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

the cavern. What more natural than that this upper
room should take a name most descriptive of its situation--as that
portion built around the cavern-shelter or _ósh ten_--or that, when the
intervention of peace made return to the abandoned farms of the plains
or a change of condition possible, the idea of the second 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 cañons 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 kwïn ne_, from _tí na_--many sitting around, and _kwïn ne_, place
of. This term is applied by the Zuñis 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 Archæological

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 Zuñi 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