34 PUEBLO ARCHITECTURE. 
parties from the other villages, seized their game, and sometimes killed 
the hunters; they had fallen upon men in outlying corn fields, maltreating 
and sometimes slaying them, and threatened still more serious outrage. 
Awatubi was too strong for Walpi to attack single-handed, so the as- 
sistance of the other villages was sought, and it was determined to 
destroy Awatubi at the close of a feast soon to occur. This was the 
annual “feast of the kwakwanti,” which is still maintained and is held 
during the month of November by each village, when the youths who 
have been qualified by certain ordeals are admitted to the councils. 
The ceremonies last several days, and on the concluding night special 
rites are held in the kivas. At these ceremonies every man must be in 
the kiva to which he belongs, and after the close of the rites they all 
sleep there, no one being permitted to leave the kiva until after sunrise 
on the following day. 
There was still some little intercourse between Awatubi and Walpi, 
and it was easily ascertained when this feast was to be held. On the 
day of its close, the Walpi sent word to their allies “to prepare the war 
arrow and come,” and in the evening the fighting bands from the other 
villages assembled at Walpi, as the foray was to be led by the chief of 
that village. By the time night had fallen something like 150 marauders 
had met, all armed, of course; and of still more ominous import than 
their weapons were the firebrands they carried—shredded cedar bark 
loosely bound in rolls, resimous splinters of pinon, dry greasewood (a 
furze very easily ignited), and pouches full of pulverized red peppers. 
Secure in the darkness from observation, the bands followed the 
Walpi chief across the valley, every man with his weapons in hand and 
a bundle of inflammables on his back. Reaching the Awatubi mesa 
they cautiously crept up the steep, winding trail to the summit, and 
then stole round the village to the passages leading to the different 
courts holding the kivas, near which they hid themselves. They waited 
till just before the gray daylight came, then the Walpi chief shouted 
his war cry and the yelling bands rushed to the kivas. Selecting their 
positions, they were at them in a moment, and quickly snatching up the 
ladders through the hatchways, the only means of exit, the doomed 
occupants were left as helpless as rats inatrap. Fire was at hand in the 
numerous little cooking pits, containing the jars of food prepared for the 
celebrants, the inflammable bundles were lit and tossed into the kivas, 
and the piles of firewood on the terraced roofs were thrown down upon 
the blaze, and soon each kiva became a furnace. The red pepper was 
then cast upon the fire to add its choking tortures, while round the 
hatchways the assailants stood showering their arrows into the mass of 
struggling wretches. The fires were maintained until the roofs fell in 
and buried and charred the bones of the victims. It is said that every 
male of Awatubi who had passed infancy perished in the slaughter, not 
one escaping. Such of the women and children as were spared were 
taken out, and all the houses were destroyed, after which the captives 
were divided among the different villages. 
