A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola: Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1886-1887, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 3-228 — John Shaqi
A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola: Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1886-1887, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 3-228Mindeleff, Cosmos
History
A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola: Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1886-1887, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 3-228
Mindeleff, Cosmos
Pueblo Indians -- Antiquities; Pueblo architecture
All the people that were permitted to come to the surface were collected
and the different families of men were arranged together. This was done
under the direction of twins, who are called Pekónghoya, the younger one
being distinguished by the term Balíngahoya, the Echo. They were
assisted by their grandmother, Kóhkyang wúhti, the Spider woman, and
these appear in varying guises in many of the myths and legends. They
instructed the people in divers modes of life to dwell on mountain or on
plain, to build lodges, or huts, or windbreaks. They distributed
appropriate gifts among them and assigned each a pathway, and so the
various families of mankind were dispersed over the earth’s surface.
The Hopituh,[2] after being taught to build stone houses, were also
divided, and the different divisions took separate paths. The legends
indicate a long period of extensive migrations in separate communities;
the groups came to Tusayan at different times and from different
directions, but the people of all the villages concur in designating the
Snake people as the first occupants of the region. The eldest member of
that nyumu tells a curious legend of their migration from which the
following is quoted:
At the general dispersal my people lived in snake skins, each family
occupying a separate snake skin bag, and all were hung on the end of
a rainbow, which swung around until the end touched Navajo Mountain,
where the bags dropped from it; and wherever a bag dropped, there
was their house. After they arranged their bags they came out from
them as men and women, and they then, built a stone house which had
five sides. [The story here relates the adventures of a mythic Snake
Youth, who brought back a strange woman who gave birth to
rattlesnakes; these bit the people and compelled them to migrate.] A
brilliant star arose in the southeast, which would shine for a while
and then disappear. The old men said, “Beneath that star there must
be people,” so they determined to travel toward it. They cut a staff
and set it in the ground and watched till the star reached its top,
then they started and traveled as long as the star shone; when it
disappeared they halted. But the star did not shine every night, for
sometimes many years elapsed before it appeared again. When this
occurred, our people built houses during their halt; they built both
round and square houses, and all the ruins between here and Navajo
Mountain mark the places where our people lived. They waited till
the star came to the top of the staff again, then they moved on, but
many people were left in those houses and they followed afterward at
various times. When our people reached Wipho (a spring a few miles
north from Walpi) the star disappeared and has never been seen
since. They built a house there and after a time Másauwu (the god of
the face of the earth) came and compelled them to move farther down
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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