96 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 66 
ways, too wide for ordinary cliff-house doorways. The walls of one 
of the rooms of the western group are plastered, and decorated with a 
procession of animals and men painted in red. Two of the human 
figures, unfortunately mutilated within the last six years, suggest 
phallic beings still personated by the Hopi, a similarity which im- 
plies that the Mesa Verde cliff-dwellers had a cult like that of the 
CRE | 
AOS s 
SK eGR 
= pis 
4 =—s 
Wy? 
Cio 
ay 
== 
Se 
aS 
~~ - 
“aS 
rt 
Affi 
SA SY 
—>> 
Fic. 119—Head-rest from Oak-tree House, Mesa Verde National Park, 
Colorado. 
Hopi, and as phallic rites and personages are pre-eminently associated 
by the latter with New-fire ceremonies, it may be that the cliff- 
dwellers of Painted House practised the same or similar rites. 
The specialization of these two great buildings for ceremonial pur- 
poses and the evidences of the former existence of a considerable 
population nearby, seen in the size of Cliff Palace and other cliff- 
houses in the neighboring caves, impart peculiar interest to the study 
