The very rapid disintegration of native-made adobe walls has brought
about the use in Zuni of many protective devices, some of which will be
noticed in connection with the discussion of roof drains and wall
copings. Figs. 32 and 33 illustrate a curious employment of pottery
fragments on a mud-plastered wall and on the base of a chimney to
protect the adobe coating against rapid erosion by the rains. These
pieces, usually fragments from large vessels, are embedded in the adobe
with the convex side out, forming an armor of pottery scales well
adapted to resist disintegration, by the elements.

[Illustration: Plate LXV. Standing walls of Kin-tiel.]

[Illustration: Fig. 32. A Zuni chimney, showing pottery fragments
embedded in its adobe base.]

[Illustration: Fig. 33. A Zuni oven with pottery scales embedded in
its surface.]

The introduction of the use of adobe in Zuni should probably be
attributed to foreign influence, but the position of the village in the
open plain at a distance of several miles from the nearest outcrop of
suitable building stone naturally led the builders to use stone more
sparingly when an available substitute was found close at hand. The thin
slabs of stone, which had to be brought from a great distance, came to
be used only for the more exposed portions of buildings, such as copings
on walls and borders around roof openings. Still, the pueblo builders
never attained to a full appreciation of the advantages and requirements
of this medium as compared with stone. The adobe walls are built only as
thick as is absolutely necessary, few of them being more than a foot in
thickness. The walls are thus, in proportion, to height and weight,
sustained, thinner than the crude brick construction of other peoples,
and require protection and constant repairs to insure durability. As to
thickness, they are evidently modeled directly after the walls of stone
masonry, which had already, in both Tusayan and Cibola, been pushed to
the limit of thinness. In fact, since the date of the survey of Zuni, on
which the published plan is based, the walls of several rooms over the
court passageway in the house, illustrated in Pl. LXXXII, have entirely
fallen in, demonstrating the insufficiency of the thin walls to sustain
the weight of several stories.

The climate of the pueblo region is not wholly suited to the employment
of adobe construction, as it is there practiced. For several months in
the year (the r