THE CLIFF VILLAGES OF THE RED ROCK COUNTRY. 577 



arrangement, whose only habitants are reptiles and noxious insects. 

 Such is the desolation of an ancient pueblo where once lived a people 

 who manufactured in prehistoric times some of the most artistic pot- 

 tery ever made in North America. Even the Indians from the neighbor- 

 ing villages who visited me and saw the beautiful ware which I exhumed 

 from these desolate mounds and sands did not fail to contrast the past 

 with the present. The best potter of the Bast mesa, an intelligent 

 woman from Hano, named Nampio, acknowledged that her productions 

 were far inferior to those of the women of Sikyatki, and she begged per- 

 mission to copy some of the decorations for future inspiration. The 

 sight of this dusky woman and her husband copying the designs of 

 ancient ware aud acknowledging their superiority was instructive in 

 many ways. 



The northeast corner of the rectangular mounds of Sikyatki rises 

 into a rocky pinnacle, steep on the north and sloping by a gentle rise 

 from the south and east. This elevation was formerly crowned with 

 houses, as will soon be made evident, and from its commanding position 

 was early in our work called an acropolis. The accompanying plan of the 

 whole village shows that it was rectangular, with northern and western 

 ranges of houses much higher than the southern and eastern. This is 

 readily referred to the contour of the foothills chosen by the ancient 

 builders as the site of their town, the high rock of the acropolis being, 

 without doubt, the first part on which houses were erected. The four 

 elongated sides which give the rectangular form to the mounds inclosed 

 a rectangular court in which are smaller mounds, remnants possibly of 

 kivas, and level spaces now marked off with rows of stones inclosing 

 modern fields of melons and squash plants. At the southern angle 

 two significant buttresses in the bounding mound suggest a gateway by 

 which the court of the village was entered. Some archaeologists have 

 insisted that the rectangular form of pueblos is a modern type, but the 

 ruins of Sikyatki take this form back to prehistoric times. 



In considering a ruin as large as Sikyatki, it is quite impossible for me 

 in the limited space allowed in this preliminary report to do more than 

 choose a few typical rooms in order to give an idea of the character of 

 the architecture of the habitations of the Sikyatkians. I have, there- 

 fore, chosen as a type the rooms of the acropolis, which were carefully 

 excavated under my direction by Kopeli, the Snake chief, one of the 

 best Indian workmen employed. 



When I began excavation at this part of the ruin, we had no trace of 

 walls to guide us, but by removing the surface debris we found a 

 double line of rooms forming a ridge extending about north and south, 

 following the rise to the top of the rock, which was about level at this 

 point. The rooms were excavated to their floors, where a stone pave- 

 ment resting on the rock was found 5 feet below the surface. The 

 walls were constructed of squared stones, set in adobe mortar and 

 smoothly plastered with the same material. 

 gM 95 37 



