HARRINGTON] PLACE-NAMES 567 



ascended to the top. Tbe Navaho become excited if any one tries 

 to scale the rock. Mrs. P. S. Cassidy, of Santa Fe, informs the 

 writer that she learned from the Navaho the following tradition 

 aboiit Ship Rock: 



The Navaho were once hard pressed by some enemy with whom 

 they were at war, and one of their medicine-men prayed one night 

 for the deliv^erauce of their tribe. The earth beneath the Navaho 

 rose, lifting them, and moved like a wave to the east, carr3nng 

 them. It stopped where Ship Rock now is. Thus they escaped 

 their enemies. After the rock assumed its present position the 

 rescued people long dwelt on its top. tilling the fields below. 



All went well until one day during a storm, when all the men 

 were at work in the fields below, the trail for ascent was split oS 

 by the elements, leaving a sheer cliff. The women, children, and 

 old men on top starved to death. Their corpses are there. That 

 is the reason that the Navaho object if anyone proposes climbing 

 to the top of Ship Rock. 

 Sipop'e. The human race and animals were born in the underworld. 

 They climbed up a great Douglas spruce tree, fse, and entered, 

 this world through a lake called S/'poj/e, a word of obscure 

 etymology. 'At Sipoj/e^ is expressed by Sipop'enx (nsp 'at'). 

 Sipop'e was like an entrance into this world. When people die, 

 their spirits go to Sipojye, through which they pass into the un- 

 derworld. There are many spirits in the waters of 8i.poj/e. 



Sipop'e is a brackish lake situated in the sand dunes north of 

 Alamosa, Colorado. It is east of Mosca, a station on the railroad 

 which runs from Alamosa to Silverton, and west of the Sierra 

 Blanca, called in Tewa Pinisse^i'' ' white mountains' {piyf 'moun- 

 tain'; te^ 'whiteness' 'white'; '*'' locative and adjective-forming 

 postfix, here denoting 3 -I- plu. vegetal). 



See Pir)£ssp^r% page 56-1. This lagoon was visited bj' Dr. E. L. 

 Hewett in 1803, who kindly furnished the following note taken 

 from his diary of that time: 



June 27, 1892. Camped over night on the summit of Mosca Pa?s on tlie way 

 to Alamosa. During the forenoon drove clown the steeji western slope and near 

 evening camped not far from a ranch house on the eastern side of the San Luis 

 valley. There appears to be here a fertile strip between the foot of the moun- 

 tain and the sand dunes of the valley. Here and there the soil seems very 

 marshy and in places there is something very much like quicksand. One of 

 . my ponies suddenly dropped to the belly in a moist place by the roadside. 



June 28, 1892. The trip from last night's camp to Alamosa was by a very 

 little used road across the sand dunes. These are enormous hills of continually 

 shifting sand. I am told that these dunes constantly change position, shifting 

 a considerable distance in a few days. Soon after noon, to the west of a group 

 of dunes, we passed a small lake of very black, forbidding looking water. It 

 looks much like the small crater lakes south of Antonito but is not in a vol- 

 canic district, I could form no idea of the depth of it, but should think it quite 



