AN ARCHEOLOGICAL COLLECTION FROM YOUNG'S 

 CANYON, NEAR FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA 



By J. WALTER FEWKES 

 chief, bureau of american ethnology 



(With Nine Plates) 



Notwithstanding the important articles on Southwestern aiiti(iuities 

 that have been pubh'shed during the past decade, we are still on 

 the threshold of the subject. Many generalizations thus far sug- 

 gested are provisional and must so remain until more comprehen- 

 sive knowledge is available to provide broader foundations. We are 

 greatly in need of field-work in several little-known localities, and 

 one or two specimens are not sufficient to warrant conclusions that 

 have been drawn from such limited comparisons. One of the least 

 known of these uninvestigated areas of our Southwest, but one that 

 bids fair to yield instructive results bearing on the solution of im- 

 portant problems, lies in Arizona, extending down the eastern slope 

 of the San Francisco mountains and ending in the foothills on the 

 left bank of the Little Colorado. These mountains are called by 

 the Hopi Indians Nuvatikiobi, or The Place of the High Snows. 

 Lying in full sight of the Hopi mesas, they are associated with many 

 Indian migration legends and important Hopi ceremonials. A few 

 miles from the left bank of the river, at Black Falls, there are 

 clusters of high stone buildings with massive w^alls that are among the 

 best preserved prehistoric monuments of our Southwest, and although 

 well known to local students, they have been overlooked by some of 

 the latest writers on the archeology of the Southwest. Fortunately, 

 however, these little-known buildings have been, officially recog- 

 nized, and are beginning to attract the attention of students. The 

 most striking of the ruins have lately been grouped by a proclama- 

 tion of the President into a National Monument under the name of 

 Wupatki, a word applied to them long ago by the Hopi Indians. 



The history of these ruins is rather brief. They were first men- 

 tioned in 1853 by Sitgreaves, but for many years after no printed 

 reference was made to them ; in 1900 the author figured and de- 

 scribed these buildings in an article in the American Anthropolo- 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 77, No. 10. 



