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The only fragment of pottery from Awatobi or Sikyatki with designs which could be identified with any modern picture of a katcina was found, as might be expected, in the former ruin. This small fragment is instructive, in that it indicates the existence of the katcina cult in Tusayan before 1700; but the rarity of the figures of these supernatural beings is very suggestive.
By the side of one of these I sit, at my feet the crystal waters, of which I may drink at will. It is our intention to explore a route from Kanab to the Colorado River at the mouth of the Paria, and, if successful in this undertaking, to cross the river and proceed to Tusayan, and ultimately to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
There is, however, one fragment of a food bowl which is adorned with a pictograph so realistic and so true to modern legends of a harpy that I have not hesitated to affix to it the name current in modern Tusayan folklore. This fragment is shown in figure 275. According to modern folklore there once lived in the sky a winged being called Kwataka, or Man-eagle, who sorely troubled the ancients.
Many ruins north of Oraibi and in the neighborhood of the farming village of Moenkopi are attributed to the Hopi by their traditionists. The ruins about Kishyuba, connected with the Kachina people, also belong to Tusayan. These and many others doubtless offer most important contributions to an exact knowledge of the prehistoric migrations of this most interesting people.
Very vague ideas are current regarding the character of Hopi culture prior to Tobar's visit to Tusayan in 1540, and with the exception of the most meager information nothing concerning it has come down to us from early historical references in the sixteenth century.
The most elaborate of all the pictures of reptiles found on ancient Tusayan pottery is shown in plate CXXXII, e, in which the symbolism is complicated and the details carefully worked out. A few of these symbols I am able to decipher; others elude present analysis.
A method of irrigation similar to this is practiced today by some of the Pueblo Indians, notably by the Hopi or Tusayan and by the Zuni. In the bottom land immediately south of the mesa, now occupied by several American families, there is a fine example of an aboriginal ditch, described later.
So far as the study of the antiquities of the ruins of Tusayan immediately about the inhabited towns has gone, we have no record of the finding of copper bells of any great age.
A part joined related tribes in the valley of the Bio Grande; others joined the Zuni and the people of Tusayan; and stall others pushed on beyond the Little Colorado to the San Francisco Plateau and far down into the valley of the Gila.
I believe that at the time of the Spanish discovery of Tusayan by Pedro de Tobar in 1540, there were only five Tusayan towns Walpi, Awatobi, Shuñopovi, Mishoñinovi, and Oraibi. Later, Awatobi was destroyed, and shortly after 1680 Walpi, the only East Mesa town, together with Mishoñinovi and Shuñopovi, on the Middle Mesa, were moved to the elevated sites they now occupy.
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