National Geographic magazine, volume 67, no. 9 (September 1925)

Page 58

252 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE PREPARING BASKETRY FOR REMOVAL FROM THE RUINS PUEBLO BONITO These relics, which have lain buried for a thousand years or more, must be carefully handled if they are to be taken intact from their resting place and deposited in the National Museum, Washington, as a loan collection from the National Geographic Society. ceremonial rooms and the probable influ­ence of their priestly groups, the Boni­tians were a democratic people. They granted no special privileges. Among all the rooms of Pueblo Bonito, no single dwelling can be pointed out as the home of the most influential. Each inhabitant had work similar to his fellows. Head men were no doubt selected pe­riodically and for definite terms of office, as with the Pueblos of to-day. We find no evidence to the contrary. Representa­tive government prevailed; clan leaders and designated members of the secret so­cieties made up the town council, and this body, in turn, chose what we might prop­erly term the mayor, decided factional dis­putes, and apportioned the arable lands. Living quarters, ex­cept for insignificant variations in size, were singularly alike. Ma­sonry walls, usually plastered with adobe mud, rose from clay floor to beamed ceil­ing. Wall pegs sup­ported c a s u a l gar­ments, while shallow niches held such lesser objects as flint knives, personal possessions, and the bone awls and sinew used constantly in sewing. Tanned skins and blankets of rabbit fur, neatly piled to one side during the day, were spread out on the bare floor as beds at night. A tuft of eagle feath­ers, suspended from the ceiling, protected the household f r om evil s p i r i t s , as it swayed gently with the s o f t movement of air through the rooms. Generally speaking, ventilation is no great concern of aboriginal peoples; and yet, unlike other prehistoric house-builders of the Southwest, the Bo­nitians provided for it by leaving squared openings in the upper walls of their dwellings. Thus was fresh air conveyed to the dark, inner rooms, where corn and other foodstuffs were stored between harvests. But crotchety old men apparently com­plained of the drafts caused by these ven­tilators, for we have found many of them partially or wholly closed, and in the outer wall of the last addition to the village no openings of any sort occur.