This National Monument is the excavated ruins of the homes of the Sinagua Indians built somewhere between 1000 and 1400. The name is Apache for "crooked water" and is pronounced Too-zee-goot. These people also inhabited Montezuma Well and Montezuma Castle in this area, I did a blog earlier this month on those two areas.
Logs were used for support posts of the rooms, as shown in this photo, just one area that had been refurbished to show the construction methods. Smaller logs were then used for the ceiling and then covered with grasses, branches or other woven material. Mud was finally placed on top to seal it.
This area was built on a hill, with rooms averaging 200 square feet per family. There were few exterior doors, similar to other pueblos. Most of the entrances were accessed through the roof reached by ladders. If there was any danger, they could just pull up the ladders.
This photo shows one of the rooms. The dark stone in the middle was used for food preparation. A smaller stone would be used to crush grains against this stone to prepare food. Some of the stones were built into the floors.
This little guy was hanging around while I was walking on the trail. For a while, it seemed like he was leading me.
No comments:
Post a Comment