682 EXPEDITION TO ARIZONA IN 1895 [ETH. ANN. 17 
the head and in sand paintings and various other decorations on altars 
and religious paraphernalia. 
BIRDS 
The bird and the feather far exceed all other motives in the decora- 
tion of ancient Tusayan pottery, and the former design was probably 
the first animal figure employed for that purpose when the art passed 
out of the stage where simple geometric designs were used exclusively. 
A somewhat similar predominance is found in the part which the bird 
and the feather play in the modern Hopi ceremonial system. As one 
of the oldest elements in the decoration of Tusayan ceramics, figures of 
birds have in many’ instances become highly conventionalized; so 
much so, in fact, that their avian form has been lost, and it is one 
of the most instructive problems in the study of Hopi decoration 
to trace the modifications of these desigus from the realistic to the more 
conventionalized. The large series of food bowls from Sikyatki afford 
abundant material for that purpose, and it may incidentally be said 
that by this study I have been able to interpret the meaning of certain 
decorations on Sikyatki bowls of which the best Hopi traditionalists 
are ignorant.! In order to show the method of reasoning in this case 
I have taken a series illustrating the general form of an unknown bird. 
There can be no reasonable doubt that the decoration of the food 
basin shown in plate CXXXVII, a, represents a bird, and analogy would 
indicate that it is the picture of some mythologic personage. It has a 
round head (figure 272), to which is attached a headdress, which we 
shall later show is a highly modified feather ornament. On each side 
of the body from the region of the neck there arise organs which are 
undoubtedly wings, with feathers continued into arrowpoints. The 
details of these wings are very carefully and, I may add, prescriptively 
worked out, so that almost every line, curve, or zigzag is important. 
The tail is composed of three large feathers, which project beyond two 
triangular extensions, marking the end of the body. 
The technic of this figure is exceedingly complicated and the colors 
very beautiful. Although this bowl was quite badly broken when 
exhumed, it has been so cleverly mended by Mr Henry Walther that no 
part of the symbolism is lost. 
While it is quite apparent that this figure represents a bird, and 
while this identification is confirmed by Hopi testimony, it is far from 
a realistic picture of any known bird with which the ancients could 
have been familiar. It is highly conventionalized and idealized with 
significant symbolism, which is highly suggestive. 
1Jn the evolution of ornament among the Hopi, as among most primitive peoples where new designs 
have replaced the old, the meaning of the ancient symbols has been lost. Consequently we are forced 
to adopt comparative methods to decipher them. If, for instance, on a fragment of ancient pottery we 
find the figure of a bird in which the wing or tail feathers have a certain characteristic symbol form, 
we are justified, when we find the same symbolic design on another fragment where the rest of the 
bird is wanting, in considering the figure that of a wing or tail feather. So when the prescribed 
figure of the feather has been replaced by another form it is not surprising to find it incomprehensi- 
ble to modern shamans. The comparative ethnologist may in this way learn the meanings of symbols 
to which the modern Hopi priest can furnish no clue. 
