of-drain, has
removed the outer coating of mud that covers stonework and adobe alike,
a large proportion of these exposures reveal stone masonry, so that it
is clearly apparent that Zuni is essentially a stone village. The
extensive use of sun-dried bricks of adobe has grown up within quite
recent times. It is apparent, however, that the Zuni builders preferred
to use stone; and even at the present time they frequently eke out with
stonework portions of a house when the supply of adobe has fallen short.
An early instance of such supplementary use of stone masonry still
survives in the church building, where the old Spanish adobe has been
repaired and filled in with the typical tabular aboriginal masonry,
consisting of small stones carefully laid, with very little intervening
mortar showing on the face. Such reversion to aboriginal methods
probably took place on every opportunity, though it is remarkable that
the Indians should have been allowed to employ their own methods in this
instance. Although this church building has for many generations
furnished a conspicuous example of typical adobe construction to the
Zuni, he has never taken the lesson sufficiently to heart to closely
imitate the Spanish methods either in the preparation of the material or
in the manner of its use. The adobe bricks of the church are of large
and uniform size, and the mud from which they were made had a liberal
admixture of straw. This binding material does not appear in Zuni in any
other example of adobe that has been examined, nor does it seem to have
been utilized in any of the native pueblo work either at this place or
at Tusayan. Where molded adobe bricks have been used by the Zuni in
housebuilding they have been made from the raw material just as it was
taken from the fields. As a result these bricks have little of the
durability of the Spanish work. Pl. XCVI illustrates an adobe wall of
Zuni, part of an unroofed house. The old adobe church at Hawikuh (Pl.
XLVIII), abandoned for two centuries, has withstood the wear of time and
weather better than any of the stonework of the surrounding houses. On
the right-hand side of the street that shows in the foreground of Pl.
LXXVIII is an illustration of the construction of a wall with adobe
bricks. This example is very recent, as it has not yet been roofed over.
The top of the wall, however, is temporarily protected by the usual
series of thin sandstone slabs used in the finishing of wall copings.