a wall ten feet t

hick. It required thousands of the unworked stones to line this deep pit. If was a circular affair and was their way of creating a semi-subterranean chamber when they did not know how to lay single thickness masonry walls with fashioned blocks. No prehistoric Rio Grande kiva, that I know of, has an entrance throu



gh its wall such as this which was found at Frijoles. T

1. hey all were entered through the roof. Such things as wall entrances are customary in kivas in the Sa
2. n Juan area but not in the Rio
3. Grande Valley. And these early people dug five pits in the floor of their kiva and lined them with cobble stones. They must have had some use for them of which we know nothing. Pits of this type are some

thing else not seen in prehistoric Rio Grande kivas. They are found in th

1. e kivas at Chaco Canyon though, and it is possible that they could have been vestiges of that early c
2. ulture. ThisI-25 particular c
3. eremonial chamber had apparently fallen into disuse for a time. But during the Great Period of occupation, when "the little strong people" presumably occup
4. ied the Tyuonyi, it was rebu
5. ilt. There was little use in going to work and building an entirely new kiva
6. when one was already here and could be rebuilt. The old roofing had fallen to the inside and there were hundreds of pounds of de
7. bris in the kiva chamber. All this was cleaned out. Building a kiv
8. a was a community enterprise. Men again began cutting and fashioning rectangular blocks from large chunks fallen from the cliff. As each block was fashioned it was la
9. id into a single thickness coursed masonry wall around the inside of the thick wall of cobble stone which belonged to the earlier

From El Paso International Airport through the town of Socorro to EMRTC

1. occupation. The Indian was smart. He laid tins circular wall sloping outward
2. toward the top so that the pressure from the heavy roof would be.
3. diverted downward when it was laid over the walls. When the wall was finish
4. ed it was nine feet high from the floor of the kiva to the ceiling. And then to keep it from falling down, the Indians dug underneath the footing stones, and objects modeled of
5. Drive north on clay which lo
6. oked like doughnutsBullock Blvd. were laid in the holes. When we discovered
7. these doughnut-shaped affairs I was mystified until an old Indian from San Ildefonso told me they were put there purposely to hol
8. d the wall up, in a spiritual way of course. What a large structur
9. e this was! It was alCanyon Rd. located at a four-way stop sign. Drive past the golf course up and over a hill and then back down past the New Mexico Tech Physical Plant.
10. most as large as the kivas at Chaco Canyon where the ancestors of these Indians probably lived several hundred years before. The