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Washington Matthews, U.S.A., whose knowledge of Navaho myths and traditions is so great that it can almost be termed exhaustive, has obtained one and doubtless will publish it. The Hopi or Moki Indians, whose villages are some three days' journey to the west, have also very definite traditions bearing on the occupancy of De Chelly.
Let me explain here also that the Hopi are variously known as Moki, Zuñi, Pueblos; but that Hopi, meaning peaceful and life-giving, is their generic name; and as such, I shall refer to them, though the western part of their reserve is known as Moki Land.
There may have been a great cataclysm; for thousands of tons of rock have fallen from the face of the cañon, and the rooms remaining are plainly only back rooms. The Hopi and Moki and Zuñi have traditions of the "Heavens raining fire;" and good cobs of corn have been found embedded in what may be solid lava, or fused adobe.
From Zuni he went to the Moki towns, then five in number, and possibly somewhat south of the present place. Beyond Moki ten leagues, they crossed a stream flowing north-westerly, which was called Colorado from the colour of its water, the first use of the name so far traced. This was what we now call the Little Colorado.
Or you may skip the short trip out to Zuñi off the main traveled highway, and the long trip south through the White Mountains two weeks at the very shortest, and you should make it six and leave Gallup, just at the State line of Arizona, drive north-west across the Navajo Reserve and Moki Land to the Coconino Forests and the Tusayan and the Kaibab, round the Grand Cañon up towards the State lines of California and Utah.
These things made up the Indians' day. The Navajos were worshippers of the physical; the sun was their supreme god. In the mornings when the gray of dawn flushed to rosy red they began their chant to the sun. At sunset the Navajos were watchful and silent with faces westward. The Moki Indians also, Hare observed, had their morning service to the great giver of light.
In some of the tribes, as the Moki Village Indians of Arizona, the members of the gens claimed their descent from the animal whose name they bore their remote ancestors having been transformed by the Great Spirit from the animal into the human form. The Crane gens of the Ojibwas have a similar legend.
Hubbell's office, you find that he, like Father Berrard, has colored drawings of every type of Moki and Navajo blankets. On the walls of the office are more pictures; on the floors, more rugs; in the safes and cases, specimens of rare silver-work that somehow again remind you of the affinity between Hindoo and Navajo. Mr.
There are pictures, too, of the caravans crossing the plains, of the coming of American occupation, of the Moki and Hopi and Zuñi pueblos, of the Missions of which only ruins to-day mark the sites in the Jemez, at Sandia, and away out in the Desert of Abo. To the left of the reception room is an excellent art gallery of Southwestern subjects.
When he was at Moki the year before, had he not failed to go to the Colorado he would have better understood the nature of the undertaking he now set for his expedition. Going on southward past what is now Parowan, they came to the headwaters of a branch of the Virgen, in Cedar Valley, and this they followed down to the main stream which they left flowing south-westerly.
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