Archeological investigations in New Mexico, Colorado, and UtahFewkes, Jesse Walter
History
Archeological investigations in New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah
Fewkes, Jesse Walter
Colorado -- Antiquities; Indians of North America -- Antiquities; New Mexico -- Antiquities; Utah -- Antiquities
The plan of operations in these two fields was somewhat different.
The work in New Mexico was an attempt to verify existing legends of
the migrations of a Hopi (Walpi) clan that once lived in a ruined
pueblo called Sikyatki, where the cemeteries, exhumed in 1895, yielded
one of the most beautiful and instructive collections of prehistoric
pottery[1] ever brought to the U. S. National Museum from the Southwest.
Legends mention by name several habitations of the Sikyatki people
during their migration from the Jemez region, before they built their
Hopi pueblo, but lack of time prevented the author from tracing their
trail throughout the entire distance back to their original home. The
object of the present investigation was to examine one of their halting
places, a ruined pueblo called Tebungki, or Fire House,[2] on the
prehistoric trail about 25 miles east of Walpi. Between this ruined
village and the ancestral home there are large and as yet undescribed
ruins, such as those of the Chaco Canyon, which may once have been
inhabited by some of these people.
Our knowledge of the former shifting of ancient clans, derived from
legends, is fragmentary, and one way to gain further information and
revivify forgotten or unrecorded history, is to study the remains of
their material culture. Architecture is a most important survival, and
pottery, which has transmitted ancient symbolism unchanged, is also
valuable. It happens that both these aids characterize the southwestern
culture areas. Other objects, as stone implements, woven and plaited
fabrics, and basketry, are not greatly unlike those made by unrelated
Indians and consequently add little to our knowledge in studies of
cultures, but architecture and ceramics are distinctive and afford data
from which we can gather much information on the history of vanished
races.
TEBUNGKI (FIRE HOUSE)
Hopi legends of clans whose ancestors once peopled the Sikyatki ruin,
but are now absorbed in the Walpi population, recount that in their
western migration they built, near a deep canyon, a village which they
named Fire House. These legends were first obtained from the Hopi by A.
M. Stephen and recorded by Victor Mindeleff[3] who located Fire House
ruin over 20 years ago. His valuable description and ground plan, the
only account heretofore printed, is graphic and substantially correct.
He calls attention to the characteristic or salient points which
distinguish Fire House from ruined buildings in the Hopi reservation,
especially its circular or oval form and the massive, well-constructed
masonry of its walls.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.—Fire House.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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