Antiquities of the Mesa Verde national park, Sprucetree House / by Jesse Walter Fewkes.

Fewkes, Jesse Walter, 1850-1930.

Date:: 1909

Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Antiquities of the Mesa Verde national park, Sprucetree House / by Jesse Walter Fewkes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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that these small rooms were shrines where offerings to the gods were deposited. No object has, however, been found to confirm this suggestion. To the right of fig. 27 a huge spruce may be seen. Its roots lie within the ruins of Sprucetree House, the trunk projecting from the wall of an estufa. In PI. x: 1 the tree is wanting. I had it cut down in order to ascertain its age. We counted the rings, which were very distinct, twice over, the results being respectively 167 and 169. I had supposed from the thickness of the tree that the number of the rings was much greater. GENERAL FEATURES Like the majority of cliff-dwellings in the Mesa Verde National Park, Spruce-tree House stands in a recess protected above by an overhanging cliff. Its form is crescentic, following that of the cave and extending approximately north and south. The author has given th’e number of rooms and their dimensions in his report to the Secretary of the Interior (published in the latter’s report for 1907-8) from which he makes the following quotation: The total length of Spruce-tree House was found to be 216 feet, its width at the widest part 89 feet. There were counted in the Spruce-tree House 114 rooms, the majority of which were secular, and 8 ceremonial chambers or kivas. Nordenskiold numbered 80 of the former and 7 of the latter, but in this count he apparently did not differentiate in the former those of the first, second and third stories. Spruce-tree House was in places 3 stories high; the third- story rooms had no artificial roof, but the wall of the cave served that purpose. Several rooms, the walls of which are now two stories high, formerly had a third story above the second, but their walls have now fallen, leaving as the only indication of their former union with the cave lines destitute of smoke on the top of the cavern. Of the 114 rooms, at least 14 were uninhabited, being used as storage and mortuary chambers. If we eliminate these from the total number of rooms we have 100 enclosures which might have been dwellings. Allowing 4 inhabitants for each of these 100 rooms would give about 400 persons as an aboriginal population of Sprucedree House. But it is probable that this estimate should be reduced, as not all the 100 rooms were inhabited at the same time, there being evidence that several of them had occupants long after others were deserted. Approximately, Spruce-tree House had a population not far from 350 people, or about 100 more than that of Walpi, one of the best-known Hopi pueblos.® In the rear of the houses are two large recesses used for refuse- heaps or for burial of the dead. From the abundance of guano and turkey bones it is supposed that turkeys were kept in these places for ceremonial or other purposes. Here have been found several desic- cated human bodies commonly called mummies. The ruin is divided by a street into two sections, the northern and the southern, the former being the more extensive. Light is prevented from entering the larger of these recesses by rooms which reach the roof of the cave. In front of these rooms are circular sub- a On the author’s plan of Spruce-tree House from a survey by Mr. S. G. Morley, the third story is indicated by crosshatching, the second by parallel lines, while the first has no markings. (PI. 1.)