Kin Ya’a, whose name means ‘tall house or towering house’ in Navajo, is considered to be the home of the four original Navajo clans, and is apparently still a very important place for the Navajo. The great house was built in 1106 (Bannister et al. 1970) on an open floodplain 1.5 kilometers northeast of Lobo Mesa.       Kin Ya’a is a tall, compact, great house that faces southeast. It is three stories on the northwest side, and it steps down to one story on the southeast. Within the great house are three enclosed surface kivas and one four-story tower kiva. The tower kiva is in the center of the back (northwest) wall, and although the highest portion that remains is 10.5 meters, it is estimated to have been 12 meters originally. The tower kiva walls are massive; they are 1.5 meters wide at the foundation, and they step back at each floor until they diminish to 60 centimeters at the top (Marshall et al. 1979).

Approximately 200 meters to the northwest of Kin Ya’a is a great kiva. The great kiva is 13.5 meters in diameter, and attached to it are additional rooms in the four cardinal directions. Around the Kin Ya’a great house, especially to the west, are the remains of many additional roomblocks. It appears that Kin Ya’a was the center of a substantial community.       A prehistoric roadway passes immediately to the southeast of Kin Ya’a. Visible on aerial photographs and on the ground as a swale, the roadway leads to the northeast to central Chaco Canyon and to the great house Pueblo Pintado (Lyons and Hitchcock 1977). The road changes direction slightly at Kin Ya’a and leads southwest towards Hosta Butte. Text and Site Map ©Anne Lawrason Marshall's Kin Ya'a at UIdaho.edu.