FEWKEs) FEATHER SYMBOLISM ON LITTLE COLORADO POTTERY 73 



Bird Figures 



The majority of the animal figures on specimens from the three 

 soutliern ruins represented birds, many of which were highly con- 

 ventionalized. Wliile there were many objects of pottery adorned 

 with feathers, this style of decoration was not as common or as 

 varied as at Shuniopovi, Sikyatki, Awatobi, or other ruins on the 

 Hopi reservation. The conventional forms of feathers so common 

 on the decorated pottery of Sikyatki are not found in the designs 

 ornamenting the potteiy of the Little Colorado ruins, but seem to be 

 confined to the pueblos in the present Hopi reservation. Thus, not 

 a single specimen of the conventional feather figured on the "butter- 

 fly vase" shown in plate cxxv of the Seventeenth Annual Report of 

 the Bureau of American Ethnology, part 2 (and also plate XL, Smith- 

 sonian Report, IS'.io), was found on anj' vessel from Homolobi, Chevlon, 

 or Chaves ])ass.° 



Fig. 27. Vase with bear's paw de.sign ( number 1.571.S7i. 



The peculiar symbol of the breath feather (Seventeenth Annual 

 Report of the Bureau of American Etiinology, plates cxxxviii /; and 

 CXLI c, (1) also appears to be limited to objects from ruins near the 

 inhabited Hopi pueblos. On none of the many figures of birds shown 

 in the Little Colorado pottery have we any such complicated symbols 

 appended to wing or tail. The figures of birds from Shuniopovi 

 resemble those from Sikyatki, but no pottery from a Little Colorado 

 ruin is found decorated with the conventional figure of the feather so 

 constant in the ancient ruins above mentioned. 



It will be noticed in the figures of birds from Homolobi and Chev- 

 lon that the posterior end of tlie body has a triangular form which 

 apparently represents the tail. At one side of this triangular figure 

 are many .short parallel lines, evidently intended to represent the 

 tips of the tail feathers, well brought out in the bird figures. 



The design shown in figure 2S represents two birds, above which 

 are emblematic rain-cloud symbols with parallel lines representing 



"Consult The Feather Symbol in Ancient Hopi Designs, American Anthropologist, v. 11, n. 1, 

 January, 1898. 



