This point would never have been reached
had the practice prevailed of covering the walls with a coating of mud.
The cruder examples of banded construction, however--those that still
kept well within constructional expediency--were doubtless covered with
a coating of plaster where they occurred inside of the rooms. At Tusayan
and Cibola, on the other hand, the tendency has been rather to elaborate
the plastic element of the masonry. The nearly universal use of adobe is
undoubtedly largely responsible for the more slovenly methods of
building now in vogue, as it effectually conceals careless construction.
It is not to be expected that walls would be carefully constructed of
banded stonework when they were to be subsequently covered with mud. The
elaboration of the use of adobe and its employment as a periodical
coating for the dwellings, probably developed gradually into the use of
a whitewash for the house walls, resulting finally in crude attempts at
wall decoration.
Many of the interiors in Zu?i are washed with a coating of white, clayey
gypsum, used in the form of a solution made by dissolving in hot water
the lumps of the raw material, found in many localities. The mixture is
applied to the walls while hot, and is spread by means of a rude
glove-like sack, made of sheep or goat skin, with the hair side out.
With this primitive brush the Zu?i housewives succeed in laying on a
smooth and uniform coating over the plaster. An example of this class of
work was observed in a room of house No.
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