king the position to be occupied by the
walls. As he thus marks the compass of the kiva, he sings in a droning
tone "Si-ai, a-hai, a-hai, si-ai, a-hai"--no other words but these. The
meaning of these words seems to be unknown, but all the priests agree in
saying that the archaic chant is addressed to the sun, and it is called
Kitdauwi--the House Song. The chief then selects four good-sized stones
of hard texture for corner stones, and at each corner he lays a baho,
previously prepared, sprinkles it with the mixture with which he has
described the line of the walls, and then lays the corner stone upon it.
As he does this, he expresses his hope that the walls "will take good
root hold," and stand firm and secure.

The men have already quarried or collected a sufficient quantity of
stone, and a wall is built in tolerably regular courses along each side
of the excavation. The stones used are roughly dressed by fracture; they
are irregular in shape, and of a size convenient for one man to handle.
They are laid with only a very little mud mortar, and carried up, if the
ground be level, to within 18 inches of the surface. If the kiva is
built on the edge of the cliff, as at Walpi, the outside wall connects
the sides of the gap, conforming to the line of the cliff. If the
surface is sloping, the level of the roof is obtained by building up one
side of the kiva above the ground to the requisite height as illustrated
in Fig. 21. One end of the "Goat" kiva at Walpi is 5 feet above ground,
the other end being level with the sloping surface. When the ledge on
the precipitous face of the mesa is uneven it is filled in with rough
masonry to obtain a level for the floor, and thus the outside wall of
some of the Walpi kivas is more than 12 feet high, although in the
interior the measurement from floor to ceiling is much less.

Both cottonwood and pine are used for the roof timbers; they are roughly
dressed, and some of them show that an attempt has been made to hew them
with four sides, but none are square. In the roof of the "Goat" kiva,
at Walpi, are four well hewn pine timbers, measuring exactly 6 by 10
inches, which are said to have been taken from the mission house built
near Walpi by the Spanish priests some three centuries ago. The ceiling
plan of the mungkiva of Shupaulovi (Fig. 23) shows that four of these
old Spanish squared beams have been utilized in its construction. One of
these is covered with a rude decoration of gouged