800 REPORT OF NATIONAl^ MUSEUM, 1896. 



In the summer of 1896, Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, while engaged in 

 explorations for the Bureau of American Ethnology, found several 

 ancient split reeds marked in a similar manner to those used in the 

 Zuni game of ^ho'-U-we. These reeds, represented in plate 15, were dug 

 up by him at the Cherlon ruin, near where the Cherlon Fork empties 

 into the Little Colorado, about 15 miles east of Winslow, Arizona. He 

 writes : 



I have uo means of knowing how old Cherlon ruin is, but very old — no white roan's 

 objects wt^re unearthed there. There were settlements in the vicinity as late as 1700. 

 This may have been one, btit I judge from the ruin and legends that it was much 

 older. The ruin of Cherlon, like many on the banks of the Little Colorado, shows 

 resemblances to ruins on Zufii River, and no doubt has relations with them. Tbe 

 Southern Hoj)! clans claim them, and I fancy both Zuni and Moki are related to tbe 

 clans of Cakwabayfi, "Blue Running Water House." 



I am indebted to Mr. Wells M. Sawyer, of the Bureau of American 

 Ethnology, for the careful drawing (Plate 15) showing the marks on the 

 reeds. One reed is apparently without marks on the exterior, and of 

 the four others two have the same marks, from which the writer infers 

 that they form part of at least two original sets. During the same 



Fig. 115. 



- STAVE FOR GAME. 



Leugtli, 7 inches. 

 Cliff dwellings of Mancos Canyon, Colorado. 



Museiini oE Ariha'olni.'y, University of IVnnsylvania. 



season's work. Dr. Fewkes excavated a bowl (Cat. Xo. 157735, IT.S.:t^.M.) 

 from the old ruin of Cunopavi containing a symbolic pictograph of a 

 bird, and a representation of the four reed or stave casts (Plate 10). 

 This bowl was dug up from the old cemetery. Old Cunopavi, or Shi- 

 mopavi, as it is commonly written, he informs me, was inhabited in 1540, 

 and the peo]>le moved to the present site about the end of the seven- 

 teenth century. '"The bowl is of the same ware as the prehistoric 

 pottery of Tusayan, and I think it older than 1540, but that is not 

 proven. The bird is Kwataka, ' Eagle Man/> an old crony of gamblers." 



Additional evidence of the antiquity of the stave game in North 

 America is afforded by a prehistoric stave of cotton wood (fig. 115), 

 (Mus. Arch., Univ. Penn.), tied at one end with sinew to prevent its 

 splitting, and practically identical with the Navajo staves of cotton 

 wood (Cat. No. 9557, U.S.N.M.), which was found by the Wetherill 

 Brothers in a prehistoric Cliff dwelling in Mancos Canyon, Colorado. 



In ancient Mexico, among the cultivated Aztecs, we find mention of 

 the "game of the canes" under the names (»f cauallopan -AxnX nemimimi- 



Identitied by Mr. Cushing with Mi'-ai-ua referred to iu his account of Slio'-li-wc. 



