r hole of sufficient size for
a man to squeeze through. This slab was set on edge and incorporated
into the masonry of the partition, and evidently served as a means of
communication with another room. The position of this doorway and its
relation to the room in which it occurs may be seen from the
illustration in Pl. C, which shows the stone in situ. The doorway or
"stone-close" is shown in Fig. 86 on a sufficient scale to indicate the
degree of technical skill in the architectural treatment of stone
possessed by the builders of this old pueblo. The writer visited Zuni in
October of the same season, and on describing this find to Mr. Frank H.
Cushing, learned that the Zuni Indians still preserved traditional
knowledge of this device. Mr. Cushing kindly furnished at the time the
following extract from the tale of "The Deer-Slayer and the Wizards," a
Zuni folk-tale of the early occupancy of the valley of Zuni.

[Illustration: Plate XCIV. Ancient wall of upright rocks in
southwestern Colorado.]

"'How will they enter?' said the young man to his wife. 'Through the
stone-close at the side,' she answered. In the days of the ancients, the
doorways were often made of a great slab of stone with a round hole cut
through the middle, and a round stone slab to close it, which was called
the stone-close, that the enemy might not enter in times of war."

[Illustration: Fig. 86. An ancient circular doorway or "stone-close"
in Kin-tiel.]

Mr. Cushing had found displaced fragments of such circular stone
doorways at ruins some distance northwest from Zuni, but had been under
the impression that they were used as roof openings. All examples of
this device known to the writer as having been found in place occurred
in side walls of rooms. Mr. E. W. Nelson, while making collections of
pottery from ruins near Springerville, Arizona, found and sent to the
Smithsonian Institution, in the autumn of 1884, "a flat stone about 18
inches square with a round hole cut in the middle of it. This stone was
taken from the wall of one of the old ruined stone houses near
Springerville, in an Indian ruin. The stone was set in the wall between
two inner rooms of the ruin, and evidently served as a means of
communication or perhaps a ventilator. I send it on mainly as an example
of their stone-working craft." The position of this feature in the
excavated room of Kin-tiel is indicated on the ground plan, Fig. 60,
which also shows the position of oth