SPEAKER CHIEF'S HOUSE
by
Earl H. Morris

The House of the Speaker Chief now stands firm and secure against all natural agencies of destruction save earthquake and collapse of the cave roof, both of which are very remote possibilities. For decades the architectural gem of Cliff Palace stood poised on a flimsy tripod base, ready, it seemed, at any moment to go tobogganing to destruction down the slope at the front of the cave. Late in April we began to construct a foundation beneath the huge leaf stone on which the Speaker Chief's House is built, and June 15th was laid the last unit of the cement-bound masonry which knits the cave floor into a mass as hard and compact as the great sandstone arch overhead.

Speaker Chief's House (Cliff Palace) showing large cavity under inclined rock before repair.

Speaker Chief House (Cliff Palace) Large cavity filled with concrete and masonry after repair.

Some time in the ages past an enormous leaf pulled loose from the roof of Cliff Palace cave and crashed down upon huge blocks left by a still earlier fall. It came to rest at an acute forward and downward slant, riven transversely by the shock of impact in to three units, each of which bore only on the tips of the several blocks beneath. Friction alone kept the units in place until the Cliff Dwellers chose to reside in the cave. They utilized the cavities beneath the great leaf for storage rooms and filled in beneath the cracks with walls of stones and clay to help sustain the mass. Later the storage chambers were walled up at the front and packed full of cave dust and refuse to provide a more stable footing for the House of the Speaker Chief. And finally, some negligent or intrepid clan dug a deep kiva immediately beneath the forward edge of the riven leaf. Generations ran their course. Came the exodus of the Cliff people and in their wake the destroying hands of time and the elements. The sealing walls of the old storage rooms slumped into the kiva and slowly the material that had been used to fill them trickled downward, thus beginning to open the original cavities that the Cliff-Dweller architects had filled. Nearly 25 years ago, the kiva was excavated, and since that time pack rats and thoughtless visitors, bent upon recovering over-looked trophies of the past, went on clawing out the loose debris beneath Speaker Chief's House until the few original bearing points of stone on stone had been revealed. So precarious seemed the situation that in 1933, Superintendent C. Marshall Finnan made an appeal for funds to prevent the collapse of the structure. His plea received the attention of the Secretary of the Interior, H.C. Ickes, who provided the necessary finances through the Public Works Administration, and now the task has been accomplished. With more than 70 tons of stone and cement built around I-beams and jack screws stratigically set, the House of the Speaker has been provided with a foundation that, in the normal course of events, should permit it to exist for many times the seven centuries which it so far has endured.

Frog carved in relief— Speaker Chief's House Cliff Palace