60 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bubn. 81 
author is not prepared to say. The Indians whom he consulted on 
the matter say that they are not sure that they know just what the 
figure means. Dr. Edgar L. Hewett 
calls it the head of the great plumed 
serpent. (Fig. 32.) 
My informants said that it might 
mean this, but they did not think so. 
Some of them were very decided in 
their interpretation of the sign as 
meaning the growing corn. This, they 
explained, was borne out by the dots, 
which represented the kernels of the 
corn, and the points on the tops, which 
represented the tassels on the top of 
the green ear. In a letter to the author from Mrs. Mary Austin, 
she says that the Sun Priest (her own 
words) at Taos told her that it was meant 
to represent the growing corn, and this was 
corroborated by Antonio Lujan, also a Taos 
Indian. 
Mrs. Lucy L. W. Wilson suggests that it 
might be a ‘‘hand sign.’”’ She gives a num- 
ber of reasons why she thinks so, but I can 
not agree with her.’ 
When questioned as to whether the sign 
might not mean a hand, my informants 
laughed and said, ‘No; what would 
they want to put a hand on a pot- 
tery vessel for.” I called their at- 
tention to the fact that Dr. Fewkes 
had found food bowls in Arizona 
which were decorated with hands 
and that the people of the Jemez 
Plateau had marked their caves and 
cliffs with hand signs, but they per- 
sisted that the so-called Avafiu was 
not a hand sign, and that they only 
felt satisfied that it was the growing 
corn. The same information was 
Fi. 29.—Red ware food bowl. given at San Juan and at San Ilde- 
fonso as at Santa Clara. 
We only encountered two cases where double heads were used (fig. 
32, A, B), and these were both on sherds. On the one the heads 
Fia. 27.—Incised mug. 
Fig. 28.—Red ware food bowl. 
14 Edgar L. Hewett. The Pajaritan Culture. Amer. Jour. of Arch., 2d ser., vol. xm, no. 3, p.341. 
1s Hand sign or Avahu. American Anthropologist, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 311-313. 
