Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895: Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744Fewkes, Jesse Walter
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Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895: Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744
"It was then arranged that in four days large bands from all
the other villages should prepare themselves, and assemble at
a spring not far from Awatobi. A long while before this, when
the Spaniards lived there, they had built a wall on the side
of the village that needed protection, and in this wall was a
great, strong door. Tapolo proposed that the assailants
should come before dawn, and he would be at this door ready
to admit them, and under this compact he returned to his
village. During the fourth night after this, as agreed upon,
the various bands assembled at the deep gulch spring, and
every man carried, besides his weapons, a cedar-bark torch
and a bundle of greasewood. Just before dawn they moved
silently up to the mesa summit, and, going directly to the
east side of the village, they entered the gate, which opened
as they approached. In one of the courts was a large kiva,
and in it were a number of men engaged in sorcerer's rites.
The assailants at once made for the kiva, and plucking up the
ladder, they stood around the hatchway, shooting arrows down
among the entrapped occupants. In the numerous cooking pits
fire had been maintained through the night for the
preparation of food for a feast on the appointed morning, and
from these they lighted their torches. Great numbers of these
and the bundles of greasewood being set on fire, they were
cast down the hatchway, and firewood from stacks upon the
house terraces were also thrown into the kiva. The red
peppers for which Awatobi was famous were hanging in thick
clusters along the fronts of the houses, and these they
crushed in their hands and flung upon the blazing fire in the
kiva to further torment their burning occupants. After this,
all who were capable of moving were compelled to travel or
drag themselves until they came to the sand-hills of
Mishoñinovi, and there the final disposition of the prisoners
was made.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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