A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth | Page 4

story should be carried along and the name first applied to it survive, even to the present day? That the upper story took its name from the rock-shelter may be further illustrated. The word _ósh ten_ comes from _ó sho nan te_, the condition of being dusky, dank, or mildewy; clearly descriptive of a cavern, but not of the most open, best lighted, and driest room in a Pueblo house.
To continue, we may see how the necessity for protection would drive the petty clans more and more to the cliffs, how the latter at every available point would ultimately come to be occupied, and thus how the "_Cliff-dwelling_" (see Fig. 498), was confined to no one section but was as universal as the farm-house type of architecture itself, so widespread, in fact, that it has been heretofore regarded as the monument of a great, now extinct race of people!
COMMUNAL PUEBLOS DEVELOPED FROM CONGREGATION OF CLIFF-HOUSE TRIBES.
[Illustration: FIG. 499.--Typical terraced communal pueblo.]
We may see, finally, how at last the ca?ons proved too limited and in other ways undesirable for occupation, the result of which was the confederation of the scattered cliff-dwelling clans, and the construction, first on the overhanging cliff-tops, then on mesas, and farther and farther away, of great, many-storied towns, any one of which was named, in consequence of the bringing together in it of many houses and clans, _thlu él lon ne_, from thlu a, many springing up, and _él lon a_, that which stands, or those which stand; in other words, "many built standing together." This cannot be regarded as referring to the simple fact that a village is necessarily composed of many houses standing together. The name for any other village than a communal pueblo is _tí na kw?n ne_, from _tí na_--many sitting around, and _kw?n ne_, place of. This term is applied by the Zu?is to all villages save their own and those of ourselves, which latter they regard as Pueblos, in their acceptation of the above native word.
Here, then, in strict accordance with, the teachings of myth, folk-lore and tradition, I have used the linguistic argument as briefest and most convincing in indicating the probable sequence of architectural types in the evolution of the Pueblo; from the brush lodge, of which only the name survives, to the recent and present terraced, many-storied, communal structures, which we may find throughout New Mexico, Arizona, and contiguous parts of the neighboring Territories.[1]
[1] See for confirmation the last Annual Report to the Arch?ological Institute of America, by Adolph F. Bandelier, one of the most indefatigable explorers and careful students of early Spanish history in America.

POTTERY AFFECTED BY ENVIRONMENT.
There is no other section of the United States where the potter's art was so extensively practiced, or where it reached such a degree of perfection, as within the limits of these ancient Pueblo regions. To this statement not even the prolific valleys of the Mississippi and its tributaries form an exception.
On examining a large and varied collection of this pottery, one would naturally regard it either as the product of four distinct peoples or as belonging to four different eras, with an inclination to the chronologic division.
When we see the reasonable probability that the architecture, the primeval arts and industries, and the culture of the Pueblos are mainly indigenous to the desert and semi-desert regions of North America, we are in the way towards an understanding of the origin and remarkable degree of development in the ceramic art.
In these regions water not only occurs in small quantities, but is obtainable only at points separated by great distances, hence to the Pueblos the first necessity of life is the transportation and preservation of water. The skins and paunches of animals could be used in the effort to meet this want with but small success, as the heat and aridity of the atmosphere would in a short time render water thus kept unfit for use, and the membranes once empty would be liable to destruction by drying. So far as language indicates the character of the earliest water vessels which to any extent met the requirements of the Zu?i ancestry, they were tubes of wood or sections of canes. The latter, in ritualistic recitation, are said to have been the receptacles that the creation-priests filled with the sacred water from the ocean of the cave-wombs of earth, whence men and creatures were born, and the name for one of these cane water vessels is _shó tom me_, from _shó e_, cane or canes, and _tóm me_, a wooden tube. Yet, although in the extreme western borders of the deserts, which were probably the first penetrated by the Pueblos, the cane grows to great size and in abundance along the two rivers of that country, its use, if ever extensive, must have