Read Ebook: Frijoles: A Hidden Valley in the New World by Hendron J W Jerome William Thomas Dorothy Editor Taylor Jocelyn Illustrator

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Indian families cut their crude shelters deep enough for occupation by several individuals. Caves were uncomfortable, but certainly better than no shelter at all. This was a strange sort of stone which nature had provided. It was very poor to build with, thought the Indian. It was soft and bulky. But years of living would eventually solve the problem. Why worry about it! In time necessity would produce some means of shelter more satisfactory. Later on, more people moved into the area. These people occupied adjacent canyons and mesas as well as Frijoles. During many years population increased and the dwellers on the Pajarito became settled in their locality.

There is no way of telling how many Indians lived in the Valley of the Frijoles during very early times--close to water and well protected. Indians could sit at the openings of their cave homes above the talus slope and see for great distances up and down the Canyon. And it was safe. No jealous enemy lurking above could roll a boulder down on them. Their cave was their protection. But caves were not adequate as homes. Fires could not be built inside without smoking out its occupants. Something better had to replace them. This new soft rock certainly was not suitable for building walls or at least these simple valley folk did not know how to use it. Crude mud huts were erected at the base of the cliff at the same time that caves were occupied as home sites. Mud was all they could find for building walls. It took lots of water to make mud and then it was so soft and crumbly that the little walls cracked and fell when they dried out.

Soon it was found that by picking up small stones and packing them into the soft mud as temper the walls would stand longer. Larger rocks and less mud made better walls and saved a lot of toil and unnecessary labor. There were many rocks to be picked up at random. Walls were raised high enough for the Indian to stand upright inside the rooms. Sharp stone axes of basalt were used to fell small trees which were laid over the tops of walls for the support of the roofs. The blunt ends of the timbers were inserted in holes gouged out of the cliff. Brush and grass were placed over them; thick mud coats were smeared over the top. Holes were cut in the roofs. Fires were built and the smoke could escape through these holes. How much better this than a cave! These tiny rooms were stuffy and smoky inside but not as unpleasant as a cave room. An Indian would soon suffocate inside a cave. During the rainy seasons the roofs leaked and great quantities of mud were stirred up and spread over the top and smoothed down flat. The women could always find more when that washed off. In time weeds and wild grasses took root in these dirt roofs.

But somewhere, somehow, not at Tyuonyi perhaps, but in some nearby valley or on some high mesa top at one of a hundred colony sites, Indian neighbors found that still larger chunks of tuff could be used for building blocks. This would save much labor. So much mud in a wall would not be necessary. It is possible that this use of larger building stones was not a matter of independent origin at any one of many primitive villages on the high mesas and in the deep canyons of the Pajarito. Indians, after years and years of living, simply came into the use of larger building blocks by the trial and error method. They served the purpose better. A dry spell or so, when it did not rain, might have made it necessary to transport more and more water in urns from water holes or nearby streams. This was women's work and hard work too. And more stone and less mud made stronger walls for houses anyway. Some of the stone was so soft that it could be shaped into blocks to fit into the walls. These blocks did not lay absolutely flat because their surfaces were irregular. Small stones were forced between the cracks and when the mud mortar dried the walls were solid. This practice went on for years and years. Indians experimented with all the materials at their disposal. They could not send an order to the Gods for building materials.

Everywhere on the Pajarito are seen the remains of homes belonging to this period of occupation. There are hundreds of them--small family houses, in deep canyons or in a forest on high mesa tops. Debris has filled them up and today they look like piles of rock. Building blocks are strewn all over the surface. Most of the blocks had been picked up at random after they had been carved by nature. Others were square or rectangular, showing that they had been fashioned by Indian hands.

The Indians who lived in the Valley of the Frijoles communicated with the other groups who lived in deep canyons to the south and to the north. They visited each other and even traded back and forth. Little colonies were formed when one, two, three or four families lived together in a house with several rooms. But the time was to come when this living all over the country would stop; people would come together to live in communities. And the little colony sites would be abandoned forever for the archaeologist to discover centuries later.

A touchy subject is that of linguistics. It is a tricky one. But students know that five different languages are spoken among the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico today. They are: Tiwa, Tewa, Towa, Keres, and Zu?ian. To be on the safe side, one should not touch too heavily upon languages spoken by Indians, especially in a writing of this kind. But languages and dialects do play an important part in our story. When those early people drifted from Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde toward the Rio Grande, they spoke a language. But, it is unknown. Students have ideas, but are reluctant to advance opinions based on the ruins they excavate or the artifacts they discover. But, two groups of Indians speaking different languages drifted onto the Pajarito. People speaking different languages have never gotten along well together even from the Tower of Babel until the present time.

It has been mentioned before that Keres-speaking Indians have a legend that long years ago a treaty or contract was made between their ancestors and Tewa-speaking people. It is said that certain loosely defined ranges of territory were to belong to each of the two groups. The meeting place or the place where the treaty was made was called "Tyuonyi." "Tyuonyi" means "place of treaty." Thus the dividing line between Tewa and Keres lands became sharply defined by what is now known as "Frijoles Canyon." But how long was such a treaty to last among primitive people? All the lands to the south of Frijoles Canyon were supposedly Keres and those to the north were Tewa. After this treaty was made, Indians probably spread out on each side of the Canyon like the parting of the waters of the Red Sea. Small house sites dotted the mesas and canyons on both sides. But still, members of both groups could possibly have lived here together. Legend hints at this.

As time went on more houses sprang up at the base of the north cliff and crude pueblos were erected on the floor of the Canyon. Kivas or ceremonial chambers were dug out of the valley floor and lined with walls of rock. Indians gathered cobble stone because they might not have known how to cut blocks during these early times with which to lay masonry walls. They gathered thousands of them and built their kiva walls eight or ten feet thick. This was their attempt to utilize the pieces of crudely shaped felsite or volcanic ash. They laid huge timbers fifteen or more inches in diameter across the walls of their large underground chambers. Then smaller poles of pine were cut and laid on top of the large vigas. Splittings were hacked from down trees. Pine, cottonwood, juniper, pi?on--anything that would split easily with crude stone implements--were used for the next roof course. Then brush and grass and mud were put on top. The roofs must have been two or more feet thick but little did the Indians realize that the tremendous weight might crack the big timbers after they dried out. How ingenious were these Indians in their simple way!

Many a moon passed. Many houses were built. Jealousy might have arisen between these two groups of Indians. Who was to raise corn on this or that little patch of fertile ground? Who should have a right to hunt deer and turkey in the Valley of the Frijoles? How could Keres-speaking people go to Tewa kivas or how could Tewas go to Keres kivas? Trouble reigned over the entire plateau and most of it was possibly in the Valley of the Frijoles. Was it ever decided which group should live in Hidden Valley when it was given the name Tyuonyi?

Jealousy could have arisen over pottery. When the Frijoles area was first occupied clay deposits were discovered in arroyos and along river banks. Indian women began moulding pottery with local clays. They discovered mineral pigments. They used paints from wild plants which fired the black designs in fast color in the vessels. The color would never come out. But slowly and surely the women began to depart from the techniques which they and their ancestors had previously used. Out of these techniques new styles of pottery were developed by using local materials. These white wares with black designs became thick and coarse as time went on and probably decreased in popularity as far as usefulness was concerned.

The Keres-speaking people had kin far to the south of the Pajarito Plateau. And these people were ingenious. Sometime in the thirteenth century, it seems, Indians living in the Little Colorado River district of what is now eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, were making a style of red pottery with black designs. This pottery was apparently very popular and spread by trade to the Rio Grande Valley. Indians in this same region eventually learned to produce a glaze paint by using lead-manganese ore. This ware also spread to the Rio Grande and glaze paint was used in decorating pottery from about 1350 A.D. to the time of the Pueblo Rebellion in 1680. It is thought that shortly after its inception and perhaps by 1400 A.D. this red pottery spread by trade to Tyuonyi.

The Keres living here might have brought this red ware in from their southern relatives living below the Pajarito Plateau. On the other hand, it is possible that they might not have lived in the Canyon before the time of the glaze pottery. The most plausible explanation seems to be that the people to the south brought the materials to their kin in the Frijoles. These materials were then transformed into the beautiful new hard red ware to catch the eye of the Tewa-speaking people who likely were modeling inferior white wares with black designs. However, there is a remote possibility that this glaze ware was never manufactured in Frijoles Canyon and this possibility brings up the question as to whether or not the ware was used as a wedge to gain entrance into Tyuonyi. The folk who were living here, either Tewa or Keres, or it could have been both, were making an inferior type of black-on-white pottery with local materials. It was inferior because it was so porous. So, the Tewa-speaking people might have readily accepted this red ware in trade from the Keres. And it seems this trading might have been carried on for a half-century or thereabout. No one is sure. At this particular time there seems to have been a definite decrease in the manufacture or trading of glaze pottery.

Something very drastic must have taken place. Could it be that there was just not enough room in the beautiful Frijoles for two groups of people who spoke different languages? It was easily a prize spot. It was a green valley--a perfect place to live and the water supply was constant. It might have been the envy of Indians for many miles around. There was not this constant water supply either to the north or to the south. Some groups living on the high mesas might even have depended on open basins hollowed out of soft rock to catch the rain water. Great jealousy could have arisen between individuals or even groups. And one might safely guess that love affairs were broken up between Tewa maidens and Keres boys or vice versa. And who can say with certainty that the Tyuonyi was not the earliest known home of the Keres-speaking people in this vicinity? Or that it was not the Tewas from the north who did the encroaching and forced their way into the Valley of the Frijoles and lived and traded pottery with the Keres?

This was most likely the period in which the terraced communal apartment houses were developed and erected. There were centers of population from this time on. There were no more small family houses. Indians built houses with several hundred rooms, at least two, and, in some cases, three stories high. What was the reason? Was it for defense purposes or was it just a normal outgrowth of the discovery of the fashioned block technique? There were several main villages occupied by the Tewa-speaking people to the north. They were all built in defensible positions: on a knoll, a high mesa top overlooking the entire surrounding country, or in a valley away from the cliffs from which heavy objects could be thrown down by enemies. These four villages were Potsui'i, Sankawi, Navawi and Tshirege. Potsui'i was located in a deep valley on a knoll. It was known as "gap where the water sinks." Sankawi was "gap of the sharp round cactus." It was built high on a mesa top in a defensible position. A trail was worn in the soft rock by thousands of moccasined feet going and coming from the pueblo. Another of their villages, Navawi, was so-called because of a pitfall gap or game trap. Game coming from either direction on the trail was caught in a deep pit. Tshirege was "House of the Bird People." It was the largest pueblo on the Pajarito and had extensive villages built at the base of the cliff. The numbers of Indians who lived at these sites during these times cannot be estimated though all four villages were large. It would appear that nothing but Tewas lived here. But there also lived their kin and kind in Frijoles Canyon.

Keres people were living to the south of Frijoles--in large pueblos too. They had been living in this south country for years at Yapashi, "pueblo of the Stone Lions," and at Haatze, "House of the Earth People." These were communal apartment houses also but the Keres population on the Pajarito probably was not as great as that of the Tewas in those days. Nobody but Keres lived here to the south of Tyuonyi.

But certainly some groups held on at Tyuonyi. Who can say what happened half a millenium ago? Likely, the Tewas in Frijoles were few. They could have been outnumbered by the Keres people who might have refused to leave their Tyuonyi. Runners could have been dispatched across trails to the north to the big villages for help. War chiefs held council. Warriors were called into action and could have streaked out over age-old trails. Hideous looking creatures with flying black hair, bow and arrow and war club in hand, went whooping and yelling to the Tyuonyi and entered the Canyon at half a dozen places over the north cliff. Two groups of Indians speaking different languages simply could not live in the same valley, farm the same fields, live in the same caves and drink the same water. This was the last of the Keres. They could not hold their own because they were outnumbered and out-fought by "the little strong people." They were driven off and the Valley of the Frijoles was Tewa from then on.

So these beaten Indians pushed south to move in with their kin at the pueblo of the Stone Lions. Whether they ever went back to Tyuonyi and attempted another stand against "the little strong people" is not known. It has been legendarily hinted that a race of "dwarfs" again attacked them at the pueblo of the Stone Lions, slaughtering many and driving off the rest. But we know of no race of "dwarfs" in the Southwest during either prehistoric or historic times. The poor Keres! They were beaten at every turn. But they knew it and moved on, occupying first one place and then another, moving in for awhile with other kin and kind. The farther away from Tyuonyi, the better!

Haatze, or "House of the Earth People" was their next stop but not for long. They lived here with their kind and then moved on, down to the village of Cuapa only to be attacked again by "the little strong people." Great numbers were slaughtered, so the legends go, and the remainder driven off and pursued almost to the present town of Santo Domingo. Legend has it that one group went off by themselves and formed the pueblos of Cochiti and Santo Domingo. Another group, it is said, climbed up a high rock and took refuge there from their attackers. The rock is known as the "Potrero Viejo" and here they built a village. One San Felipe legend tells us this: nearly all the people at Cuapa were slain, except a woman with a parrot who hid in a metate and a boy who hid in a store-room. These two moved to the Tiwa-speaking village of Sandia and got a cold reception so they went east to live with the Tanos, where the woman gave birth to five children. Things were made so miserable for them here that they left and moved to the Rio Grande and eventually went to San Felipe. That is why we have the pueblo of San Felipe today. These people still know the Pajarito as their ancestral home and it is not an uncommon thing for them to organize a communal hunt to the homes of their ancestors or trudge to the Shrine of the Stone Lions and paint the noses of the life-size fetiches or sprinkle a little sacred meal--deep in ancient Keres land.

Time has a peculiar way of curing all ills. The Keres had been driven from the Tyuonyi by the "little strong people" and possibly did not make further attempt to re-occupy this Valley of the Frijoles. They were contented to stay in the broad Valley of the Rio Grande where the water supply was constant and where their enemies did not care to go. The boundary line was set. And even the hostile Tewas had probably experienced enough of war and trouble.

Tyuonyi, the Hidden Valley, might have been like an oasis in the desert. Who can say that there was sufficient water in the canyons and on the mesas to the north--that water holes did not go dry and that the Tewas did not have to depend upon waters from the heavens to make their corn grow? And who can say that the waters of El Rito de Los Frijoles dried up? One can only suppose. But judging by climatic conditions as they are today, Frijoles Canyon was one of the main sources of water on the Pajarito. Since water was a controlling factor in the lives of these people, what primitive group of Indians would not fight over the right to live in a well-watered valley--a green and beautiful valley--where adequate shelter was afforded by the vertical walls of a high north cliff? Certain things hint that little time passed before Tewa-speaking groups penetrated the Valley of the Frijoles again and in larger numbers than before. Slowly and surely they trickled in a few at a time. Over a period of years the infiltration was heavy. Deep trails were worn in the soft rock ledges by the passing over of thousands of moccasined feet going to and from the northern villages some ten miles distant. The steam of hatred between the jealous groups could have cooled off but probably never completely. Toward the close of the fifteenth century primitive Tewa farmers, it seems, had again settled in Frijoles Canyon.

They went to work in earnest this time, building houses; not with mud walls which would wash down when it rained, but with walls of stone, which type of construction their predecessors had begun. Some of the caves occupied by the earlier people could have eroded away while others could have been re-hewn by these later occupants. Who knows? Crumbling remains of old talus houses might have been leveled off at the base of the cliff and new homes built over them. Indian men carved the heavy stones into square and rectangular blocks with stone axes. The stones lay almost flat and the masons did not have to be too careful in their fashioning because small pieces of rock hammered tight in the joints would hold the blocks steady. These walls were laid on footings of smooth-worn river pebbles. Block after block was carved and laid into structures seven feet high. Indian women carried water from the little river in ollas on the tops of their heads and trudged day after day up the steep slopes to the cliff. They gathered clay, perhaps not from Frijoles Canyon, because it was hard to find. They might have traveled miles for enough to apply a thin coating of wash over the stone walls of their homes.

Time developed the terraced community apartment house for the prehistoric Pueblo Indian in the cliff as well as in the open flats on the floor of the Canyon. Second stories, it seems, came quite late in the evolution of house types at Frijoles. Narrow mud walls of such poor quality as were built in earlier times at Tyuonyi would never have held two stories but the new walls of fashioned rock would hold them because they were more stable. It stands to reason that when stone and mortar were laid into a wall, the process of drying out transformed the wall into a unit. This process reminds me of an expression I remember from my freshman days in college, that: "Pre-Cambrian rocks are homogeneous in their heterogeneity," and it is certainly true that stone walls built by our prehistoric friends of the sixteenth century could enjoy the same comment. Floors to these houses were plastered with fine adobe mortar. The rough surfaces of walls were plastered over too, from floor to roof timbers. And the cliff dweller was lucky if no water got inside his house. The secret was to keep them dry. It might not have been an uncommon sight to have witnessed the mudding of roofs by Indian women of sixteenth century Tyuonyi. After a good rain they could have taken advantage of water caught in pottery vessels which had been set outside the houses. This would have saved the women many a weary step to water and return.

One story was not sufficient so up, up, up went the houses to two and three stories. The cliff formed the back walls of the rooms--then Mr. Prehistoric Indian had only three walls to lay instead of four. Walls of stone, ten and twelve inches thick, would hold the weight of one or two additional stories and especially when they leaned against the steady cliff. But additional rooms meant more poles, more cane, brush and mud. When second and third story rooms were added the smoke from fires in rooms below escaped through a front opening. There was no way for the smoke to escape through the upper rooms and the cliff dweller was smart enough not to cut a hole in the floor and let the smoke into his house above. And, too, second and third story rooms likely were much safer than first story rooms. Ladders could be pulled up to the roofs. Who knows that these Tewas were not thinking of revengeful Keres people to the south?

In some cases caves were hewn and used independently of the talus houses to the front but certainly it was impossible to stay inside while large fires were burning. The poor cliff dweller would have suffocated. Many attempts were made to ventilate caves by boring smoke holes above the doorways. But it was impossible to ventilate a cave successfully. Not much of a draft was created. Indians attempted to ventilate their cave homes by cutting as many as three holes through the soft cliff and then plastering the holes on the inside to facilitate the passage of the smoke. They met with little success.

The majority of the caves at Tyuonyi were connected with the talus houses to the front. Caves entered from second-story rooms were very popular and likely were used, for the most part, as ante-chambers and not as independent dwellings. They were excellent for storage purposes and if the Indian wanted to live he had to hold food over from one season to the next. Covering a period of a little more than a hundred years, let us say, the Indians of Frijoles Canyon cut over three hundred cave rooms in the north cliff. Some were, used independently of the houses to the front but most of them were not. Caves were hewn before houses were built, and likely, a great number of them were cut after the talus houses were erected against the cliff. They built just as many houses as caves, if not more. Houses extended as far as four rows of rooms out from the cliff and they were terraced up as high as three stories. On top of them were open porches which we call "ramadas" today. They were mere shelters with four corner poles and a few cross pieces of juniper or pine with brush and leaves over the top. What delight some old cronies might have had basking in the sun during some hot summer afternoon!

This was the valley of the cliff dweller, the Ancient Tewa more than likely, who built houses and cut caves for almost two miles up and down the north cliff of Frijoles Canyon. Here he could see for great distances--he could look up and he could look down. He could hear the water rippling in the Rito below and he could live in true Indian fashion. But these villages were not built in a day or a year. It took many years. Although there are the ruins of enough houses and caves along the north wall to have housed two thousand primitive Indians, no more than a few hundred ever lived here at one time. There simply wasn't land enough to farm, or game enough to supply food for a greater number. It would seem that Tyuonyi never had a static occupation but an ever moving one.

The cliff dwellers at Frijoles, like their kin to the north, knew that the only safe method of living was in communities. So they erected what is known today as the "Long House." One section of the north cliff was almost vertical and its base sloped gently down to the waters of the little river. This must have been the concentration of the cliff homes. Rooms were built side by side for over seven hundred feet. There were few cave rooms here to crawl back into and out of the weather. These people must have learned by experience how uncomfortable caves were, because they stuck to houses with stone walls and roofs of poles and brush and grass and mud. And they built these homes solid against the cliff and even carved recesses in the cliff so that the ends of the building stones would fit perfectly. Then the walls would not slip. The Long House was not very far from water--fifty yards. This was just a step for the women.

Some of the dwellers carved and painted pictures on the back walls of their houses or even in the caves which had barely enough room for three or four people to occupy. Call it writing if you like. It likely was "doodling." They had no written language. They were forced to record what they thought and what they believed or had seen on the walls of their houses or in the designs of their pottery. Birds were the most common design. A mountain sheep was occasionally drawn, or a squirrel, or a rabbit; perhaps a bear or a katsina--a supernatural being. They might have tried to depict their ancestors emerging from the darkness and climbing up a high pole from the underworld of Sipapu. The awanyu or "plumed serpent" was quite common. It was the guardian spirit of springs. In one cave there was a drawing of a horse and certainly this was not an ancient drawing for the Spanish brought the horse to New Mexico. Some wandering Tewa could have seen the Spanish on horseback--on creatures which Indians thought devoured people. It might have been that other Tewa-speaking people from around the pueblo of San Juan, far to the north, described a horse by pictograph, when they hurried into the mountain homes of their kin after seeing the Spanish in 1540. Or it might have been drawn by some visitor after the evacuation of the Indians. It could even have been someone's joke.

About a quarter-mile from the cliff dwellings, and where the Canyon becomes narrow, is a deep natural cave. It is eighty feet across and its opening faces the valley one hundred fifty feet above the waters of the Rito. One prehistoric group lived here for a time. They were certainly secluded. Hand holds were gouged from the soft cliffs with sharp pointed rocks and here in this, now called "Ceremonial Cave," Indians built seventeen first-story rooms and several second-story rooms around the back. They excavated a kiva or ceremonial chamber to the front of the cave. Think of the task these Indians had when they carted water and poles and sticks and perhaps stones up the side of the cliff. Tons of rock were required to build these houses and the ceremonial chamber. This little group built their kiva twelve feet in diameter. It was a circular affair dug to a depth of nine feet and lined with a wall of stone which was plastered on the inside. The floor was of a special kind. It was hard, black and shiny. It had been polished with a smooth stone like the ones the Indian women use today to polish their black pottery. Only this floor was made of blood--animal blood. The Indians carefully saved the blood from animals which they killed and then mixed it with fine silt and soot from the fire and smeared it over their kiva floor in thin layers. When the blood coagulated the plaster hardened and then it was polished by rubbing a smooth stone over it in backward and forward motion. This must have been an important room to have had such an elaborately made floor. But kivas in prehistoric times may have been more important than they are today.

These "high-up" cave dwellers had their houses built like the ones at Mesa Verde, completely sheltered by the overhanging cave roof. To the side of the dwellings, situated near the back wall of the cave, was a turkey pen of little cleanliness. When I discovered this pen hundreds of years later, the floor was covered with human feces, turkey and rodent droppings. They had all lived here in times anterior to the coming of the Spaniards--Indians, turkeys and rodents. The Indian hauled his water and food from the valley below. He secluded himself from the bulk of the Indian population at Tyuonyi. The question will always be, why? Of course, there was a small pueblo on the other side of the Canyon on a little knoll across the river but this might have been built, occupied and abandoned before Indians ever occupied the big cave as a place of residence.

And then, there were Indians who preferred to live on the floor of the Canyon in pueblos--terraced community apartment houses. Several hundred yards below the concentration of the cliff dwellings and in the lower end of the Tyuonyi they built such an apartment house. Little is known about it because it has never been excavated. Broken pieces of pottery, the most important tool of the archaeologist, are found strewn over its ruins today. Its walls are down now and its rooms are almost completely filled in with debris. This particular group of Indians preferred to have their dwelling close to water and they erected it with stone and mud mortar. This is all that is known of this isolated settlement.

It is quite possible that the most popular dwelling places in Frijoles Canyon were the dwellings at the Long House, so well protected by the sheer vertical cliff wall. These could have been over-crowded. Indians might have cared little about living in other sections of the cliff. It might have been that some of the cliff dwellers had experienced terrible slides when hundreds of tons of loose rock and boulders came tumbling down on their little houses, crushing them like pasteboard boxes and burying the occupants alive. All the man-power in the northern part of the Pajarito Plateau could never have rescued their kin who might have been caught in these cave homes. Those rocks had rolled from the top to stay and there they remain today. One wonders what stories those buried caves hold--if, by chance, the skeletons of the occupants are still there. Indians perhaps have died scratching at the boulders which covered the entrances to their caves or tearing their hair and clutching their throats as they suffocated and fell extended on the hard plaster floors in their rooms. Those caves have never been opened.

Puwige never existed during the very early occupation of the Canyon. Its initial wall stones were not laid until the beginning of the Great Period. Any Indian family might have erected a few rooms near the little river--close to water. Then another family came along and built a few more rooms. A son took on a wife and the entire family helped to build his house, since house-building was a community proposition. Indian men went to the slopes where boulders had rolled down and broke them with heavy stones and fashioned the pieces into uneven building blocks. This was no small job. Walls were laid in mud mixed by the small brown hands of Indian women. Poles were cut and laid across the walls, then splittings and cane and brush were laid over the tops and sealed with thick coats of mud. Thick coats of crude plaster were spread over the inside of walls and over floors. These Indians had little clay, none for walls anyway, without hauling it in on their backs, so, they poured hot ashes into the mud to make it stick. Hot ashes formed a sort of lime. Coronado, in 1540, found the Indians at Tiguex making a mortar and plaster in this manner. Slabs of basalt were brought in and set edgewise in the rooms as fireplaces. This was the home of the newlyweds--built right next to the groom's father's house. The young bride could have come from the Long House to live at Puwige, the community house, with her husband's family.

The place on which Puwige was erected was so situated that the Indians had to make walls with sharp turns to follow the contour of the land. This must have been a popular place to live for as time went on more and more rooms were added. Indians evidently preferred this to the vulnerable cliffs. It was not all planned and executed at one time. Some second-story rooms were added and then porches of poles and brush were built. Additions of rooms continued until Puwige was shaped in the form of a crescent with the open part facing the little river which was only a few feet away. Indians lived here for untold years. Something happened. I know not what. It seems that they closed the gap by building three rows of rooms. It was no more a crescent but a circle of rooms built around a large plaza or inner court. Rooms were built in rows, seven deep on the east side of the circle and three on the west side. There were about three hundred rooms on the ground floor and many second and third-story rooms--four hundred in all, more or less. The place was turned into a veritable fort. These people were cunning. They cut seven rooms out through the east side and formed a narrow passageway through which everyone had to pass in order to enter his home. They went from the outside of the pueblo through this narrow passage, dodging obstructions, until they reached the huge inner court. And then they ascended to their respective dwellings by means of small ladders, pulling them to their roof-tops during times of danger. Leave it to the Tewas, "the little strong people," to find ways and means of protecting themselves from lurking danger.

I was once told a story by some San Ildefonso Indians about this Puwige hallway. Guarding the hallway was a half-circle barricade of stone and mud. It was several feet thick and both ends joined the walls of the main building. Through this circular wall was a small opening. The wall must have stood six or eight feet high to have been effective. Now the Tewas contend that at one time, long ago, a sentry was stationed day and night inside the circle. When Puwige was attacked the alarm was given and a huge boulder was rolled in front of the opening. This was to slow down the attackers. If they were fortunate enough to get by the boulder then it was intended that they stumble over a slab of basalt set edgewise in the passageway. It must have stood a foot or more in the air. If the attackers got by the stone without losing balance, then they encountered numerous wooden posts bedded upright in the dirt floor of the long narrow passage. How confusing and prohibitive! Entrance to Puwige was almost impossible unless "the little strong people" desired it. For the villager, an Indian woman with a water jar on her head, moving along slowly, entrance was easy, but for the enemy--no. Warriors stood on housetops, high in the air, and shot sharp-pointed arrows at enemies. They threw rocks and pottery vessels. They fought with clubs--anything they could get their hands on. Puwige was not easy to penetrate.

Was this Puwige occupied by any particular group or were the people of the cliff houses allowed to scramble down and hurry to the inside for protection? Was it a fort for the entire community or just for the people who lived here? The cliff homes were being lived in at the same time as Puwige and might have been more effective as defense units. There was only one side to protect in the cliff homes--the front. And who were the attackers: Navaho, Keres or other groups? Legend has it that the Navaho plundered the pueblos for years and years and history tells us so. They stole the hard-earned stores of food from the pueblos and ran off with the women and children whom they made slaves. But it isn't likely that the Navaho, on foot during the days of Puwige, cared much about penetrating the mountain homes. It would have been a chore to carry the loot back with them. The Navajo likely did not relish the idea of coming over the high range of mountains from the west for a few pots of beans and corn. Would it not be more likely that the so-called "little strong people" might have feared attacks during the night by the Keres to the south who had been driven from their Canyon homes? Tyuonyi was "the oasis of the Pajarito" and the Tewas did not intend to be driven from their fertile valley. Some lurking band could have crept over the south cliff when all was quiet--while Tewas were resting peacefully below. And the attackers were quiet too, with their moccasined feet, like the mountain lion which creeps upon a fawn. A falling rock or the crackling of a dead branch would be a dead give-away. This was not to happen to "the little strong people."

In 1540 the Spanish explorers passed the Keres province and moved northward, it would appear, near the present site of San Juan Pueblo. The entire Indian population fled to the mountains, as you will recall, where they said they had four very strong villages. It is entirely possible that some of these people from the north pushed deep into the mountain country and on to the Valley of the Frijoles where the Spanish could not go on horseback. It was a Hidden Valley. If this had been true, if these northern people had moved into Tyuonyi with their kith and kin and had told about how the Spanish stormed pueblos and shot cannon at other Indians and readily conquered the inhabitants, "the little strong people" might have had incentive to fortify their Puwige against the undesirable attentions of the conquerors. Or it might have been some visitor from the Valley of the Rio Grande who told about depredations at Tiguex. But would a Keres warn a Tewa? We must not overlook the fact that it would have been possible for friendly relations to have existed between the rival groups of people at the time of the Spanish Conquest. They could have lived close together and traded pottery and other articles back and forth. One might go so far as to say that they could have lived at Tyuonyi together a few years prior to its abandonment. But taking all these things into consideration it was likely the Keres whom the Tewas fortified themselves against, and from whom they had probably experienced hostile visits. So they fortified their Puwige and drew up their ladders to the roof-tops in defiance. And the people in the cliffs also drew up their ladders.

Within the inner court of this big community house were three kivas. These deep underground ceremonial chambers lined with rock walls were built adjacent to the rooms on the north side. Puwige was large. It was more than two hundred seventy-five feet across and the tiers of rooms formed a wide band around the outside of the circular court. Why the Indians erected three kivas so close together is uncertain unless it was to have more room in the plaza. It is possible that the kivas were erected first, outside of the village, and as the pueblo grew the three little ceremonial chambers were entirely enclosed within it. But why three kivas inside Puwige? Indians had their reasons. These three ceremonial chambers were small. They were not more than twelve or fifteen feet in diameter. The hard plaster floors were seven or eight feet below the surface of the ground. Their roofs were of poles laid across the stone walls with brush and grass and mud for a covering. Small combination hatchways and smoke vents were cut in the roofs and ladders were put down to the floors as a means of getting in and out. These chambers were likely society kivas of which there were several in every Indian village. Or we might compare them with club rooms in our own society. They were places where the elders met in council, or where they came to spend an hour or so, perhaps a week, visiting with their spiritual fathers. Kivas were places where policy was discussed and decided upon--or a kiva might have been a place where a group of hunters gathered before going on a hunt to pray that their hunt would be successful. We will never know what went on in the secret chambers at Tyuonyi, or as a matter of fact, in any other prehistoric kiva.

And speaking of kivas or ceremonial chambers, some groups preferred to have theirs in the cliffs, hewn out like the smoky cave rooms but generally larger. And the kivas, like the cave rooms, were plastered half-way up the walls whenever they became smoked. This happened quite often if fires were kept burning.

The greatest period of occupation of Hidden Valley must have begun sometime during the fifteenth century. It was to last about a hundred years. With the beginning of this Great Period, the period in which Puwige and all of the talus houses were most likely built and occupied, there certainly must have been some social or ceremonial organization similar to that in the modern pueblos. There were likely two moieties. The dual system where every person in the village belonged to one of two kivas--either Turquoise or Squash, or, Winter or Summer respectively. Presumably a baby born in the winter belonged to the Turquoise kiva. If it was a patrilineal society then the individual might have belonged to the same kiva as his father. Who knows but that it was a matter of personal choice? Each kiva, Turquoise or Squash, had a ruler or cacique whose word was absolute. He was the father of the village to whom villagers looked for guidance and his appointment was for life. The moieties were under the spiritual guidance of the two town chiefs who were responsible for the welfare of the people. An important office was that of cacique. He had been chosen because of his thorough knowledge of chants, sacred rituals, ceremonial procedure and prayers. No one doubted the word of the cacique. And all Indians owed duties to their respective kivas. Although the groups, Turquoise and Squash, were in opposition they also depended upon one another for the common good of the pueblo.

If the dual system was in vogue at Tyuonyi, there must have been two kivas to support it. A peculiar thing, it seems, took place here. At least one tribal kiva was built and was in use before the Great Period of occupation came along. It was a large structure forty-two feet in diameter. Sixty Indians could have crouched down around the inside against the wall. Indian men, years before, excavated a large concave depression in the side of a hill a hundred yards or so down the Canyon from Puwige. Days and days were required to bring in thousands of cobble stones. They labored untiringly. They brought them from the river and they brought chunks from the cliff. Around this deep concave depression which they had laboriously scooped out of the earth with broken pieces of pottery, sticks, flat stones and whatever else they had to work with, Indian men laid stone after stone of this volcanic tuff in crude mortar. They laid a wall ten feet thick. It required thousands of the unworked stones to line this deep pit. It was a circular affair and was their way of creating a semi-subterranean chamber when they did not know how to lay single thickness masonry walls with fashioned blocks.

No prehistoric Rio Grande kiva, that I know of, has an entrance through its wall such as this which was found at Frijoles. They all were entered through the roof. Such things as wall entrances are customary in kivas in the San Juan area but not in the Rio Grande Valley. And these early people dug five pits in the floor of their kiva and lined them with cobble stones. They must have had some use for them of which we know nothing. Pits of this type are something else not seen in prehistoric Rio Grande kivas. They are found in the kivas at Chaco Canyon though, and it is possible that they could have been vestiges of that early culture.

This particular ceremonial chamber had apparently fallen into disuse for a time. But during the Great Period of occupation, when "the little strong people" presumably occupied the Tyuonyi, it was rebuilt. There was little use in going to work and building an entirely new kiva when one was already here and could be rebuilt. The old roofing had fallen to the inside and there were hundreds of pounds of debris in the kiva chamber. All this was cleaned out. Building a kiva was a community enterprise. Men again began cutting and fashioning rectangular blocks from large chunks fallen from the cliff. As each block was fashioned it was laid into a single thickness coursed masonry wall around the inside of the thick wall of cobble stone which belonged to the earlier occupation. The Indian was smart. He laid this circular wall sloping outward toward the top so that the pressure from the heavy roof would be diverted downward when it was laid over the walls. When the wall was finished it was nine feet high from the floor of the kiva to the ceiling. And then to keep it from falling down, the Indians dug underneath the footing stones, and objects modeled of clay which looked like doughnuts were laid in the holes. When we discovered these doughnut-shaped affairs I was mystified until an old Indian from San Ildefonso told me they were put there purposely to hold the wall up, in a spiritual way of course.

What a large structure this was! It was almost as large as the kivas at Chaco Canyon where the ancestors of these Indians probably lived several hundred years before. There was no kiva this large in the entire Rio Grande Valley. Huge timbers forty-five feet long were required to span its diameter and timbers that large were difficult to carry. But with crude stone axes and obsidian knives these kiva builders penetrated the forest to cut girders for their ceremonial chamber. In the year 1513 A.D. or thereabout, they cut three trees with trunks fifteen inches or more in diameter. It took hours, days perhaps. They hacked and they pounded with their Neolithic implements of toil until all three trees had been felled. I would hate to estimate the time required to fell these timbers but time meant nothing to the Indian. Then there was the job of removing all the branches, needles and bark.

Preparing a girder in prehistoric times was a great task. Green timber is much heavier than seasoned wood. And so these timbers weighing a ton or more were dragged out of the forest to the kiva with stout ropes made of yucca fiber. Sheer strength was all these people had. There were no carts with wheels on them to bear the brunt of the load. Heavy objects had to either be dragged or carried. After much sweat and toil the ends of the huge poles were rolled over into position in shallow trenches worked out for this purpose on both sides of the kiva. These three timbers formed the under structure of the roof. When they were placed exactly like the Indian wanted them, pointed rocks were driven into the ground around the ends and the open spaces were packed with adobe so that these huge round logs would not roll. They placed much smaller timbers of pine across the huge vigas. These were not so difficult to cut and they were laid about three feet apart. From down-timbers of pine, pi?on, cottonwood or any other type of fallen trees they hacked and ripped long narrow sections for the next roof course. The splittings were transported in bundles to the kiva and one by one they were laid close together over the small pine poles. Great quantities of thin willow branches, cane or cat-tail stems were used for the next course. Pine needles, brush, yucca leaves and whatever leafy material they could gather was placed on the top. They needed this brush and leafy material because it was to hold the thick heavy mud coats which were spread over the top. Indian women carried urn after urn of water on their heads from the Rito and stamped and mixed this mud. The only chore left was to throw dirt over the top.

When the ceremonial chamber was finished it looked like a huge, low mound--almost level with the ground. The Indians did not forget the square opening in the top for the exit of the smoke. Kivas were stuffy places inside. And as in all kivas there was a ventilator. This had been built during the earlier period of occupation and reused during the Great Period. It was a mere tunnel which looked like a fireplace and it suddenly turned upward like a fireplace chimney. The mouth of the chimney was level with the ground so that the draft would be downward and would go into the kiva and lift the smoke from the firebox to the ceiling and eventually out the square opening. The Indian of Tyuonyi did understand something about ventilating a kiva. He was smart enough to know that if the top of the ventilator was built very far above ground level it would work like a fireplace. Then all the smoke would be drawn to the floor of the kiva and sucked out through the low tunnel. And in this case he could not have remained inside. But he never found out how to ventilate his cave room in the cliff. How unfortunate!

Directly across the kiva in the west side was the entrance which had also been put here years before. It was merely a tunnel with a roof of small juniper branches. The outside end was open and was just large enough for the ends of a two-pole ladder to rest. Indians usually go into their kivas through the roofs, but not here. They climbed down the ladder, stooped, and with knees in a flexed position scurried through the tunnel to the inside.

The five pits in the floor, which have been mentioned before, were apparently no longer needed for they were filled in with dirt and stones tightly packed. A thin layer of dirt was thrown over the entire floor surface. Kiva floors are generally plastered over and during this period of occupation the Tyuonyi women, more than likely, were the ones who smeared four fine coats of adobe over the floor and smoothed it out with their hands.

I have neglected to mention one of the most important things of all--the Sipapu or ceremonial entrance from the underworld. It was the place of ceremonial emergence into this earthly life. Archaeologists generally find a small hole in the floor of almost every kiva. But here at Tyuonyi a special kind of Sipapu was made. A piece of soft volcanic ash was formed into a rectangular block and buried edgewise in the floor. A small hole shaped like an icecream cone was drilled in the top as the spirit entrance. The Indians have a legend about this. It is symbolic of the entrance to the land of "Earth Old Women" and of the place where the human race originated. Long ago they climbed up a Douglas Spruce Tree and came into this world through a lake called Sipapu. And when they die the spirits go to Sipapu and on to the underworld. It is said that this lake is located in the sand hills north of Alamosa, Colorado. How important the kiva was to the Indians of Tyuonyi! Sipapu represented the place of creation and to them it was important in no small way. The cacique of each one of the big tribal kivas, both Squash and Turquoise, was a direct representative of the Earth Mother or "Earth Old Woman."

But the dweller at Tyuonyi had forgotten something. He did not realize how tremendously heavy the roof of his big kiva was. He did not know that the small pine timbers, the splittings, brush, grass, mud and dirt would cause the big pine vigas to bend and sag and crack in the middle. It is a question whether or not the roof fell in during some important ceremony. The situation had to be remedied at any rate. Pine poles, nine or ten inches in diameter were cut so they would support the weight of the roof. Six holes were dug in the kiva floor, two under each of the big vigas. Flat rocks were put in the bottoms of the holes and the ends of the six timbers were inserted and swung into place under the big girders, and driven with heavy rocks into an upright position. The big vigas might have sagged a little but the roof never fell after this time. Flat stones were driven tight around the bottoms of the support posts and the holes in which they rested were packed solid with mud and rocks to keep the timbers from slipping. And this was how the prehistoric Indian at Tyuonyi built his ceremonial chambers in which women were not allowed unless requested by the men. There might have been more than one roof put on this kiva. The first one could have been laid during the latter part of the fifteenth century. It could have fallen and then been rebuilt. Archaeologists do know that the last time this large kiva was roofed over was during the early part of the sixteenth century. We found one of the large charred ends of a big roof timber and it had been cut in 1513 A.D. So it was about this time that the last kiva roof was laid. Just how long it was in use is a question. It was surely used until the end of the occupation of Frijoles Canyon sometime near the close of the sixteenth century.

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