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Updated: June 17, 2025
Nasyuñweve, Katci, and other prominent Kokop people occupy and cultivate the land about Sikyatki on the ground of inheritance from their ancestors who once inhabited the place.
On the western edge of the ruin a solitary farmhouse, used during the summer season, had been constructed of materials from the old walls, and was inhabited by an Indian named Lelo and his family during our excavations. He is the recognized owner of the farm land about Sikyatki and the cultivator of the soil in the old plaza of the ruins.
The ruin was spoken of in the ceremony as the Sipapüni, the abode of the dead who had become katcinas, to whom the prayers said in the circuits were addressed. The two conical mounds on the mesa above Sikyatki are often referred to that ancient pueblo, but from their style of architecture and from other considerations I am led to connect them with other phratries of Tusayan.
Our success in finding places of interment on all sides of Sikyatki, irrespective of direction, leads me to suspect that further investigation of the sand-dunes north of Awatobi will reveal graves at that point. I have already called attention to the great abundance of charred corn found in the rooms north of the mission.
Two routes were taken to approach Sikyatki one directly across the sandy plain from the entrance to Keam's canyon, following for some distance the road to East Mesa; the other along the edge of the mesa, on the first terrace, to the cluster of houses at Coyote spring.
All else is incomprehensible to me, and my identification is therefore provisional and largely speculative. I wish, however, in leaving the description of this beautiful bowl, to invite attention to the brilliancy and the characteristics of the coloring, which differ from the majority of the decorated ware from Sikyatki.
The ruin of Fire-house, one of the pueblos where the Kokop people are reputed to have lived before they built Sikyatki, is situated on the periphery of Tusayan. It is built of massive stones and differs from all other ruins in that province in that it is circular in form.
Possibly the inhabitants of Sikyatki, which is only two or three miles away, frequented this place and cultivated these ancient gardens. Kanelba is regarded as a sacred spring by several Hopi religious societies of East Mesa. The Snake priests of Walpi always celebrate a feast there on the day of the snake hunt to the east in odd years, while in the alternate years it is visited by the Flute men.
As adding weight to this theory it may be mentioned that traditionally the Flute people claim to be the ancient people of Tusayan, and possibly contemporaries, in that province, with the ancient inhabitants of Sikyatki.
The handles of the dippers or ladles are single or double, solid or hollow, simply turned up at one end or terminating with the head of an animal. The upper side of the ladle handle may be grooved or convex. No ladle handle decorated with an image of a "mud-head" or clown priest, so common on modern ladles, was found either at Awatobi or Sikyatki.
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