There can be no doubt that the delineator sought to represent in this
figure one of the numerous horned _Cervidæ_ with which the ancient
Hopi were familiar, but the drawing is so incomplete that to choose
between the antelope, deer, and elk seems impossible. It may be
mentioned, however, that the Horn people are reputed to have been
early arrivals in Tusayan, and it is not improbable that
representatives of the Horn clans lived in Sikyatki previous to its
overthrow.
Two faintly drawn animals, evidently intended for quadrupeds, appear
on the interior of the food bowl shown in plate CXXX, _b_. These are
interesting from the method in which they were drawn. They are not
outlined with defined lines, but are of the original color of the
bowl, and appear as two ghost-like figures surrounded by a dense
spattering of red spots, similar in technic to the figure of the human
hand. I am unable to identify these animals, but provisionally refer
them to the rabbit. They have no distinctive symbolism, however, and
are destitute of the characteristic spots which members of the Rabbit
clan now invariably place on their totemic signatures.
[Illustration: FIG. 264--Mountain sheep]
The animal design on the bowl illustrated in plate CXXX, _c_, probably
represents a rabbit or hare, quite well drawn in profile, with a
feathered appendage from the head. Behind it is the ordinary symbol of
the dragon-fly. Several crosses are found in an opposite hemisphere,
separated from that occupied by the two animal pictures by a series of
geometric figures ornamented with crooks and other designs.
The interior of the food bowl shown in plate CXXX, _d_, as well as the
inner sides of the two ladles represented in plate CXXXI, _b_, _d_,
are decorated with peculiar figures which suggest the porcupine. The
body is crescentic and covered with spines, and only a single leg,
with claws, is represented. It is worthy of mention that so many of
these animal forms have only one leg, representative, no doubt, of a
single pair, and that many of these have plantigrade paws like those
of the bear and badger. The appendages to the head in this figure
remind one of those of certain forms regarded as reptiles, with which
this may be identical.
[Illustration: FIG. 265--Mountain lion]
In another decoration we have what is apparently the same animal
furnished with both fore and hind legs, the tail curving upward like
that of a cottontail rabbit, which it resembles in other particulars
as well. This figure also hangs by a band from a geometric design
formed of two crescents and bearing four parallel marks representing
feathers. The single crescent depicted on the inside of the ladle
shown in plate CXXXI, _b_, is believed to represent the same
conception, or the moon; and in this connection the very close
phonetic resemblance between the Hopi name for moon[136] and that for
the mammal may be mentioned. In the decoration last described the same
crescentic figure is elaborated into its zoömorphic equivalent.
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY