After having visited Fire House and verified to his satisfaction that
it was a former home of a Hopi clan, as recounted in legends of that
clan, the author sought still further evidence of an archeological
character in the region east of Fire House, as recorded in migration
stories. The area between Fire House and Jemez is extensive and rich
in ruins of all kinds, open air pueblos predominating. It is too great
a task to visit all of these ruins during one summer, and the work
accomplished in a single month seems small, but a beginning was made
in the hope that the cumulative work of many summers will make it
important.
The farther we recede from the Hopi country the more obscure become
their clan trails, and the more difficult it is to identify the
localities mentioned in legends. The inhabitants of some of the pueblos
now in ruins between Jemez and Hopi, may have died out without leaving
any representatives; others, when they left their village, may have
gone to Zuñi or elsewhere. In the country east of Fire House, as
far as Fort Defiance, several ruins were observed, but none of them
seemed to show close archeological likeness to the oval Fire House,
or to corroborate the traditions of the descendants of the clans now
absorbed into the population of Walpi. A large ruin near Ganado was
visited, and an imperfect sketch made of its ground plan. Its walls are
so much worn down by the encroachment of the stream on one side, and
the road on the other, that little could be learned from superficial
examination. Although it is not a circular ruin like Fire House, yet an
extended excavation might reveal some interesting details of ceramic
symbolism[5] which would be important.