There were found many disk-shape stones, pecked on the periphery as if
used in grinding pigment or in bruising seeds, and spheroidal stones
with a facet worn at one pole as if used for the same or a similar
purpose (plate CLXXI, _b_, _c_). A few stone axes and hatchets were
also taken from the graves; most of these are rude specimens of stone
working, although one of them can hardly be excelled in any other
collection. Many arrowpoints were found, but these are in no respect
peculiar. They are made of many different kinds of stone, but those of
obsidian are the most numerous. They were generally found in numbers,
sometimes in bowls. Evidently they had not been attached to shafts
when buried, for no sign of the reeds remained. Arrowheads sewed into
a bandoleer are still worn as insignia of rank by warriors, and it is
probable that such was also true in the past, so that on interment
these arrowpoints might have been placed in the mortuary basin
deposited by the side of the warrior, as indicative of his standing or
rank, and the bandoleer or leather strap to which they were attached
decayed during its long burial in the earth. Spearpoints of much
coarser make and larger in size than the arrowheads were also found in
the graves, and a rare knife, made of chalcedony, showed that the
ancient, like the modern Hopi, prized a sharp cutting instrument.
Among the many large stones picked up on the mounds of Sikyatki there
was one the use of which has long puzzled me. This is a rough stone,
not worked save in an equatorial groove. The object is too heavy to
have been carried about, except with the utmost difficulty, and the
probability of the former existence of a handle is out of the
question. It has been suggested that this and similar but larger
grooved stones might have been used as tethers for some domesticated
animal, as the eagle or the turkey, which is about the only
explanation I can suggest. Both of these creatures, and (if we may
trust early accounts) a quadruped about the size of a dog, were
domesticated by the ancient Pueblo people, but I have found no
survival of tethering in use today. Eagles, however, are tied by the
legs and not confined in corrals as at Zuñi, while sheep are kept in
stone inclosures. It is probable that this latter custom came with the
introduction of sheep, and that these stones were weights to which the
Sikyatki people tied by the legs the eagles and turkeys, the feathers
of which play an important part in their sacred observances.
Certain small rectangular slabs of stone have been found, with a
groove extending across one surface diagonally from one angle to
another (plate CLXIX, _a_, _b_.) These are generally called arrowshaft
polishers, and were used to rub down the surface of arrowshafts or
prayer-sticks. Several of these polishers were taken from Sikyatki
graves, and one or two were of such regular form that considerable
care must have been used in their manufacture. A specimen from Awatobi
is decorated with a bow and an arrow scratched on one side, and one of
dark basaltic rock evidently came from a distance. A number of metates
and mullers were found in the graves at Sikyatki. One of the best of
the latter is shown in plate CLXX. These stones are of different
degrees of fineness, and vary from simple triangular slabs of fine
sandstone to very coarse lava. The specimen figured has depressions on
the sides to facilitate handling.[157]
Perhaps the most significant of all the worked stones found in the
Sikyatki cemeteries were the flat slabs the edges of which near the
surface of the soil marked the presence of the graves. These slabs may
be termed headstones, but they have a far different meaning from those
that bear the name of the deceased with which we are most familiar,
for when they have any marking on their faces, it is not a totem of
the dead, but a symbol of the rain-cloud, which is connected with
ancestor worship.
One of the best of these mortuary slabs has its edge cut in such a way
as to give it a terraced outline, and on one face a similar terrace is
drawn in black pigment. These figures are symbols of rain-clouds, and
the interpretation of the use of this design in graves is as follows:
The dead, according to current Tusayan thought, become rain-cloud
gods, or powerful intercessors with those deities which cause or send
the rains. Hence, the religious society to which the deceased
belonged, and the members of the clan who survive, place in the
mortuary bowls, or in the left hand of their friend, the paho or
prayer emblem for rain; hence, also, in prayers at interment they
address the breath body of the dead as a _katcina_, or rain god. These
_katcinas_, as divinized ancestors, are supposed to return to the
villages and receive prayers for rain. In strict accord with this
conception the rain-cloud symbol is placed, in some instances, on the
slab of rock in the graves of the dead at Sikyatki. It proves to me
that the cult of ancestor worship, and the conception that the dead
have power to bring needed rain, were recognized in Sikyatki when the
pueblo was in its prime. One of these slabs is perforated by a small
hole, an important fact, but one for which I have only a fanciful
explanation, namely, to allow the escape of the breath body. Elsewhere
I have found many instances of perforated mortuary stone slabs, which
will be considered in a report of my excavations in 1896.