South West Pueblo - Kiva

For more than a millennium, Pueblo peoples have constructed various forms of social ceremonial meeting chambers knows as Kivas. These special multipurpose buildings, sometimes free-standing, sometimes embedded within the larger house blocks, were primarily used by men. In the Kiva, men discuss the governing of their community, decide when to plant and harvest crops, plan seasonal rituals and rehearse dances, build alters, repair kachina costumes, train the young, smoke and pray. During major ceremonies, both men and women dancers use these rooms for rest and costume changes. Kivas are considered the oldest religious and social space in continuous use in the Western Hemisphere . There is a difference in the primary form of the Kiva. The western Pueblos build them in a rectangular form with the eastern Pueblos using a circular form, reserving the rectangular form for more sacred purposes. The building is often sunk into the ground suggesting a link between this world and the ancestral underworld. The first Kiva symbolized the place of emergence, the ground/ womb, and represents the entire world. The Milky Way was embodied by the roof, the sky by the walls, the four directions and the four sacred mountains by four openings in the walls. A bench, which encircled the interior, represented the fog, where the rain giving kachina spirits dwelled. These structures are seen as sacred and are not to be entered by nonresidents. They remain a potent architectural reminder of the abiding gulf between Pueblo and Anglo-American worldviews.