580 THE CLIFF VILLAGES OF THE RED EOCK COUNTRY. 



and stemless, the surface, in a few instances, decorated with incised 

 lines. Their presence in graves is readily explained when we remem- 

 ber that originally smoking was a ceremonial habit, and a certain 

 reverence is still paid by the priest to the pipe, which he rises in the 

 celebration of the mysteries. The fragments of one herb found in one of 

 the food basins has been identified as probably belonging to the genus 

 Mcotiana, the native American tobacco plant, and it is well known 

 that even to the present day food offerings, sprinkled with dried 

 tobacco leaves, are made before certain feasts following great ceremo- 

 nials. A well-made stone fetish of a mountain lion, found with a bowl 

 of arrowheads, was thought to indicate that the dead with which they 

 occurred belonged to a warrior society. The lips of this fetish still 

 showed the red pigment with which they had been painted. 



Fragments of obsidian were apparently highly prized by the ancient 

 people of Sikyatki. From this material, which had been carried along 

 distance to reach Tusayan, arrowheads were made. As a substance 

 of value it was deposited in masses in the mortuary vessels. 



There is evidence that the ancient people of Tusayan used coal for 

 fuel, seams of which underlie their pueblos, but in course of time this 

 substance had fallen into disuse, so that it is unknown as a fuel today. 1 

 Coal in the form of lignite was also polished into ornaments, a slab of 

 which, rjerforated for suspension, was taken from one of the graves. 

 Similar polished lignite slabs also occur in graves and elsewhere in 

 ruins as far south as the Gila, and from the province of Cibola or Zuiii. 



The well-known turquoise beads were prized for ornamental purposes 

 by the ancient Sikyatkians, and their existence in prehistoric graves 

 implies barter with distant people of the Rio Grande. Slabs of mica 

 and selenite were drilled and fashioned into pendants to be worn on the 

 neck or in the ears. The most common form of necklace was made of 

 short segments of the leg bones of some birds strung together. These 

 were stained green ; and from around the neck bones of one skeleton 

 which was exhumed a many-stranded necklace of this kind was taken, 

 some of the beads of which still preserved the green color. A saucer- 

 like basin contained several scores of hard seeds, each perforated and 

 apparently used for beads. 



A large number of mortuary food basins contained small, smooth 

 stones similar to those still used in polishing pottery. With these 

 were likewise concretionary nodules, quartz crystals, fragments of 

 stalactites, and in one instance a fossil cepkalopod. A similar shell 

 is one of the most sacred objects contained in the badge of chieftaincy 

 of a woman's society called the Lalakohtu at the present day, 

 and we may rightly suspect that it was held in like reverence in old 

 Sikyatki. 



'This change probably took place at the introduction of sheep, whose dried drop- 

 pings are now used in firing pottery. 



