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A third man, personating the turquois hermaphrodite Ahsonnutli, wore the usual squaw’s dress with a blanket fastened over the shoulders reaching to the ground. Her mask was blue. The three left the lodge carrying their masks in their hands. Passing some distance down the avenue to the east they put on their masks and returned to the lodge. A buffalo robe had been spread in front of the lodge.
There were also a number of skeletons without ceramic offerings of any kind. In one or two interments two or more small jars were found placed inside of a food bowl, and in many instances votive offerings, like turquois, beads, stones, and arrowpoints, had been deposited with the dead. The bowls likewise contained, in some instances, prayer-sticks and other objects, which will later be described.
This style of decoration is only sparingly used on Sikyatki ware. The crosshatching is provisionally interpreted as a mosaic pattern, and reminds one of those beautiful forms of turquois mosaic on shell, bone, or wood found in ancient pueblos, and best known in modern times in the square ear pendants of Hopi women.
There were also many fragments of rope, string, cord, and loosely twisted bands, resembling head bands for carrying burdens. Several shell and turquois beads were found, but my limited studies of the cliff-houses revealed only a few other ornaments, among them being beads of turkey-bone and a single wristlet fashioned from a Pectunculus.
But with Dorothy, possession had dimmed her appreciation for the little turquois and pearl affair which adorned her finger, and at which handsome Harry Langdon had glanced so contemptuously only the evening before, and then down at the elegant monogrammed diamond ring which glistened on his own white, shapely hand.
Another ring, set with turquois, he sent to his mother-in-law, the Princess Espinoy, from whom he had received it. About an hour after midnight, on the morning, therefore, of the 16th of October, Fray Hernando gave notice that the prisoner was ready to die. The alcalde Don Alonzo then entered, accompanied by the executioner and the notary.
Only that very day Dorothy had wished with all her heart that she could get up some excuse to break what Jack considered an engagement, and give him back his little cheap pearl and turquois ring; but the occasion did not seem to be quite ripe, and Jack, poor fellow! had been kinder to her than ever that day. At the corner she hesitated.
The cause of this abandonment during the sixteenth century seems to have been the length and danger of the route; for we are informed that one of the adventures would have proved exceedingly profitable, had not their ships, on their return across the Caspian, with Persian raw silk, wrought silks of many kinds, galls, carpets, Indian spices, turquois stones, &c., been plundered by Corsair pirates, to the value of about 40,000l.
Turquois and shell beads were found in considerable numbers in the excavations at Awatobi, but, as they are similar to those from Sikyatki, I have reserved a discussion of them for following pages. A few fragments of shell armlets and wristlets were also exhumed. These were made generally of the Pacific coast Pectunculus, so common in the ruins of the Little Colorado.
Then upon each of these was placed a hair from the beard of the turkey, and to each was added a thread of cotton yarn. During the arrangement of the feathers the tube decorator first selected four bits of black archaic beads, placing a piece on each bit of cloth; then four tiny pieces of white shell beads were laid on the cloths; next four pieces of abalone shell and four pieces of turquois.
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