The ruins of the ancient pueblo of Sikyatki, consisting of mounds and
a few outcropping walls, are situated on rocky elevations rising from
the sand hills at the eastern or sunny base of the East Mesa, about 3
miles from the modern Hopi pueblo of Walpi in northeastern Arizona. The
founders of Sikyatki are said, in very circumstantial migration legends,
to have belonged to a [Keres?] clan called the Kokop, or Firewood,
which previously lived in a pueblo near Jemez, New Mexico. Preliminary
excavations were made at Sikyatki, under the author’s direction, by the
Smithsonian Institution in 1895, when there was obtained, chiefly from
its cemeteries, a valuable collection of pottery, most of which is now
installed in the National Museum.[1]
Little is known of the history of Sikyatki save through tradition, but
enough has been discovered to show that it was abandoned before 1540, the
year of the visit to Tusayan of Pedro Tovar, an officer of the Coronado
expedition. It was probably settled much earlier, perhaps about the time
the Bear clans, also said to have come from the Jemez region, built the
first houses of Walpi near the point of the terrace at the west or cold
side of the East Mesa, below the present settlement.[2] Both of these
prehistoric pueblos occupied sites exposed to attack by enemies and
were not built on mesa tops, hence it may be assumed that there were no
enemies to fear in Tusayan at the time of their establishment. But later,
when the Snake clans from the north joined the Bear settlement at Walpi,
trouble seems to have commenced. As above mentioned, the Bear clans came
from the same region as the Kokop and were presumably friendly, probably
kin of the Sikyatkians; but the Snake clans came from Tokonabi, in the
north, and were no doubt of foreign stock, implying a hostility that may
have been the indirect cause of the overthrow of Sikyatki and Awatobi by
the other Hopi.
The two epochs in Hopi ceramic development that can be distinguished
with certainty are (1) the Sikyatki epoch and (2) the Tanoan or historic
epoch. The third, or renaissance, of the Sikyatki dates back to 1895, and
may be called the modern epoch. The Sikyatki epoch gave way to the Tanoan
about the beginning of the eighteenth century. It did not develop from
any group preexisting in the neighborhood of the present Hopi pueblos but
was derived from the east and it ceased suddenly, being replaced by a
totally different group introduced by radically different clans.[3]