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Espejo, therefore, appears to have been the first to mention Awatobi as "Aguato," which is metamorphosed in Hakluyt into "Zaguato or "Ahuzto," although evidently Oñate's "Aguatuybá" was intended as a name of a pueblo. I have not been able to determine satisfactorily the date of the erection of the mission building of San Bernardino at Awatobi, but the name is mentioned as early as 1629.
One is impressed by the close resemblance between the Awatobi pottery and that from the ruins of the Little Colorado and Zuñi, which no doubt is explained, in part, by the identity in the constituents of the potter's clay near Awatobi with that in more southerly regions.
All variants of the legend are in harmony in this particular, that Awatobi was destroyed by the other Tusayan pueblos, and that Mishoñinovi, Walpi, and probably Oraibi and Shuñopovi participated in the deed. A grievance that would unite the other villagers against Awatobi must have been a great one, indeed, and not a mere dispute about water or lands.
While it may be said that it would be more decisive evidence of the prehistoric character of this object if Awatobi had not been under Spanish influence for over a century, still, from the position where it was dug up and its resemblance to metal bells which are undoubtedly prehistoric, there seems to be little reason to question its age.
Awatobi was a historic ruin, destroyed in 1700, and therefore somewhat influenced by the Spaniards. Many of the survivors became amalgamated with pueblos still inhabited. Its kinship with the surviving villagers was clear. Sikyatki, however, was overthrown in prehistoric times, and at its destruction part of its people went to Awatobi. Its culture was prehistoric.
It is hardly characteristic of these people to barter such objects among one another, and no specimens from the shrines appear to have made their way into the numerous collections of traders known to me. There is, however, archeological evidence revealed by excavations that the room centrally placed in the court north of the mission contained a shrine in its floor on the night Awatobi fell.
As they belong especially to the katcina cult, which is naturally supposed to have been in vogue at Awatobi, I was greatly interested in the finding of a fragment representing a grotesque head which reminded me of a glutton of the division of the Tcukuwympkia called Tcuckutû.
It is worthy of note that, as a rule, bone implements are more common in houses than in graves; and since the Awatobi excavations were conducted mostly in living rooms, while those at Sikyatki were largely in the cemeteries, the bone implements from the former pueblo far outnumber those from the latter.
Most of the skeletons were in a poor state of preservation, but several could have been saved had we the proper means at our disposal to care for them. No evidence of cremation of the dead was found, either at Awatobi or Sikyatki, nor have I yet detected any reference to this custom among the modern Hopi Indians.
The three pueblos of Sikyatki, Awatobi, and Walpi, when properly studied, will show the condition of pueblo culture in three centuries in Sikyatki, pure, unmodified pueblo culture; in Awatobi, pueblo life as slightly modified by the Spaniards, and in Walpi, those changes resulting from the advent of Americans superadded.
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