MINDELEFF.] TRADITIONS—HOPITUH. 25 
races, he ran up the ladder as if to offer her a praver emblem, but in- 
stead he drew out a sharp flint knife from his girdle and eut her throat. 
He threw the body down where all could see it, and ran along the ad- 
joining terraces till he cleared the village. A little way up the mesa 
was a large flat rock, upon which he sprang and took off his dancer’s 
mask so that all might recognize him, then turning again to the mesa 
he sped swiftly up the trail and escaped. 
And so foray and slaughter continued to alternate between them until 
the planting season of some indefinite year came around. All the Sik- 
yatki men were to begin the season by planting the fields of their chief 
on a certain day, which was announced from the housetop by the See- 
ond Chief as he made his customary evening proclamations, and the 
Walpi, becoming aware of this, planned a fatal onslaught. Every man 
and woman able to draw a bow or wield a weapon were got in readiness 
and at night they crossed the mesa and concealed themselves along its 
edge, overlooking the doomed village. When the day came they waited 
until the men had gone to the field and then rushed down upon the 
houses. The chief, who was too old to go afield, was the first one killed, 
and then followed the indiscriminate slaughter of women and children, and 
the destruction of the houses. The wild tumult in the village alarmed 
the Sikyatki and they came rushing back, but too late to defend their 
homes. Their struggles were hopeless, for they had only their planting 
sticks to use as weapons, which availed but little against the Walpi 
with their bows and arrows, spears, slings, and war clubs. Nearly all 
of the Sikyatki men were killed, but some of them escaped to Oraibi 
and some to Awatubi. A number of the girls and younger women were 
spared, and distributed among the different villages, where they became 
wives of their despoilers. 
It is said to have been shortly after the destruction of Sikydétki that 
the first serious inroad of a hostile tribe occurred within this region, and 
all the stories aver that these early hostiles were from the north, the 
Ute being the first who are mentioned, and after them the Apache, who 
made an occasional foray. 
While these families of Hopituh stock had been building their strag- 
gling dwellings along the canyon brinks, and grouping in villages around 
the base of the East Mesa, other migratory bands of Hopituh had be- 
gun to arrive on the Middle Mesa. As already said, it is admitted that 
the Snake were the first occupants of this region, but beyond that fact 
the traditions are contradictory and confused. It is probable, however, 
that not long after the arrival of the Horn, the Squash people came 
from the south and built a village on the Middle Mesa, the ruin of which 
is called Chukubi. It is on the edge of the cliff on the east side of the 
neck of that mesa, and a short distance south of the direct trail leading 
from Walpi to Oraibi. The Squash people say that they came from Pa- 
lat Kwabi, the Red Land in the far South, and this vague term expresses 
nearly all their knowledge of that traditional land. They say they lived 
