632 EXPEDITION TO ARIZONA IN 1895 (ETH. ANN. 17 
these collections have failed to teach the lesson they might have taught, 
from the fact that data concerning the objects composing them are so 
indefinite. Very little care had been taken to label these collections 
accurately or to collect any specimens but those which were strikingly 
beautiful or commercially valuable. It was therefore with the hope of 
giving a more precise and comprehensive character to our knowledge 
of Tusayan antiquities that I wished to excavate one of the ruins of 
this province which was undoubtedly prehistoric. Conditions were 
favorable for success at the mounds called by the Indians Sikyatki.! 
These ruins are situated near the modern Tusayan pueblos of East 
Mesa, from which I could hire workmen, and not far from Keam’s Can- 
yon, which could be made a base of supplies. The existing legends 
bearing on these ruins, although obscure, are sufficiently definite for 
all practical purposes. 
I find no mention of Sikyatki in early historical documents, nor can 
the name be even remotely identified with any which has been given to 
a Tusayan pueblo. My knowledge of the mounds which mark the site 
of this ancient village dates back to 1892, when I visited them with 
one of the old men of Walpi, who then and there narrated the legend 
of its destruction by the Walpians previously to the advent of the 
Spaniards. I was at that time impressed by the extent of the mounds, 
and prepared a rough sketch of the ground plan of the former houses, 
but from lack of means was unable to conduct any systematic excava- 
tion of the ruin. 
Comparatively nothing concerning the ruin of Sikyatki has been 
published, although its existence had been known for several years 
previously to my visit. In his brief account Mr Victor Mindeleff? 
speaks of it as two prominent knolls, ‘‘about 400 yards apart.” the 
summits of which are covered with house walls. He also found por- 
tions of walls on intervening hummocks, but gives no plan of the ruin. 
The name, Sikyatki, is referred to the color of the sandstone of which 
the walls were built. He found some of the rooms were constructed of 
small stones, dressed by rubbing, and laid in mud. The largest cham- 
ber was stated to be 94 by 44 feet, and it was considered that many of 
the houses were “built in excavated places around the rocky summits 
of the knolls.”* Mr Mindeleff identified the former inhabitants with the 
ancestors of the Kokop people, and mentioned the more important 
details of their legend concerning the destruction of the village. 
1 Many of the specimens in the well-known Keam collection, now in the Tusayan room of the Pea- 
body Musenm at Cambridge, are undoubtedly from Sikyatki, and still more are from Awatobi. Since 
the beginning of my excavations at Sikyatki it has come to be a custom for the Hopi potters to dis- 
pose of, as Sikyatki ware, to unsuspecting white visitors, some of their modern objects of pottery. 
These fraudulent pieces are often very cleverly made. 
2 Architecture of Tusayan and Cibola, op. cit., pp. 20, 21. 
These rooms I failed to find. One of the rocky knolls may be that called by me the ‘‘acropolis.” 
The second knoll I cannot identify, unless it is the elevation in continuation of the same side toward 
the east. Possibly he confounded the ruin of Kiikiichomo with that of Sikyatki. 
