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
the valley, to a point about half way between the East and Middle
Mesa, and there they stayed many plantings. One time the old men
were assembled and Másauwu came among them, looking like a horrible
skeleton, and his bones rattling dreadfully. He menaced them with
awful gestures, and lifted off his fleshless head and thrust it into
their faces; but he could not frighten them. So he said, “I have
lost my wager; all that I have is yours; ask for anything you want
and I will give it to you.” At that time our people’s house was
beside the water course, and Másauwu said, “Why are you sitting here
in the mud? Go up yonder where it is dry.” So they went across to
the low, sandy terrace on the west side of the mesa, near the point,
and built a house and lived there. Again the old men were assembled
and two demons came among them and the old men took the great Baho
and the nwelas and chased them away. When they were returning, and
were not far north from, their village, they met the Lenbaki
(Cane-Flute, a religious society still maintained) of the Horn
family. The old men would not allow them to come in until Másauwu
appeared and declared them to be good Hopituh. So they built houses
adjoining ours and that made a fine, large village. Then other
Hopituh came in from time to time, and our people would say, “Build
here, or build there,” and portioned the land among the new comers.
[Footnote 2: The term by which the Tusayan Indians proper designate
themselves. This term does not include the inhabitants of the
village of Tewa or Hano, who are called Hanomuh.]
The site of the first Snake house in the valley, mentioned in the
foregoing legend, is now barely to be discerned, and the people refuse
to point out the exact spot. It is held as a place of votive offerings
during the ceremony of the Snake dance, and, as its name, Bátni,
implies, certain rain-fetiches are deposited there in small jars buried
in the ground. The site of the village next occupied can be quite easily
distinguished, and is now called Kwetcap tutwi, ash heap terrace, and
this was the village to which the name Walpi was first applied--a term
meaning the place at the notched mesa, in allusion to a broad gap in the
stratum of sandstone on the summit of the mesa, and by which it can be
distinguished from a great distance. The ground plan of this early Walpi
can still be partly traced, indicating the former existence of an
extensive village of clustering, little-roomed houses, with thick walls
constructed of small stones.
The advent of the Lenbaki is still commemorated by a biennial ceremony,
and is celebrated on the year alternating with their other biennial
ceremony, the Snake dance.
The Horn people, to which the Lenbaki belonged, have a legend of coming
from a mountain range in the east.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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