﻿NO. 



SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, ig22 



99 



supposed to represent the plumed snake ; and near the southwest 

 corner there are smaller mural designs representing two snakes. 



The presence of shrines outside Pipe Shrine House is significant 

 as the first of their kind ever found on the Mesa. On the northeast 

 corner of the ruin there is a small square enclosure with walls on 

 three sides, one of which is the wall of the northeast side of the ruin. 

 Reset in the north wall of this enclosure is a stone, found a little 

 distance away, bearing an incised circle or sun symbol ; and within 

 the shrine were found several waterworn stones ; also an iron meteor- 

 ite, a fossil nautiloid, and many stone concretions and waterworn 



Fig. 97. — Mountain Lion Shrine, or Shrine of the South. Stairway con- 

 structed by aborigines. Square enclosure is shrine as found. South wall 

 of Pipe Shrine House shown above. (Photograph by Geo. L. Beam. 

 Courtesy Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad.) 



stones. A stone slab found nearby bears on its surface an incised 

 circle, the symbolic representation of the sun, indicating the presence 

 of a sun shrine nearby. Waterworn stones, by a confusion of cause 

 and efifect, are supposed to be efficacious in rain-producing. 



South of Pipe Shrine House the ground slopes gradually (fig. 97), 

 the earth being held back by a retaining wall. Aboriginal stone 

 steps lead down to an enclosure which was a shrine, rectangular in 

 shape, built in a recess of the retaining wall opposite the western door- 

 way on the south side of the ruin. Within this shrine were a number 

 of waterworn stones sufficient to fill a cement-bag, surrounding a large 

 crudelv fashioned frasrment of a stone idol of the mountain lion. Al- 



