroundings. Our Navaho workmen employ
like means to meet like problems.

With half a dozen miniature dikes Rafael waters his principal cornfield
on the south side of the valley a mile west of Pueblo Bonito. A
handful of grass or a chunk of sandstone suffices to turn a lesser
runoff onto smaller plots higher up the slope (fig. 4). Dan Cly takes

full advantage of natural drainage on the steplike ledges of Rincon
del Camino (fig. 5).

Successful floodwater irrigation depends not only upon understanding
of the principles of runoff but also upon knowledge of soils. As

Bryan (1941, pp. 224-225) sums up his observations: "The essential
feature is the selection . . . of a place overflowed by flood water.
The overflow must be sufficient to saturate the ground and thus irrigate
the crop and yet not so violent as to wash out the plants . . .
Broad valley floors over which the flood-run-off after rain spreads
widely are favorable areas." Chaco Canyon was just such an area.
During periods of alluviation, layers of silt and sand were deposited
uniformly across the valley floor (pl. 4, lower).

The preeminent Navaho farmer in the Chaco district today lives on
the Kinbiniyol, a few miles below the ruin of that name and about
12 miles southwest of Pueblo Bonito. He is Tom Chischilly-begay
(pl. 12, left), who says he began to cultivate these particular fields
about 1918. He learned his method from Juan Etcitty, since deceased,

who created Juan's Lake 4 or 5 miles below Tom's place and
farmed there successfully until his dam burst one season causing an
arroyo that ruined everything.

By a system of check dams and embankments Chischilly-begay
utilizes the entire drainage of the Kinbiniyol (fig. 6). A low earth
dam is the initial control but it apparently washes out each year.
Originally a ditch was intended to take out from the dam but it was
abandoned before completion. Now (1925) Tom endeavors to meet
each onrush of floodwater and spread it laterally across his fields.

Throughout the rainy season he has to be especially watchful, and on
the job constantly whenever water is running. In another 5 years,
Tom says, he will be too old to work so hard and an arroyo is bound
to get started. As a matter of fact this eventuality was narrowly
averted in 1923, a year of almost unprecedented rainfall, when Tom's
corn was partially washed out and his diked areas half filled with silt.
A few weeks before our 1925 visit, floodwaters once again had cut a
wide path through his fields (pl. 13).

Tom told us other Navaho sometimes come long distances just to
see his farm. None has yet attempted his system of floodwater irrigation
because no one else "has the same kind of a valley." When he
first began to farm here he planted a broad strip of white Santo
Domingo corn right through the middle of his Navaho planting. He
has since specialized in this white variety and insists it is now pure
Navaho. An ear of it collected at the time of our visit measured
18 inches long when it reached the Department of Agriculture in
Washington, although it subsequently shrank 2 inches in drying.

As a further byproduct of that 1925 visit we were given a "multiple"
ear and several "tassel" ears. The latter, Tom said, often occur
when more than five kernels are planted in a single hill. If eight are
planted, for example, one or more stalks may produce tassel ears. I
did not learn at the time whether the Navaho have any special beliefs
concerning such abnormalities but they were "laughing ears" to our
Zuñi. "If you eat them, they will make you laugh."

Multiple, or branched, ears are saved for goat fodder because they
"increase the number of kids." Men sometimes eat kernels from such
ears, Tom informed us, but women rarely do.

A few miles above Chischilly-begay's productive acres is Kinbiniyol
ruin. It stands at the edge of a shallow, wet-weather pond which had
been enlarged in ancient times by a simple rock dam at the foot of a
low, sandstone knoll southwest of the ruin. From that dam a ditch
led downvalley, cutting through natural obstacles to irrigate the village
fields (fig. 7). We did not attempt to trace its course throughout or
to discover its ending, but Hewett (1905, p. 329) describes it as "fully
two miles long." The lower side of the portion we plotted had been
reenforced repeatedly by slabs on end, and even by masonry (pl. 14).
In one place an exposed section showed a gravel fill 42 inches in depth.

This impressive remnant is one of those named by Special Agent
S. J. Holsinger who reported to the General Land Office under date
of December 5, 1901, that "at least five artificial reservoirs are plainly
discernible, each having a system of irrigation ditches" (Holsinger,
Ms., p. 10). Hewett (1905, 1930, 1936) closely follows Holsinger.

Some of the ancient works specified have since disappeared; others
have been altered, by time or man.

Kinklizhin, the Black House, stands about 7 miles southwest of
Pueblo Bonito, on the trail to Kinbiniyol. A couple of hundred yards
north of the ruin is a dirt dam with an outlet cut through a sandstone
outcropping at the east end. Hewett, who gives more details than
Holsinger in this instance, mentions a "stone" dam and says its associated

ditch, sand-filled but traceable, conveyed the reservoir water
to fields possibly 200 acres in area (Hewett, 1905, p. 326). In 1875
Lt. C. C. Morrison visited this same dam and described it (1876,
p. 360) as "a built wall of earth, with stone revetment—10 feet across
the top, five feet high, and 15 feet across the base." Richard Wetherill
filed claim on and presumably farmed these same acres, but Dan Cly,
one of our Navaho workmen, insisted that his brother built both dam
and ditch. What we have here, therefore, probably should be regarded
as a post-1905 Navaho conversion and reutilization of a P. III
irrigation work.

At the foot of the cliff northeast of Peñasco Blanco, a few rods
above the point where Chaco Canyon turns west to meet the Escavada,
Holsinger observed another rock dam and ditch. They had been exposed,
presumably only a year or two before, by a "freshet in the
Chaco." Floodwaters dashing against the same bank year after year
eventually destroyed both dam and ditch. My old Navaho friend
Padilla fixed disintegration of the dam at about 1910; what was undoubtedly
the last vestige of the nearby ditch vanished during the
rainy season of 1920. A single slab on edge, its base about 3 feet
below the surface, was all that remained visible when I passed by on
August 11 of that year. Because the slab's significance was not
recognized at the time, no photograph was made. It was undercut
and lost with the next flood.

According to Holsinger (Ms., p. 10), the associated reservoir "was
built in a great bed of sand and was lined with slabs of stone and
clay." He says Navaho were then cultivating the ancient fields below
the reservoir but without benefit of the latter. The site, I feel confident,
is where Wello had his cornfield, a hundred yards more or less
below the old ranch buildings where he lived, on the south side at the
mouth of the Escavada. And the slab-lined ditch to which Padilla
refers (herein, chapter IX, p. 350) probably lies under the same sandcovered
field.

A reservoir and system of ditches near Una Vida that Hewett
(1905, p. 326) describes as "the best preserved works in the canyon"
somehow eluded our search. Holsinger barely mentions them, and
his fifth locality, the Chaco-type ruin near Crownpoint where "remnants
of a dam" and "a very large canal" are to be found (Holsinger,
Ms., p. 11), does not concern us at this time.

Old Hosteen Beyal professed to remember (see chapter IX, p. 345)
a ditch that began at the head of Chaco Canyon and continued along
the south side to a point beyond Pueblo Bonito. There is no trace
of such a ditch today, but opposite, on the north side, there is still to
be seen the one Richard Wetherill plowed from Wejegi to his reservoir
at the southeast corner of Pueblo Bonito. This post-1901 effort[3] to
conserve the north cliff runoff has sometimes been attributed to
the Bonitians.

Part of a sand-filled ditch is discernible on the south side of the
Escavada just east of the Bonito-Farmington road (1923). Padilla
recalled this work as being very distinct when he was a youth, and

one of our younger Navaho said it can be followed for 6 miles even
now. What Padilla referred to as a "wagon road" at the south end
of The Gap, and what others call a "canal," is, in the writer's opinion,
part of a processional path—a type of feature to be discussed
elsewhere.

If the Bonitians ever constructed in Chaco Canyon irrigation works
on a par with those named above, the remains lie buried under the
2 to 6 feet of alluvium piled upon the valley floor since Pueblo Bonito
was abandoned. The sloping banks of shallow ditches or channels
were exposed by our exploratory trenches, but all surface constructions
we saw—divertive ridges, check dams, or dikes—date from the
period of Navaho occupancy. They were clearly designed to control
and utilize runoff; they are similar in every respect to controls raised
by Navaho now living in or near the canyon. Jackson (1878, p. 433)
in 1877 observed that Navaho families east of Pueblo Pintado had
dammed the arroyo to create a small pool from which they drew water
by ditch to irrigate their cornfields. This is precisely what the Chacoans
did at Peñasco Blanco and Kinbiniyol back in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries; it is what Tom Chischilly-begay was trying to do
on the Kinbiniyol in 1925.

In 1911, when the water table at Pueblo Bonito was but 20 feet
below the surface, Ellsworth Huntington (1914, p. 81) learned of
only two local Indians "reasonably sure of a good crop of corn each
year." Both lived at the junction of the Chaco and Escavada where
water was close to the surface and where individual dams provided
for irrigation. During the previous 16 years there had been but two
good harvests generally throughout the Chaco country.

The agricultural possibilities of Chaco Canyon, past and present,
naturally interested C. S. Scofield, then in charge of the Office of
Western Irrigation Agriculture, U. S. Bureau of Plant Industry, and
a member of the National Geographic Society's 1920 Committee on
Research. It was he who first suggested testing local soils and water
in order to ascertain their mineral properties. If they contained an
excess of sodium, difficulties were indicated.

Results of the water analyses are given in the preceding chapter.
Our soil samples were taken in 1924 from Test Pit No. 3, dug two
years previously about midway between camp and the ruin. The pit
was 9 feet 2 inches deep, and samples were collected at 10-inch intervals
from bottom to top. No. 1, therefore, is lowermost; No. 11, at
the surface. Here, again, I am pleased to acknowledge our indebtedness
to Messrs. Scofield and Breazeale for their interest and
cooperation.

The following extracts from Mr. Breazeale's letter of September 27,
1924, reporting the results of his analysis, are self-explanatory:

The presence of sodium carbonate, or black alkali, uniformly
throughout our 9-foot test column introduced an unanticipated factor
into the subsistence problem at Pueblo Bonito, namely, soil productivity.
If 0.144 percent of black alkali is sufficient to render a soil
impervious to water, then black alkali, rather than a contemporary
arroyo, may be the principal cause for abandonment of Pueblo Bonito.
Mr. Breazeale sums up the situation in one sentence: "Unless we
can get water into a soil we stand little show of getting any crop
out of it."

All the Chaco water we sampled, wells and floods alike, contained
an excess of sodium over calcium. Upcanyon, east of Pueblo Bonito,
wherever seepage is apparent, there is usually to be seen a more or
less conspicuous deposit of gypsum. If annual precipitation in Pueblo
Bonito times were only slightly above that of today, as it may have
been, those seeps would have flowed more freely than now, dissolving
the gypsum and carrying it out where floodwaters could have picked
it up and transported it to Bonitian farms. That process, of course,
would have been interrupted by inception of the twelfth-century
arroyo. Only a little gypsum is required to counteract the effects of
0.144 percent sodium carbonate.

The higher calcium content in surface water from the Kinbiniyol
greatly interested Mr. Scofield, as is evidenced by the quotation from
his letter of August 24, 1925, in chapter I, page 12. He thought
the Bonitians might have had some of their farms over in that valley
where agriculture would have been more richly rewarded, as it is
today, than in Chaco Canyon. However, while speculating upon this
possibility, we must not overlook Rafael's well, a mile west of our
camp, which likewise shows a high proportion of calcium. This well
apparently taps drainage from the rincon immediately to the south
and it is my guess that the sandstone cliffs there, like those upcanyon,
contain a little gypsum. Back in the days of Pueblo Bonito, before
entrenchment of its contemporary arroyo, calcium distributed by
floodwaters would have kept local soils flocculent and productive.
Black alkali not only tightens soil against water penetration but kills
off vegetation also.

The present arroyo, which allows no possibility of successful agriculture
in Chaco Canyon, is at least the third of its kind, as stated in
the previous chapter. If geologic history repeats itself once more,
this arroyo will be completely filled during the next cycle of alluviation
and a new flood plain will be established above it. When that time
comes, resident families can again with confidence plant garden
foodstuffs such as the Bonitians planted.

Vegetables and fruits.—From household debris in Pueblo Bonito
we recovered remains of the following:[4]

• Maize (Zea mays)

• Pumpkins (Cucurbita pepo; C. moschata)

• Rocky Mountain beeplant (Cleome serrulata)

• Walnuts (Juglans major; J. rupestris)

• Grape (Vitis arizonica)

• Pricklypear (Opuntia sp.)

• Pinyon nuts (Pinus edulis)

• Wild potato (Solanum sp.)

While this list shows only those actually found during the Society's
explorations, the Bonitians unquestionably knew and used many other
plant products. From Pepper's observations (1920, p. 298) we may
add to our catalog beans and "seeds similar to those of the wild sunflower";
we might also include with confidence a number of desert
plants whose roots, young leaves, or fruits are today relished by the
Navaho and Hopi. For instance, seeds of Indian rice grass (Oryzopsis
hymenoides) were unquestionably harvested by the Bonitians, as they
still are by many western tribes, since stems of the plant were employed
repeatedly in local construction. Among other plants native
to the Chaco country and recognized for their food value by the Hopi
(Hough, 1897, pp. 37-42; Whiting, 1939) are dropseed (Sporobolus
flexuosus Thurb.), goosefoot or lambsquarters (Chenopodium cornutum
B. & H.), pricklypear (Opuntia), pigweed (Amaranthus sp.),
and Rocky Mountain beeplant (Cleome integrifolia T. & G.). Cockleburs
(Xanthium saccharatum Wallr.), such as we found in the wall
adobe of Room 47, Pueblo del Arroyo, were probably only pests to the
prehistoric farmers of Chaco Canyon.

When the Espejo Expedition in February 1583 approached the
Tigua villages above present Albuquerque, the Indians fled from
their homes. "All were deserted," writes Luxán (Hammond and
Rey, 1929, p. 81), "but contained large quantities of maize, beans,
green and sun-dried calabashes, and other vegetables . . ." Today, as
in Conquest times and previously, corn, beans, and pumpkins comprise
the principal food crops of the Pueblos.

Pueblo society being matrilineal, before American customs began
to take root, Pueblo women not only owned the fields, which the
husband and unmarried sons cultivated, but also controlled the food
supply. Since it was a common practice until a generation ago to
reserve at least one year's supply of maize against the possibility of
drought or crop failure (Bourke, 1884, p. 135; Matilda Coxe Stevenson,
1904, p. 353; Forde, 1931, p. 393), care of these stores was no
light responsibility. Weevils and mice had to be watched as well as
family appetites. In what probably was cornmeal, placed in bowls
as burial offerings with bodies interred in Room 329, Pueblo Bonito,
we noted puparia of a muscoid fly (Calliphoridae) and body parts
of ptinid and darkling beetles (Niptus sp.; Alphitobius sp.).[5]
Larvae of both beetles attack stored cereals, while those of the muscoid
fly feed primarily on dead animal matter.

One of the three bowls containing the supposed meal also held a

number of dried wild potatoes.[6] Wild potatoes still grow in Chaco
Canyon and a few plants had taken root in the East Court of Pueblo
Bonito. We protected these latter for a time but neglected to test a
statement of our Navaho workmen, namely, that the tubers are not
edible until the second year. Wild potatoes are exceedingly bitter,
and the Hopi, Zuñi, Navaho, and other Southwestern tribes who
gather them as a winter food consume with them clay containing
magnesia, to lessen the griping effect.

The 34 fragments of corncobs brought to the Museum laboratories
provide but little for study. Most are charred; all are much shrunken.
One fragment shows 8 rows of kernels; twelve show 10 rows; seventeen,
12 rows; one, 14 rows; and three, 16 rows. Only one charred
fragment has kernels attached and these are rounded, a flint variety.
Pure strains of the low-growing, drought-resistant Hopi corn produce
ears about 6 inches long with 12 rows of kernels (Forde,
1931, p. 391).

The favorite pumpkin at Pueblo Bonito appears to have been
Cucurbita pepo, although the striped cushaw type, C. moschata, is
also represented by seeds, rind, and peduncles. Squashes are not
present. Pueblo farmers currently plant with their pumpkins a few
gourds for dance rattles, bottles, and ladles. That this practice was
also followed by the Bonitians is suggested by two neck fragments of
gourd (Lagenaria leucantha) canteens, one of which has a small opening
at the stem end and a transverse hole for the carrying cord.

Mammals.—Besides the vegetal remains listed above, the rubbish
heaps of Pueblo Bonito yielded bones of the following mammals:[7]

• Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus)

• Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana)

• Elk (Cervus canadensis)

• Mountain sheep (Ovis canadensis)

• Jack rabbit (Lepus californicus)

• Cottontail (Sylvilagus auduboni)

• Grizzly bear (Ursus horribilis)

• Beaver (Castor canadensis)

• Badger (Taxidea taxus)

• Bobcat (Lynx baileyi)

• Porcupine (Erethizon epixanthum)

• Gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus)

• Red fox (Vulpes sp.)

• Coyote (Canis lestes)

• Indian dog (Canis familiaris)

While some of these were probably trapped only for their pelts, the
first six certainly were killed primarily for their flesh. Narrators of
the Conquest period repeatedly mention rabbits among Pueblo gifts
to the Spaniards. In his letter of August 3, 1540, from the Zuñi
village of Hawikuh, Coronado informs the Viceroy: "The food which
they eat in this country is corn . . . and beans and venison, which
they probably eat (although they say that they do not), because we
found many skins of deer and hares and rabbits" (Winship, 1896,
p. 559). Ninety years later, enumerating the game to be found in
New Mexico, Benavides (Ayer, 1916, p. 37) includes a mediumsized
deer of which "there are very, very many; and on these the
Indians sustain and clothe themselves."

Deer furnished not only hides for clothing but meat for the table,
sinew for bow strings, and bone for implements. Hence it is only
natural that the mule deer, which frequents upland country, should
be conspicuously represented among the mammalian remains from
Pueblo Bonito. Of seven deer, sheep, and pronghorn skulls recovered,
six had been broken for extraction of the brain. Seeing these, my
older Navaho neighbors remarked that they as young men, and their
fathers before them, had hunted pronghorns on nearby mesas—and
deer, elk, and sheep in the mountainous country north of the Rio
San Juan. Undoubtedly these neighbors of mine were among those
who formerly maintained an antelope corral "near Escavada Wash"
(Hill, 1938, p. 96).

Pepper (1920, pp. 31, 264, 298) records the finding of a mountain
lion claw, in Room 1; a "turtle carcass," in Room 78; the hair, jaw,
and two claw fragments of a cinnamon bear, in Room 92. The first
and third may well be the nucleus of a story echoed by Special Agent
S. J. Holsinger (Ms., p. 18) in his report to the General Land
Office, namely, that in a room in the north-central portion of Pueblo

Bonito "the remains of a bear were found and in another that of
two cougars or mountain lions."

The Society gathered additional evidence of mountain lions and
bears. Included in an offering secreted in the north wall of Kiva Q
were a considerable number of grizzly claws and phalanges, 10 claws
of the black bear (Euarctos americanus), and 4 mountain-lion (Felis
concolor) claws. We collected another grizzly claw in Room 330 and
still another while clearing away fallen masonry and blown sand from
an unidentified section of the ruin. The latter two, like those from
the repository, were not drilled or otherwise prepared for suspension.
According to Hill (1938, pp. 157-160), bear claws and even whole
paws are essential in certain Navaho rituals, but the flesh is eaten only
when starvation threatens. Bear meat is taboo among the modern
Pueblos, and we must suppose it was among their forefathers also.

If dogs, coyotes, and other carnivores were regularly eaten by
Southwestern tribes, historic and prehistoric, we have no positive evidence
of the fact. Parsons (1939, p. 22) says only compelling necessity
would drive the Hopi to such an extreme. But Bourke (1884,
p. 253) implies that they actually relished "a good mess of stewed
pup," and Stephen (1936, pp. 266, 939) saw two Hopi dogs killed
and dressed for leisurely consumption. Thus canid remains from the
rubbish piles of Pueblo Bonito may, or may not, indicate that hunger
had stalked the village.

Altogether, a dozen Indian dogs and perhaps 30 coyotes are represented
in our collection. Only five skeletons were articulated and
reasonably complete. Three of these came from Kiva F, Pueblo del
Arroyo—one from the floor (pl. 101) and another about 20 inches
higher, at bench level. Incomplete skeletons of two dogs, one lacking
only the skull, and a coyote were found in Kiva I, same ruin. These
and other remains are considered hereinafter (Appendix B) by the
late Glover M. Allen, former curator of mammals at the Museum of
Comparative Zoology.

In Room 334, Pueblo Bonito, half filled with debris of occupation,
we found the detached skulls of a bobcat, a gray fox, two red foxes,
a dog, and three coyotes. Present also were three bobcat leg bones
and a handful of fox and coyote bones. Why were these eight animals
slain and what became of the remainder of their skeletons? The
head skins of dogs killed for the purpose cover dog kachina masks
of the Hopi (Stephen, 1936, p. 117). Coyotes, foxes, and bobcats
are usually taken today for their pelts.

Dr. Allen raises the question whether some of our coyotes and
badgers (2 skulls and half a mandible) might have sought shelter in

the ruins and died there. This is possible, of course, but not very
probable. With a single exception all the canid bones we collected
came from beneath fallen masonry and usually from household rubbish
at a depth of 6 feet or more below the present surface. The
exception is a coyote skull and neck vertebrae (field No. 1484)
found shallowly buried in the depression that marked Kiva R. Except
for this lone skull, quite obviously post-Bonito, all our canid
remains seem to me undeniably contemporaneous with the ruins in
which they were found. Despite the fact that those remains were
recovered mostly from debris of occupation, their relative scarcity
militates against the idea that dogs and coyotes were customarily eaten.
Then, too, there is the puzzle of the headless bodies and the bodiless
heads!

The Pueblos had domesticated the dog and the turkey long before
the Spaniards arrived. This fact is established both by archeological
evidence and by the Conquistadores themselves. The anonymous
author of the Relación del Suceso states that the Zuñi kept turkeys
"more for their feathers than to eat, because they make long robes of
them" (Winship, 1896, p. 573). Coronado doubted this limitation,
as he wrote from Hawikuh in 1540, because he himself, uninhibited
by native custom, considered Zuñi turkeys "very good, and better
than those of Mexico" (ibid., p. 559). It is true, nevertheless, that
fowl of all kinds have been under a general Pueblo taboo until quite
recently.

Three hundred and fifty years after the Conquest, Mrs. Stevenson
(1904, p. 368) observed at Zuñi that "chickens are kept for the eggs,
the whites of which are used for mixing paints to be applied to wooden
objects. The whole egg is sometimes eaten by men to bring them
larger families." The four Zuñi men who accompanied me on a
reconnaissance of the Chaco region in 1920 may have been unduly
cautious, but they always declined the occasional breakfast eggs I
offered although they knew at the time that their young relatives had
learned to eat eggs at Government boarding schools.

Unworked turkey bones are conspicuous in the trash mounds at
Pueblo Bonito. We even found fragments of turkey-egg shells. With
the possible exception of deer bones, turkey bones were most frequently
utilized in the manufacture of that indispensable household
implement, the awl. Thus the ban against turkey flesh, if recognized
in prehistoric times, did not extend to the skeleton. Canid bones, on
the other hand, were rarely employed at Pueblo Bonito. We have
only five implements, for example, made from leg bones of dogs or
coyotes. All are awls. In addition, we have an arrowpoint shaped

from what appears to be the ulna of a dog (fig. 69). Fish, also, seem
to have been taboo among the ancient Pueblos. At least I find in the
archeological literature no reference to fish remains even from ruins
situated near rivers and trout streams. Coronado and his countrymen
were always glad to add fish to their limited native fare and expressed
astonishment that the Pueblos did not. "The Zuñi," observed the
unknown author of the Relación Postrera de Sívola, "do not know
what sort of a thing fish is" (Winship, 1896, p. 569). Navahos avoid
fish, so I was told in northern Arizona in 1908, because their ancestors
drove the cliffdwellers into the San Juan River where they were
transformed into fish.

At modern Isleta, according to Parsons (1932, p. 211), one informant
contradicted the statement of another and emphatically denied
that fish were eaten locally. The four Zuñi men who accompanied me
to Chaco Canyon in 1920, and who patiently watched the preparation
of a meager camp supper one rainy night, shrank back in horror when
I jestingly identified a bit of salmon skin as rattlesnake. But they
shared the contents of the can a few minutes later, albeit with lingering
suspicion, after I had pointed to the illustration of a magnificent
fish on the wrapper and helped myself to a generous portion.

In what Lummis describes as "the boniest passage in Benavides,"
Fray Alonso emphasizes the piscatorial possibilities of the Rio Grande
in 1630 (Ayer, 1916, pp. 36-37, 261-262). Among others, he names
the gar pike. Hence our interest in the identification of nine gar-pike
(Lepisosteus sp.) scales (U.S.N.M. No. 334958) from Room 44,
Pueblo del Arroyo. The gar pike is not recorded from the Rio San
Juan, 50 miles to the north, and any fish would have been as great
a curiosity in Chaco Canyon a thousand years ago as it would be today.
Although we found none in Pueblo Bonito, Pepper reports a fishbone
from Room 32.

Elderly Navaho assert that the Chaco country was a veritable
paradise before white men came, and most of us can sympathize with
their point of view. None will deny that introduction of firearms and
horses, cattle, and sheep brought significant changes. Nevertheless,
even with the superior range we postulate a hundred years ago, and
the increased herds that range would have supported, game alone
could not have fed any considerable population. The inhabitants of
Pueblo Bonito could probably have slaughtered in a single season
every animal within a day's journey, had they been of a mind to
do so. But they were farmers, not hunters. The relative infrequence
of mammal bones in their rubbish heaps is ample proof that the Bonitians
did not depend upon the chase for their subsistence. Their

appetite for maize, beans, and pumpkins—staples in Anasazi fare for
uncounted generations—was an inherited appetite. Thus their reliance
upon crops from these three cultivated plants was perfectly
natural.

Agriculture is a gamble, especially in the Pueblo country. Rains
there are unpredictable. Lacking sufficient midsummer moisture,
crops do not mature. When harvests fail, people go hungry. Tradition
and personal experience both reminded the Pueblo farmer that
years of little rain occurred repeatedly. Hence the wisdom of providing,
when crops were good, against the possibility of lean harvests.
And many Hopi and Zuñi families still follow this centuries-old custom
even now, although a village grocery store may stand a stone's
throw away.

Throughout the Pueblo country summer rains, rather than winter
snows, supply the moisture on which plants grow and ripen. But
summer rains frequently fall below normal; they may fail altogether
and for two, three, or four years in succession. Dr. Douglass's 1,200year
tree-ring record of southwestern climate, a byproduct of our
search for the age of Pueblo Bonito, reveals a surprising number of
dry years (Douglass, 1929, 1935, 1935-1936). The Great Drought of
1276-1299 had no effect upon the inhabitants of Pueblo Bonito because
they had abandoned Chaco Canyon at least a hundred years before. It
was a succession of lesser droughts in the last quarter of the eleventh
century, especially that of 1090-1101, that presumably hastened the
arroyo which forced emigration of the Bonitians. Since 1540, droughts
in the Southwest have repeatedly caused Indian groups to leave their
homes and go out seeking temporary relief from others, even from
their traditional enemies.

No one can study this testimony of the tree rings without realizing
how precarious the Pueblo subsistence problem has always been.
Hooton (1930, pp. 317-320) sees in the skeletal remains from Pecos
evidence of progressively declining health and attributes that decline
to "continual undernourishment." Dietary deficiency is accepted as
the probable cause of Osteoporosis symmetrica, a condition frequently
noted in the crania of Pecos infants and children. The same disease
was also present at Pueblo Bonito and doubtless for the same reason,
too much maize. Arthritis also left its mark at both villages. Corn,
beans, and pumpkins were subsistence staples, but they were not
enough at Pecos in 1800 or at Pueblo Bonito 700 years earlier.