Kinishba: A Prehistoric Pueblo of a Great Pueblo Period

KINISHBA a Prehistoric Pueblo OF THE GREAT PUEBLO PERIOD A REVIEW BY Dorothy Challis Mott

TUCKED away in a delightful valley high up in the Apache country in the eastern part of of Arizona is a city. Ancient man built it. Time interred it. And the probing spade of the Southwest's most eminent archaeologist uncovered it for modern man to see and learn from it the ways of the ancient ones. Its name is Kinishba-brown house. The archaeologist is Dr. Byron Cummings, director emeritus of the Arizona State Museum, erstwhile head of the archaeology department of the University of Arizona, and the unquestioned authority on matters archaeological in the great Southwest.For nine years, Dr. Cummings has given his time, his energy, and the benefit of his profound learning to piecing together the fragmentary story of Kinishba that modern man might know a little more of those who have gone before in order to better understand, perhaps, those things which are to come.

And, happily, those things which he has learned are now brought together in a book, the story of many lifetimes, "Kinishba, a Prehistoric Pueblo of the Great Pueblo Period."

Appropriately, the priceless little volume is brown, as is the ruin of which it speaks. And within its brown covers, it tells in words and pictures what is known of the ancient village where, seven centuries and more ago, several thousand human beings lived and breathed, were born and died, even as today.

Invaluable as an addition to the rather limited bibliography of Southwestern archaeology, the book nevertheless is written for the layman. The story is told with the true simplicity which can come only from those most learned. Profusely illustrated with black and white and color plates, it reveals not only the story of the ancient ones of Kinishba, but much of the author himself, his great understandings, his great sympathy, his abiding faith in the fundamental "rightness" of the world.

Kinishba, the book tells us, is about four and a half miles from Fort Apache, near the eastern border of Arizona.

The broad valley in which the ancient city lies is completely surrounded by friendly mountains, and its existence would be little suspected unless one were informed of its location.

The ruin is not difficult to reach, however, from any part of the state. It is only a few miles from U. S. Highway 60, only about a mile and a half by road from the Indian Service road which used to be the temporary U. S. Highway 60 before the new road was completed.

But, as is always the case, there are thousands of people the country over interested in knowing about such places who are "arm chair travelers," and for them, "Kinishba" is the answer.Shall we take a little journey through the book to see what we can find?

"With pride and appreciation," the preface says, "the Hohokam Museums Association presents the story of Kinishba from the pen of the dean of Southwestern archaeologists, Dr. Byron Cummings.

"It is a rare privilege to help preserve this record of the emergence of a long silent community, as told by the one man most capable of interpreting as well as recording the archaeological facts unearthed.

"Long a member of the staff of the University of Arizona, several times its president, for many years director of the department of archaeology and director of the Arizona State Museum, and at present director emeritus of the Museum, Dr. Cummings returns for this book to his great love 'the field.' "The man who built the state's museum from a meager collection of bird skins and stones to an institution guarding beautiful objects worth millions, went to Kinishba and recorded another great achievement. He transformed an undistinguished mound of dirt into a vivid city of the past.

"Nine years ago Dr. Cummings, assisted by his students, began the work of excavating Kinishba. It emerged slowly from six centuries of neglect. Much of it was re-stored. Its beauties were housed in a museum on the site.

"Now the story is told.

"But as important as the recitation of the work is an understanding of its significance, and the understandable presenta tion of that meaning to the reader.

"All these the association believes have been done in full measure only as they could be done by a scholar such as Dr. Cummings.

"In the hope that the story of Kinishba will serve as an inspiration to those archaeologists who come after him, will provide a source of understanding for the great pre-history of the Southwest, and will lend permanence to the story of a scientific triumph, the association presents Kinishba, the story of a prehistoric pueblo of the Great Pueblo period."

Then past the table of contents to a map of Arizona which shows the exact location of the ruin, through the "acknowledgment" to the "introduction" where we get a glimpse of those things to come.

Here we discover the modern history of the ruin and how it came about that Dr. Cummings is its excavator.

And then into the meat of the book where fascinating paragraph follows paragraph until the story is done.

"... No people have contributed more to the wellbeing of mankind in their time than the inhabitants of the prehistoric pueblos. Go where you will in the great Southwest, uncover the homes of these people, examine the evidence of their architecture, their industries, and their arts and you are everywhere impressed by the patient industry, the skill and the community cooperation that must have prevailed. Here were men and women willing to work in sympathetic harmony with their neighbors and never allow selfish greed to supplant community welfare. Clan and family organization were plainly maintained and yet individuality gained full expression in the industries and in the arts.

"To such people we would like to introduce you at Kinishba . . ."

Thus we are introduced to the people of Kinishba, you and I who read the book.

With the most profound understanding of their problems, their ways of living, their contributions to the world are related and evaluated the past unfolded, weighed and understood, to help us live the present, and again, perhaps to understand the future.

We learn, quickly, why the ancient one chose this valley where the Apache roam today, for his home of yesterday; we learn in intimate detail how his home was built, how many were put together to form the several sections of the village.

Two large structures, designated Group I and Group II, lie, one on either side of what is now a deep arroyo. In ancient times, it was not so deep nor yet so wide, and through it coursed, perhaps, the spring which was the very life-blood of the ancient ones.

Around these two large structures were smaller groups of rooms.

But the readers, you and I, along with Dr. Cummings, are concerned only with Group I, which lies slightly northwest by southeast, on the east side of the arroyo, for it is this group numbering some 208 ground floor rooms (all of them two-stories high and some three) which has been completely uncovered.

There are, here and there, the walls, deeply buried in the brown earth of earlier and yet older structures.

There is the large patio with its covered bench or raised walk around its four sides with its sacred altar in the center of the south portion.

There is the smaller patio to the north with its subterranean rectangular ceremonial chamber. There is the long passage-way which gives entrance to the patio and the interior from the south. There is the entrance into the smaller patio from the west. And there is the now blocked off passage-way coming in from the north.

We find ourselves, you and I, not reading

The ancient ones were fond of decorating their pottery with the figures o of little animals in the round as well as using stylized animals and bird forms in flat designs. Sometimes almost "modernistic" in treatment, the ancient designs might well be adapted to modern decoration. Here is a tiny little white and black bear which formed one of two handles on the top of a red, black and white polychrome jar. The "ticking" on the small neck is a distinctive marking of the "Roosevelt" type of pottery. Many other zoomorphic or animal figures were found at Kinishba. Some of the little figurines were made perhaps by the youngsters experi menting at modeling in their mother's clay as she sat she sat fashioning her exquisite pottery pieces.

To the archeologist and the lay student of archeology, Kinishba ruin is a virtual paradise. Not only because of the size and extent of the ruin but because of the wealth of material disclosed by the excavations. As fine an example of the potter's art at Kinishba to come from that prehistoric ruin is this lovely decorated olla or jar. The rich red of the jar is in delightful contrast to the black and white of the design and the allowing of the background to show through the black design and outlining it in delicate white enhances its richness. A combination of cloud symbols, ziz-zag lightning symbols and the fine hatching representing rain, all attest to the maker's sending up prayers to the rain gods ds for the water which to the ancient ones meant the difference between life and death. Of exquisite proportions, this olla is 18 inches high and 15 inches in diameter at its greatest width. The dark shadows on the left are "fire clouds" slight smudgings which sometimes appear during the "firing" or hardening of a piece of pottery.

This beautiful example of Kinishba pottery is also unusual as far as Southwestern pottery goes both in treatment of the banded black design, outlined in white, the design on the edge of the straight rim. and in the shape of the bowl. Not many examples of the ancient potter's art are made with such flat bottoms. This little bowl is three and one quarter inches high and is about six inches in diameter. The design element, a variation of the Greek key design with the cloud symbols repre sented in the step design inside the block, is repeated all around the bowl. The cloud symbol also appears on the rim. The years of careful excavations at Kinishba have uncovered thousands of fine examples of the potter's art of the ancient people. These are on display at the Kinishba Museum near the ruin, available for examination by all visitors. The Kinishba ruin is in the White Mountains near Fort Apache, and is becoming one of the most interesting places for visitors to Arizona to see during their travels in this state.

Something of the artis tic development of the people of Kinishba, art ists supreme among a race of artists, can be gained by the reproduc tions of their pottery in color. They made innumerable types of both decorated and un decorated pieces which were used for cooking. and serving, or for stor ing water and pieces used ceremonially. They were in many sizes and shapes, and the design and color com binations were almost limitless. No two pieces of pottery are ever exactly alike. Here is a beautiful olla or jar, in buff verging on an orange red, carrying a broad banded de sign in black and white around its middle, and another band of the same colors around the restricted neck. The jar is nearly 12 inches high and is 16 inches in diameter. It is a "late Gila polychrome" in the parlance of the ar chaeologist, which indicates merely that it is similar to polychrome or many-colored pottery produced in the Gila area during the later part of the development of the Southwest's prehistoric culture.

Excavating a prehistoric ruin involves not only the back-breaking work of digging with a pick and shovel but also meticulous work with trowel, whiskbroom, and camelhair brush. When burials are encountered, or rare artifacts, they must be uncovered and removed with utmost care. In the top picture, Dr. Cummings, right, is examining, with two of his students, a second-story fireplace of one of the rooms at Kinishba. Through the centuries of neglect, the beams supporting the first story roof and the second story floor have collapsed, allowing the whole fireplace to drop down, intact, to within a few feet of the first story floor level. In the center photograph a youth's skeleton has been uncovered where centuries ago the hapless young man fell to his death from a second story. Why he was left where he fell is a mystery. From such remains, however, the trained archaeologist not only can piece together the events which caused the death of the individual, but he can also tell much of the physical characteristics of the people from which he came. In the lower picture, two interesting facts about the ancient ones can be determined: first. that they sometimes interred the bodies of children in pottery ollas or large storage jars, as in this case; and second, that the ancient ones made pottery jars large enough to accommodate a child's body.

Not a dry scientific tome but rather the story of the lives of real people. With Dr. Cummings, we visit their homes and visit with them. We find them earnest, sincere, hardworking, religious people, people we would be glad to know and call our friends.

"This Group I," Dr. Cummings tells us, "of Kinishba should rightly be classed as a compact pueblo. Its homes are built closely joining each other and clustered around two central courts. It grew according to a general plan and its development must have extended over several generations. Charcoal secured from several burned-out rooms in the central and southern part shows that the timbers from which it came were cut between the years of 1150 and 1320 A. D. From the northern and older part of the group good pieces of juniper timber and charcoal were secured but so far our experts have been unable to fit them into Dr. Douglass' normal chart, based on pine timber, and so far their age is undetermined. One piece of pine charcoal obtained from a room in one of the smaller mounds (Group IV) seems to indicate about the year 1050 A. D. Thus the development of the entire pueblo (1050 to 1320 A. D.) seems to stretch over the greater part of the Great Pueblo period (900-1540 A. D.)"

The walls of the pueblo were ashlar, rubble and cyclopean and these types of walls are illustrated with excellent photographs so you won't be puzzled by their meaning.

Rooms were used as living quarters, as store rooms and as ceremonial chambers. There were stone lined and clay lined fire places. There were mealing bins in some of the rooms with the stones for grinding the corn still in place.

"It is unnecessary," Dr. Cummings says, "to describe in detail each one of the living rooms of Kinishba, although there were interesting variations in their form and internal arrangements.

Housewives, then as now, showed individual tastes and ideas; but the variations are so slight in primitive homes that it is sufficient to describe a few typical rooms and kivás (ceremonial chambers)."

Now, let's go with Dr. Cummings to watch them build a part of the pueblo.

"Can you not see," he says, "the picture of this pueblo as it grew under the patient, industrious hands of its inhabitants?

"Perhaps a young man from another village, or at least another clan, had been accepted as the husband of a Kinishba family and the young people wished to make their home in the pueblo among her mother's clan. All the members of the two families would turn in and help build the new home, adding it to some corner of the clan's quarters.

"Perhaps a group of people from some outlying smaller village or hamlet wished to join the larger community for greater sociability and better protection. Can you not see them marshalled into squads of workmen under their chosen leader or leaders? A bunch of sturdy men climb to the cliffs where the red and brown sandstone expose their protruding noses and complacent layers. With wooden levers they pry out the blocks and loosen the strata; and with stone hammers and axes they break them into building stone of suitable size and trim their faces by chipping and flaking with smaller axes. Other groups of men and women lift those blocks to their patient backs and shoulders and pick their way down the hillside to the pueblo. "Others scour the beds and banks of the arroyos nearer the village for large boulders for foundations, while the children swarm everyhere gathering the flakes and sheets of thin shale and sandstone to fill the spaces in the masonry between the stone and between the courses to make the walls of the new home more attractive. Another group brings water from the arroyo and puddles the mud for mortar near by, carrying it in baskets to the masons who, under the direction of the respective housewives, rear the homes that are to shelter themselves and their families through the long future years.

"Can you not see the perspiration rolling down the faces of the men as they patiently hack away with their stone axes to fell and trim the trees whose trunks are to form the supporting beams for the roofs of their homes? Don't you catch the grunts of the men as they tug at the ropes of twisted buckskin or braided yucca with which they laboriously drag those timbers down from the hills across the plains to the pueblo? Today men buy the materials and hire professionals to rear their homes; but then it was a work of love, of family cooperation and helpfulness. It developed skill and created better understanding and greater sympathy with the problems confronting the community. It shamed the laggards, implanted hope and good cheer, and blotted out discouragement. Who could fail under these conditions?"

And a few paragraphs further on"Their storerooms give evidence to the fact that they looked ahead and provided for lean years-seasons when frosts or droughts stunted their corn and beans and they had little to store away for winter need. They did not live merely for today. They provided for tomorrow, for next month, for next year. They toiled patiently and persistently to raise their crops and gather nature's bounty of meat, nuts, roots and plants. When these were put away in their storehouses and made secure from the depredations of squirrels, gophers, rats and mice, they could settle down in peace and devote themselves to their religious ceremonials and the development of their handcrafts." And so to those handcrafts. "Their needs and their patient industry led to the manufacture of many useful articles from stone, wood, bone, and clay. They were not satisfied with the production merely of something they could use. Their intimate acquaintance with all nature about them led them to try to imitate that beauty of form and color which they observed everywhere. Their life was simple, yet it must have been very satisfying. They lived close to nature and their pulses throbbed in harmony with the life about them. "Their manufactured goods were largely implements and utensils used in their daily life. Articles made of the more perishable materials have been destroyed in the exposed ruins of the pueblo; but stone, bone, horn, shell and burned clay have survived the ravages of time and articles formed from these materials still survive to tell the story of their makers..."

And from this point on, you will be fascinated with the story of these artifacts and their methods of manufacture. One great section of the book is given over to the pottery, its manufacture, and to both black-and-white and colored illustrations. There are, in fact, 35 color plates beautiful beyond description, of pottery and pottery designs from Kinishba.

A short but comprehensive description of the whole field of Southwestern pottery, methods of manufacture, types of design, its historical development, is given for the enlightenment of the lay-reader, so that you and I can walk among the people and watch them work with a comprehensive eye and an understanding mind-the pottery of Kinishba is the crowning achievement of its people, and it would not do for us to approach the work of these ancient artists with little or no knowledge of their art. But the pottery is not all. Dr. Cummings introduces us to their other works. their metates and manos used to grind their corn, axes, hammers, arrowshaft polishers, arrowshaft straighteners, arrow and spear points, drills, pipes, punches, chisels, balls, and disks, all made from stone. Their ornaments of stone, bone and shell, some of lovely turquoise and coral, tiny animals of catlinite, diorite, basalt or soapstone, gypsum. Their bone daggers, awls, needles, whistles; other things fashioned from horn. Ceremonial things both strange and beautiful-painted tablets, painted deer jaws. Then he brings us, on this journey through Kinishba, to the people themselves. We learn of their physical characteristics, of the diseases which swept them low. Much, we discover, has been learned of the people from their burials and the things(Turn to Page 41)