THE CLIFF VILLAGES OF THE RED ROCK COUNTRY. 573 



and yellow pigments, and a micaceous hematite, which is srill used by 

 the Snake priests and other warriors to decorate their cheeks on cere- 

 monial occasions. 



A beautifully decorated black and white ware vase stood near by, 

 covered with an inverted ladle, and containing several arrowpoints of 

 finest workmanship. There were no food vessels or basins as in ordi- 

 nary burials, and no original means of entrance into the chamber of 

 death could be found. The chief had been entombed in the room with 

 pious care, and afterward the walls of masonry were sealed about hi in. 

 There were no evidences of post-mortem entrance to the chamber, and 

 nothing to show that it was a living room subsequently to the burial. 

 The mode of intramural interment was not common at Awatobi, but 

 most of the dead were buried outside the town, as the cemeteries north 

 and west of the village abundantly prove. It is significant that this 

 solitary instance of house burial was found in the oldest part of the 

 ruin, and it is probable that after the advent of the Spaniards the cus- 

 tom was abandoned, except in those instances where the walls or floor 

 of the mission were used for that purpose. 



The Awatobeans buried most of their dead outside their village in 

 the shifting sand dunes north and west of their old town, and in the foot- 

 hills at the base of their mesa. The interments in the sand were gen- 

 erally, as in modern Tusayan burials, found to be accompanied with 

 food bowls of finest yellow ware, or with rude cooking pots or bowls 

 and slipper-shape jars, in all of which fragments of food were detected. 

 Most of the skeletons from these cemeteries which were examined had 

 been placed in a sitting posture, the knees brought up to the chin, and 

 the pottery offerings were deposited at one side. Several of the dead 

 had wooden slats painted green, which, in one instance, was held in 

 the left hand. This offering, called a prayer stick, was decorated with 

 two figures of the dragon fly painted in black outlines. 



The interments at the base of the mesa seem to have been made in 

 shallow graves among the rocks, and were accompanied with food 

 offerings deposited in decorated bowls. In one of these graves I found 

 two nests of food bowls, each composed of six specimens, one at the 

 side of the other. At another grave, which was identified as that of a 

 person high in sacerdotal standing, there was a colander pierced with 

 a double row of holes arranged in the form of a Greek cross, and filled 

 with stone arrowpoints, charm stones, and pigments. This colander 

 may have been used by the priest in sifting sand on the floor of the 

 kiva or sacred room when he made the sand picture, an important 

 accessory of the altar. At the skull of the same priest there was a 

 stone fetish of the puma, and near his breastbone an elaborately carved 

 prayer stick, upon which the impression of a feather was still to be seen. 

 How long ago these objects were placed by the survivors on the graves 

 of their kindred I can not say, suffice is it to know that funeral habits 

 still practiced by the Mokis find their counterpart in villages of their 



