FEWKES] SIKYATKI MORTUARY DEPOSITS 649 
No rulé could be formulated in regard to the place where the pottery 
would occur, and often the first indication of its presence was the 
stroke of a shovel on the fragile edge of a vase or bowl. Having once 
found a skeleton, or discolored sand which indicated the former pres- 
ence of human remains, the probability that burial objects were near by 
was almost a certainty, although in several instances even these signs 
failed. 
A considerable number of the pottery objects had been broken when 
the soil and stones were thrown on the corpse at interment. So many 
were entire. however, that I do not believe any considerable number 
were purposely broken at that time,and none were found with holes 
made in them to “kill” or otherwise destroy their utility. 
No evidences of cremation—no charred bones of man or animal in 
or near the mortuary vessels—were found. From the character of the 
objects obtained from neighboring graves, rich and poor were appar- 
ently buried side by side in the same soil. Absolutely no evidence of 
Spanish influence was encountered in all the excavations at Sikyatki— 
no trace of metal, glass, or other object of Caucasian manufacture such 
as I have nentioned as haying been taken from the ruins of Awatobi— 
thus confirming the native tradition that the catastrophe of Sikyatki 
antedated the middle of the sixteenth century, when the first Spaniards 
entered the country. 
It is remarkable that in Sikyatki we found no fragments of basketry 
or cloth, the fame of which among the Pueblo Indians was known to 
Coronado before he left Mexico. That the people of Sikyatki wore cot- 
ton kilts no one ean doubt, but these fabrics, if they were buried with 
the dead, had long since decayed. Specimens of strings and ropes of 
yucca, which were comparatively abundant at Awatobi, were not found 
at Sikyatki; yet their absence by no means proves that they were not 
used, for the marks of the strings used to bind feathers to the mortu- 
ary pahos, on the green paint with which the wood was covered, may 
still be readily seen. 
The insight into ancient beliefs and practices afforded by the numer- 
ous objects found at Sikyatki is very instructive, and while it shows 
the antiquity of some of the modern symbols, it betrays «a still more 
important group of conventionalized figures, the meaning of which may 
always remain in doubt. This is particularly true of the decoration 
on many specimens of the large collection of highly ornamented pottery 
found in the Sikyatki cemeteries. 
If we consider the typical designs on modern Hopi pottery and com- 
pare them with the ancient, as illustrated by the collections from 
Awatobi and Sikyatki, it is noted. in the first place, how different they 
are, and secondly, how much better executed the ancient objects are 
than the modern. Nor is it always clear hhow the modern symbols are 
derived from the ancient, so widely do they depart from them in ak 
their essential characters, 
