kivan.

1871 in Utah Hist. Q. (1939) VII. 54 Found pieces of pottery and arrowheads... Also saw a ‘kiver’ or underground ‘clan room’.

1875 Scribner's Monthly Dec. 205/2 This kiva, as it is called in their own tongue, is called ‘Estufa’ by the Spaniards, and is spoken of by writers in English as the ‘Sweat House’.

1898 17th Ann. Rep. Bureau Amer. Ethnol. 1895–6 611 A pueblo of the size of Awatobi..would no doubt have ceremonial chambers or kivas.

1927 W. Cather Death comes for Archbishop iv. ii. 132 It was a smothered fire in a clay oven, and had been burning in one of the kivas ever since the pueblo was founded.

1931 Discovery Sept. 279/2 The ‘khiva’ as they are called by the present Hopi Indians... It seems clear that their purpose was to provide a meeting place for councils and ceremonies for the men of the clan.

1950 F. Eggan Social Organization W. Pueblos ii. 28 Between the members of the kiva groups there are no special kinship ties.

1958 J. Cleugh tr. R. Jungk Brighter than Thousand Suns xviii. 295 The mechanism used took the form of a ‘critical assembly’ under remote control. Processes going on inside the ‘Kivas’—the buildings had been called after the sacred ceremonial chambers of the Pueblo Indians, which could only be approached, with the greatest awe, by their priests—were to be observed solely on television screens.

1964 E. A. Nida Toward Sci. Translating viii. 169 For the Zuñis, uttering melika in a kiva ceremony would be as out of place as bringing a radio into such a meeting.