570 THE CLIFF VILLAGES OF THE RED ROCK COUNTRY. 



opened a chamber 28 by 14 feet in the middle of the rectangular court 

 of the eastern portion of Awatobi, 100 feet north of the mission, and dis- 

 covered a human skull and other bones which evidently had not been 

 buried with care. This accorded with Hopi tradition pointing to this 

 room as the kiva in which some of Awatobeans died on the fatal night 

 of the massacre. I was at that time deterred from further excava- 

 tions in the kiva by the horror of my workmen at desecrating the 

 place. This summer, however, I determined to continue the excava- 

 tions there and to follow the walls of adjacent rooms. The results led to 

 a discovery which sheds new light on the character of the rooms in the 

 middle of the rectangular court of the eastern part of Awatobi. 

 Instead of a single room at this point, three square chambers of about 

 the same size were found, side by side, and in the center of the floor of 

 the middle room, feet below the surface of the ground, I came upon 

 a square stone shrine. As the workmen excavated to the level of the 

 floor, I noticed in the middle of the room a large slab of stone through 

 which had been out a rectangular orifice. This slab was removed and 

 below it was laid bare a crypt, the walls of which were made of four stone 

 slabs, each set on edge, making a receptacle about 24 feet square. This 

 crypt was evidently a shrine or sacred receptacle in which prayer offer- 

 ings were deposited in old pagan rites, for its floor was covered with 

 remains of prayer sticks, some of which, colored with green pigment, 

 were well preserved. It was without doubt a place of offerings to rain 

 gods, for on each of the four stone walls which inclosed it a rain-cloud 

 symbol was drawn in black pigment. The figure of the rain cloud thus 

 outlined on the slab at the north side was colored yellow, that at the west 

 green, that at the south red, and the slab at the east white, showing 

 an association of colors with world quarters which still forms a prom- 

 inent feature in Tusayan rituals. 



The situation of this shrine in the middle of an ancient dance place 

 is interesting in comparisons with modern usages, for even to the pres- 

 ent day, in several of the inhabited Tusayan towns, the middle of the 

 plaza, where ceremonial dances are performed, is occupied by a stone 

 shrine in which prayer sticks are placed, as I have repeatedly described 

 in my accounts of religious observances of these people. In modern 

 conceptions this centrally placed shrine is said to be symbolic of a 

 mythic opening out of which, in their cosmogony, races came in the 

 beginning, from the Underworld, and there is little doubt that the 

 same belief was associated Avith the buried cyst excavated at Awatobi. 



The western or ancient portion of Awatobi is a high mound rising 

 steeply from the south at the edge of the mesa and sloping gradually 

 toward the north and west. It is probable, judging from the configura- 

 tions, that when inhabited the buildings, the debris of which forms 

 this mound, rose vertically from the edge of the cliff' to a height of four 

 stories and sloped by terraces to the level surface of the mesa on the 

 north. By cutting into the mound on the steep side, we were able to 



