Wherever excavations were conducted in the eastern section of Awatobi,
we could not penetrate far below the surface without encountering
unmistakable evidences of a great conflagration. The effect of the
fire was particularly disastrous in the rooms of the eastern section,
or that part of the pueblo contiguous to the mission. Hardly a single
object was removed from this part of Awatobi that had not been
charred. Many of the beams were completely burned; others were charred
only on their surfaces. The rooms were filled with ashes and scoriæ,
while the walls had been cracked as if by intense heat.
Perhaps the most significant fact in regard to the burning of Awatobi
was seen in some of the houses where the fire seems to have been less
intense. In many chambers of the eastern section, which evidently were
used as granaries, the corn was stacked in piles just as it is today
under many of the living rooms at Walpi, a fact which tends to show
that there was no attempt to pillage the pueblo before its
destruction. The ears of corn in these store-rooms were simply
charred, but so well preserved that entire ears of maize were
collected in great numbers. It may here be mentioned that upon one of
the stacks of corn I found during my excavations for the Hemenway
Expedition in 1892, a rusty iron knife-blade, showing that the owner
of the room was acquainted with objects of Spanish manufacture. This
blade is now deposited with the Hemenway collection in the Peabody
Museum at Cambridge.