A pueblo of the size of Awatobi, with so many evidences of long
occupancy, would no doubt have several ceremonial chambers or kivas,
but as yet no one has definitely indicated their positions. I have
already called attention to evidences that if they existed they were
probably to be looked for in the open court east of the western mounds
and in the space north of the mission. In all the inhabited Tusayan
pueblos the kivas are separated from the house clusters and are
surrounded by courts or dance plazas. No open spaces existed in the
main or western mounds of Awatobi, and there was no place there for
kivas unless the pueblo was exceptional in having such structures
built among the dwellings, as at Zuñi. A tradition has survived that
Awatobi had regular kivas, partially subterranean, of rectangular
shape, and that they were situated in open courts. This would indicate
that the space east of the oldest part of the ruin may have been the
sites of these chambers. The old priests whom I have consulted in
regard to the probable positions of Awatobi kivas have invariably
pointed out the mounds north of the mission walls in the eastern
section of the ruin as the location of the kivas, and in 1892 I proved
to my satisfaction that these directions were correct.
There is no reason to suppose that the kiva was a necessity in the
ancient performance of the Tusayan ritual, and there are still
performed many ceremonials as secret and as sacred as any others which
occur in rooms used as dwellings or for the storage of corn. Thus, the
Flute ceremony, one of the most complicated in Tusayan, is not, and
according to legends never was, performed in a kiva. On the contrary,
the secret rites of the Flute society are performed in the ancestral
Flute chamber or home of the oldest woman of the Flute clan.
Originally, I believe, the same was true in the case of other
ceremonials, and that the kiva was of comparatively recent
introduction into Tusayan.[75]
Speaking of the sacred rooms of Awatobi, Mindeleff says: "No traces of
kivas were visible at the time the ruin was surveyed," but Stephen is
quoted in a legend that "the people of Walpi had partly cleaned out
one of these chambers and used it as a depository for ceremonial
plume-sticks, but the Navaho carried off their sacred deposits,
tempted probably by their market value as ethnologic specimens." It is
true that while from a superficial examination of the Awatobi mounds
the position of the kivas is difficult to locate, a little excavation
brings their walls to light. It is likewise quite probable that the
legend reported by Stephen has a basis in fact, and that the people at
Walpi may have used old shrines in Awatobi, after its destruction, as
the priests of Mishoñinovi do at the present time; but I very much
doubt if the Navaho sold any of the sacred prayer emblems from these
fanes. It is hardly characteristic of these people to barter such
objects among one another, and no specimens from the shrines appear to
have made their way into the numerous collections of traders known to
me. There is, however, archeological evidence revealed by excavations
that the room centrally placed in the court north of the mission
contained a shrine in its floor on the night Awatobi fell.
In 1892, while removing the soil from a depression about the middle of
the eastern court of Awatobi, about 100 feet north of the northern
wall of the mission, I laid bare a room 28 by 14 feet, in which were
found a skull and many other human bones which, from their
disposition, had not been buried with care. The discovery of these
skeletons accorded with the Hopi traditions that this was one of the
rooms in which the men of Awatobi were gathered on the fatal night,
and the inclosure where many died. I was deterred from further
excavation at that place by the horror of my workmen at the
desecration of the chamber. In 1895, however, I determined to continue
my earlier excavations and to trace the course of the walls of
adjacent rooms. The results obtained in this work led to a new phase
of the question, which sheds more light on the character of the rooms
in the middle of the eastern court of Awatobi. Instead of a single
room at this point, there are three rectangular chambers side by side,
all of about the same size (plate CVIII). In the center of the floor
of the middle room, 6 feet below the surface, I came upon a cist or
stone shrine. As the workmen approached the floor they encountered a
stone slab, horizontally placed in the pavement of the room. This slab
was removed, and below it was another flat stone which was perforated
by a rectangular hole just large enough to admit the hand and forearm.
This second slab was found to cover a stone box, the sides of which
were formed of stone slabs about 2-1/2 feet square. On the inner faces
of the upright slabs rain-cloud symbols were painted. These symbols
were of terrace form, in different colors outlined with black lines.
One of the stones bore a yellow figure, another a red, and a third
white. The color of the fourth was not determinable, but evidently,
from its position relatively to the others, was once green. This
arrangement corresponds with the present ceremonial assignment of
colors to the cardinal points, or at least the north and south, as at
the present time, were yellow and red, respectively, and presumably
the white and green were on the east and west sides of the cist. The
colors are still fairly bright and may be seen in the restoration of
this shrine now in the National Museum.
There was no stone floor to this shrine, but within it were found
fragments of prayer-plumes or pahos painted green, but so decayed
that, when exposed to sunlight, some of them fell into dust. There
were likewise fragments of green carbonate of copper and kaolin, a
yellow ocher, and considerable vegetal matter mixed with the sand. All
these facts tend to the belief that this crypt was an ancient shrine
in the floor of a chamber which may have been a kiva.
The position of this room with a shrine in the middle of the court is
interesting in comparison with that of similar shrines in some of the
modern Hopi pueblos. Shrines occupy the same relative position in
Sichomovi, Hano, Shipaulovi, and elsewhere, and within them sacred
prayer-offerings are still deposited on ceremonial occasions. At
Walpi, in the middle of the plaza, there is a subterranean crypt in
which offerings are often placed, as I have elsewhere described in
treating of certain ceremonies. This shrine is not visible, for a slab
of stone which is placed over it lies on a level with the plaza, and
is securely luted in place with adobe. There are similar subterranean
prayer crypts in other Tusayan villages. They represent the
traditional opening, or _sipapu_, through which, in Pueblo cosmogony,
races crawled to the surface of the earth from an underworld. In
Awatobi also there is a similar shrine, for the deposit of
prayer-offerings, almost in the middle of a plaza bounded on three
sides by the mission, the spur of many-storied houses, and the wall
with a gateway, while the remaining side was formed by the great
communal houses of the western part of the pueblo.
While we were taking from their ancient resting places the slabs of
stone which formed this Awatobi shrine, the workmen reminded me how
closely it resembled the _pahoki_ used by the _katcinas_, and when, a
month later, I witnessed the _Nimán-katcina_ ceremony at Walpi, and
accompanied the chief, Intiwa, when he deposited the prayer-sticks in
that shrine,[76] I was again impressed by the similarity of the two,
one in a ruin deserted two centuries ago, the other still used in the
performance of ancient rites, no doubt much older than the overthrow
of the great pueblo of Antelope mesa.