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I don't know how old I was, but I had been married for several years, I think, for my first child had died. I was then living in this same old house. These Spaniards came from the direction of Keam's Canyon, and they passed on toward Oraibi. They did not come up onto this mesa at all, but just took corn and melons and whatever they wanted from the fields down below.
At seven one morning in May, equipped with one of Mr. Hubbell's fastest teams and a good Mexican driver who knew the trail, we set out from Ganado for Keam's Cañon. It need scarcely be stated here that in Desert travel you must carry your water keg, "grub" box and horse feed with you. All these, up to the present, Mr.
The ruin is conveniently situated for the best archeological results; it has a good spring near by, and is not far from Keam's Canyon, the base of supplies. The soil covering the rooms, however, is almost as hard as cement, and fragile objects, such as pottery, were often broken before their removal from the matrix.
Certain it is that if the Kokop people once inhabited Fire-house they must have been joined by other clans when they lived at Sikyatki, for the mounds of this pueblo indicate a village much larger than the round ruin on the brink of the mesa northeast of Keam's canyon.
This spring is about half of the fifty-five miles between Ganado and Keam's Cañon; and the last half of the trail is but a continuance of the first: more lilac-colored mesas high above the top of the world, with the encircling peaks like the edge of an inverted bowl, a sky above blue as the bluest turquoise; then the cedared lower hills redolent of evergreens; a drop amid the pumice rocks of the lower world, and you are in Keam's Cañon, driving along the bank of an arroyo trenched by floods, steep as a carved wall.
As previously stated, Sikyatki is situated about 250 or 300 feet above the plain, and when approached from Keam's canyon appears to be about halfway up the mesa height. On several adjacent elevations evidences of former fires, or places where pottery was burned, were found, and one has not to go far to discover narrow seams of an impure lignite.
Conditions were favorable for success at the mounds called by the Indians Sikyatki. These ruins are situated near the modern Tusayan pueblos of East Mesa, from which I could hire workmen, and not far from Keam's Canyon, which could be made a base of supplies. The existing legends bearing on these ruins, although obscure, are sufficiently definite for all practical purposes.
The former inhabitants lived in pueblos on the northern side, high up on the mesa which separates Jeditoh valley from Keam's canyon. All of these pueblos are now in ruins, and only a few Navaho and Hopi families cultivate small tracts in the once productive fields. The majority of the series of ruins along the northern rim of Antelope valley resemble Awatobi, which is later described in detail.
As Keam's Canyon is the only place in this region at which to provision an expedition, it is usual to approach Awatobi from that side, the road turning to the right shortly after one ascends the steep hill out of the canyon near Keam's trading post.
No walls of the old town rise more than a few feet above the surface, for most of the stones have long ago been used in rebuilding the pueblo on other sites. Kisakobi was situated higher up on the mesa, and bears every appearance of being more modern than the ruin below. Its site may readily be seen from the road to Keam's canyon, on the terrace-like prolongation of the mesa.
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