Ch.2: Historic Pueblo Architecture

URBAN GENESIS AT CHACO: Case Study of the Origin of Civilizations. Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6

2.2 The Beginning: A Concentric World-view

The origin tale of the Pueblos is essential to their identities and world-view. More specifically, it underlies the psychological and spiritual understanding of rooms, the village as a whole, and the surrounding landscape. The following account of the Origin is abridged to the point where it can be homogenized; the individual accounts of each Pueblo differ greatly in details and place-names. For the more detailed accounts of the Origin by different Pueblos see Ortiz 1969, Ferguson and Hart 1985, Parsons 1939, Titiev 1945, and (Stevenson in) Mindeleff 1891. For each Pueblo, the People are the members of their Pueblo only.

The earth is Mother.

Ages ago, divine beings led the early humans and all other animals into this world via a passage from the world below. The passage opened into the bottom of a lake. All lakes in this world are connected by underground passages, enabling spirits to move about the world underground, emerging and reentering through bodies of water. The original point of emergence at the bottom of the lake in the north is called Shipap.

After emerging, drying, and taking final form, the People moved south to find the Middle Place, the center of the world where they should dwell. The journey was extremely arduous. The People split into two groups, each searching and settling for a time in different places. Many, if not most of the People died. According to the Zu?i, some of the People continued to wander further south, never to return. However, the People finally found and settled at the Middle Place.

The water spider spread his legs out until he reached the four oceans in the east, west, south, north, and also touched the zenith and the nadir. When he had thus spread out to find the six cardinal directions, his heart was over the long-sought middle place. (Ferguson and Hart 1985:23)

Here, and the Tewa say, 'all paths rejoin.' (Eggan in Ortiz, 1969: xiv)

Thus, six sacred directions form the spatial framework of the Pueblo world. The directions are from-the-north, -the-south, -the-east and -the-west; from-below and -above; and Center. Shipap, the point of emergence, lies somewhere to the north: among the Hopi, it is to their northwest in the Grand Canyon, whereas eastern Pueblo groups place it somewhere in what is now southern Colorado.

The importance of Shipap in the Pueblo worldview is demonstrated by the way that a new Pueblo is founded. A small representation of Shipap--a sipapu--is created, and the area around it becomes the public plaza at center of the new village, sanctifying that point as the geographic center of the world, and justifying the location of the town around it as being at the proper place, the Middle Place, the Center. For members of each community, therefore, the center of their settlement is the 'coordinate origin,' the point at which the six sacred directions meet.

Each pueblo, in the belief of its inhabitants, is at the very center of the world. The village begins at the Center, and grows outward. In his analysis of Tewa society Alfonso Ortiz translates the term for this primary sipapu as the Earth Mother Earth Navel Middle Place. "This is the sacred center of the village," writes Ortiz:

Ritual dances and other performances must continue to be initiated here, as the Tewa explain it, because this is the true center of the village. I might go a little further and say that this is the center of centers, or the navel of navels. (1969:21)

Dances and processions must take place around the sipapu. Therefore the area surrounding it is kept open as the central plaza of the village.

From-the-north and from-below are especially important as the sacred directions of emergence into this world. This belief is manifested in the way one emerges from a room in a pueblo: Pueblo rooms were accessed either from the roof by a ladder, or by a door on the south wall (Ortiz 1969:23). Each day, then, the Emergence is reenacted.