By far the largest number of objects found at Sikyatki were gathered
from the cemeteries outside the ruin, and were therefore mortuary in
character. It would seem that the people buried their dead a short
distance beyond the walls, at the three cardinal points. The first of
these cemeteries was found in the dune between the ruin and the peach
trees below the spring, and from its relative position from the pueblo
has been designated the northern cemetery. The cemetery proper lies on
the edge of the sandy tract, and was first detected by the finding of
the long-bones of a human skeleton projecting from the soil. The
position of individual graves was indicated usually by small, oblong
piles of stones; but, as this was not an invariable sign, it was
deemed advisable to extend long trenches across the lower part of the
dune. As a rule, the deeper the excavations the more numerous and
elaborate were the objects revealed. Most of the skeletons were in a
poor state of preservation, but several could have been saved had we
the proper means at our disposal to care for them.
No evidence of cremation of the dead was found, either at Awatobi or
Sikyatki, nor have I yet detected any reference to this custom among
the modern Hopi Indians. They have, however, a strange concept of the
purification of the breath-body, or shade of the dead, by fire, which,
although I have always regarded it as due to the teaching of Christian
missionaries, may be aboriginal in character. This account of the
judgment of the dead is as follows:
There are two roads from the grave to the Below. One of these is a
straight way connected with the path of the sun into the Underworld.
There is a branch trail which divides from this straight way, passing
from fires to a lake or ocean (_patübha_). At the fork of the road
sits Tokonaka, and when the breath-body comes to this place this chief
looks it over and, if satisfied, he says "_Üm-pac lo-la-mai, ta ai_,"
"You are very good; go on." Then the breath-body passes along the
straight way to the far west, to the early _Sipapû_, the Underworld
from which it came, the home of Müiyinwû. Another breath-body comes to
the fork in the road, and the chief says, "You are bad," and he
conducts it along the crooked path to the place of the first fire pit,
where sits a second chief, Tokonaka, who throws the bad breath-body
into the fire, and after a time it emerges purified, for it was not
wholly bad. The chief says, "You are good now," and carries it back to
the first chief, who accepts the breath-body and sends it along the
straight road to the west.
If, on emerging from the first fire, the soul is still unpurified, or
not sufficiently so to be accepted, it is taken to the second fire pit
and cast into it. If it emerges from this thoroughly purified, in the
opinion of the judge, it is immediately transformed into a
_ho-ho-ya-üh_, or prayer-beetle. All the beetles we now see in the
valleys or among the mesas were once evil Hopi. If, on coming out of
the second fire pit, the breath-body is still considered bad by the
chief, he takes it to the third fire, and, if there be no evil in it
when it emerges from this pit, it is metamorphosed into an ant, but if
unpurified by these three fires--that is, if the chief still finds
evil left in the breath-body--he takes it to a fourth fire and again
casts it into the flames, where it is utterly consumed, the only
residue being soot on the side of the pit.
I have not recorded this as a universal or an aboriginal belief among
the Hopi, but rather to show certain current ideas which may have been
brought to Tusayan by missionaries or others. The details of the
purification of the evil soul are characteristic.
The western cemetery of Sikyatki is situated among the hillocks
covered with surface rubble below a house occupied in summer by a
Hopi and his family. From the nature of the soil the excavation of
this cemetery was very difficult, although the mortuary objects were
more numerous. Repeated attempts to make the Indians work in a
systematic manner failed, partly on account of the hard soil and
partly from other reasons. Although the lower we went the more
numerous and beautiful were the objects exhumed, the Indians soon
tired of deep digging, preferring to confine their work to within two
or three feet of the surface. At many places we found graves under and
between the huge bowlders, which are numerous in this cemetery.
The southern cemetery lies between the outer edge of the ruin on that
side and the decline to the plain, a few hundred feet from the
southern row of houses. Two conspicuous bowlders mark the site of most
of the excavations in that direction. The mortuary objects from this
cemetery are not inferior in character or number to those from the
other burial places. All attempts to discover a cemetery on the
eastern side of the pueblo failed, although a single food basin was
brought to the camp by an Indian who claimed he had dug it out of the
deep sand on the eastern side of the ruins. Another bowl was found in
the sand drift near the trail over the mesa to Kanelba, but careful
investigation failed to reveal any systematic deposit of mortuary
vessels east of the ruin.[111]
The method of excavation pursued in the cemeteries was not so
scientific as I had wished, but it was the only practicable one to be
followed with native workmen. Having found the location of the graves
by means of small prospecting holes sunk at random, the workmen were
aligned and directed to excavate a single long, deep trench, removing
all the earth as they advanced. It was with great difficulty that the
Indians were taught the importance of excavating to a sufficient
depth, and even to the end of the work they refused to be taught not
to burrow. In their enthusiasm to get the buried treasures they worked
very well so long as objects were found, but became at once
discouraged when relics were not so readily forthcoming and went off
prospecting in other places when our backs were turned. A shout that
anyone had discovered a new grave in the trench was a signal for the
others to stop work, gather around the place, light cigarettes, and
watch me or my collaborators dig out the specimens with knives. This
we always insisted on doing, for the reason that in their haste the
Indians at first often broke fragile pottery after they had discovered
it, and in spite of all precautions several fine jars and bowls were
thus badly damaged by them. It is therefore not too much to say that
most of the vessels which are now entire were dug out of the impacted
sand by Mr Hodge or myself.
No rule could be formulated in regard to the place where the pottery
would occur, and often the first indication of its presence was the
stroke of a shovel on the fragile edge of a vase or bowl. Having once
found a skeleton, or discolored sand which indicated the former
presence of human remains, the probability that burial objects were
near by was almost a certainty, although in several instances even
these signs failed.
A considerable number of the pottery objects had been broken when the
soil and stones were thrown on the corpse at interment. So many were
entire, however, that I do not believe any considerable number were
purposely broken at that time, and none were found with holes made in
them to "kill" or otherwise destroy their utility.
No evidences of cremation--no charred bones of man or animal in or
near the mortuary vessels--were found. From the character of the
objects obtained from neighboring graves, rich and poor were
apparently buried side by side in the same soil. Absolutely no
evidence of Spanish influence was encountered in all the excavations
at Sikyatki--no trace of metal, glass, or other object of Caucasian
manufacture such as I have mentioned as having been taken from the
ruins of Awatobi--thus confirming the native tradition that the
catastrophe of Sikyatki antedated the middle of the sixteenth century,
when the first Spaniards entered the country.
It is remarkable that in Sikyatki we found no fragments of basketry or
cloth, the fame of which among the Pueblo Indians was known to
Coronado before he left Mexico. That the people of Sikyatki wore
cotton kilts no one can doubt, but these fabrics, if they were buried
with the dead, had long since decayed. Specimens of strings and ropes
of yucca, which were comparatively abundant at Awatobi, were not found
at Sikyatki; yet their absence by no means proves that they were not
used, for the marks of the strings used to bind feathers to the
mortuary pahos, on the green paint with which the wood was covered,
may still be readily seen.
The insight into ancient beliefs and practices afforded by the
numerous objects found at Sikyatki is very instructive, and while it
shows the antiquity of some of the modern symbols, it betrays a still
more important group of conventionalized figures, the meaning of which
may always remain in doubt. This is particularly true of the
decoration on many specimens of the large collection of highly
ornamented pottery found in the Sikyatki cemeteries.
If we consider the typical designs on modern Hopi pottery and compare
them with the ancient, as illustrated by the collections from Awatobi
and Sikyatki, it is noted, in the first place, how different they are,
and secondly, how much better executed the ancient objects are than
the modern. Nor is it always clear how the modern symbols are derived
from the ancient, so widely do they depart from them in all their
essential characters.