Adobe construction

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 03:10:14 -0500

The adobe construction is undoubtedly derived from Mexican neighbors and has not been long in use; the adobe or adobe and stone structures are flat-roofed like the ordinary Mexican houses, covered with earth, and sometimes provided with rainspouts ; such houses usually have smoke-holes, and in some of the eastern and southern villages they have rude chimneys with chimney-pots (ollas with broken bottoms). The doorway of the accultural house is usually five or six feet high, something over two feet in average width, but considerably wider at bottom than at top, and commonly extending not quite to the ground ; doors are unusual, save in the more acculturized villages, when they are either carpenter made or composed of okatilla stems lashed together. The simpler rectangular houses grade in structure, material, and appurtenances into the primitive, dome-shape type. The adjacent shelter (vah’-toh) appears to be an innovation derived from Spanish contact ; it consists of four, nine, or more crotched posts of mesquite, set in a rectangle and carrying stringers of mesquite or paloverde and cross-sticks of okatilla or sahuaro, sometimes thatched carelessly with sacaton, more frequently covered with leafy shrubbery, coarse sticks, etc, or with hides, bits of canvas, blankets, etc. The cooking circle or roofless house is primitive ; it consists of a series of mesquite posts, four or five feet high, set in a circle four to six yards in diameter, connected save at one point (which serves as a doorway) by two or three horizontal binders, usually of mesquite sapling, to which a layer of sacaton grass is lashed. During fair weatherand nearly all days are fair in Papagueriaculinary operations are performed in this airy structure ; it is only during stormy weather that fires are built in the houses. Toward midday men, women, and children take refuge from the burning desert sun, whose rays are intense beyond imagining in humid lands, under the bah’ toh or in the house. At night the men usually sleep either out in the open or under the shelter, the women and children more commonly in the houses. It is to be remembered that the Papago house is primarily a place for storing properties and taking refuge from the sun, and only subordinately a protection from storm and cloud.

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Adobe construction