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The whole number of specimens of textile fabrics found at Awatobi was small, and their character disappointing for study, for the conditions of burial in the soil are not so good for their preservation as in the dry caves or cliff houses, from which beautifully preserved cloth, made at a contemporary period, has been taken.
Among the fragments of dippers from Awatobi are several with perforations in the bottom, irregularly arranged or in geometric form, as that of a cross. These colanders were rare at Sikyatki, but I find nothing in them to betray Spanish influence.
Although Awatobi was destroyed almost two centuries ago, the shrines of the old pueblo were used for many years afterward, and are even now frequented by some of the Mishoñinovi priests. In one of these ancient depositories two wooden figurines sat in state up to within a few years ago.
About 1680, as we learn from documentary accounts, the population of Awatobi was 800, and it was probably not much smaller in 1700, the time of its destruction. Wherever excavations were conducted in the eastern section of Awatobi, we could not penetrate far below the surface without encountering unmistakable evidences of a great conflagration.
The red peppers for which Awatobi was famous were hanging in thick clusters along the fronts of the houses, and these they crushed in their hands and flung upon the blazing fire in the kiva to further torment their burning occupants.
The visit of Padre Juan Garaycoechea to Tusayan was at the invitation of Espeleta, chief of Oraibi, but he went no farther than Awatobi, where he baptized the 73 Hopi. He then returned to the "governor," and arrived at Zuñi in June.
There is no water in the valley which stretches away from the mesa on which Awatobi is situated, and the foothills are only sparingly clothed with desert vegetation. There is a solitary tree midway between the sand dunes west of the village and the western mounds, near which we found it convenient to camp.
You see, the Awatobi people had some such things, too, and so our people wanted to save them. I think some of our trouble with Awatobi was to get these things. "I remember that after the famine, when crops were good again, we had trouble with Navajos. It was in the summer and a Hopi hoeing his field was killed by a bunch of thieving Navajos, and that started the trouble.
With a corps of trained workmen much better results than those we obtained might have been expected, and the experience which the Indians subsequently had at Sikyatki would have made my excavations at Awatobi, had they been carried on later in the season, more remunerative.
If, however, the first pueblo approached was Walpi, and Tobar followed the Zuñi trail, I think he would have been discovered by the Awatobi people before nightfall if he entered the cultivated fields early in the evening.
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