A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola | Page 8

people, although there is little doubt that the Snake and the Horn were the two first peoples who came to the neighborhood of the present villages. The Bear people were the next, but they arrived as separate branches, and from opposite directions, although of the same Hopituh stock. It has been impossible to obtain directly the legend of the Bears from the west. The story of the Bears from the east tells of encountering the Fire people, then living about 25 miles east from Walpi; but these are now extinct, and nearly all that is known of them is told in the Bear legend, the gist of which is as follows:
The Bears originally lived among the mountains of the east, not far distant from the Horns. Continual quarrels with neighboring villages brought on actual fighting, and the Bears left that region and traveled westward. As with all the other people, they halted, built houses, and planted, remaining stationary for a long while; this occurred at different places along their route.
A portion of these people had wings, and they flew in advance to survey the land, and when the main body were traversing an arid region they found water for them. Another portion had claws with which they dug edible roots, and they could also use them for scratching hand and foot holes in the face of a steep cliff. Others had hoofs, and these carried the heaviest burdens; and some had balls of magic spider web, which they could use on occasion for ropes, and they could also spread the web and use it as a mantle, rendering the wearer invisible when he apprehended danger.
They too came to the Tségi (Canyon de Chelly), where they found houses but no people, and they also built houses there. While living there a rupture occurred, a portion of them separating and going far to the westward. These seceding bands are probably that branch of the Bears who claim their origin in the west. Some time after this, but how long after is not known, a plague visited the canyon, and the greater portion of the people moved away, but leaving numbers who chose to remain. They crossed the Chinli valley and halted for a short time at a place a short distance northeast from Great Willow water ("Eighteen Mile Spring"). They did not remain there long, however, but moved a few miles farther west, to a place occupied by the Fire people who lived in a large oval house. The ruin of this house still stands, the walls from 5 to 8 feet high, and remarkable from the large-sized blocks of stone used in their construction; it is still known to the Hopituh as Tebvwúki, the Fire-house. Here some fighting occurred, and the Bears moved westward again to the head of Antelope (Jeditoh) Canyon, about 4 miles from Keam's Canyon and about 15 miles east from Walpi. They built there a rambling cluster of small-roomed houses, of which the ground plan has now become almost obliterated. This ruin is called by the Hopituh "the ruin at the place of wild gourds." They seem to have occupied this neighborhood for a considerable period, as mention is made of two or three segregations, when groups of families moved a few miles away and built similar house clusters on the brink of that canyon.
[Illustration: Plate V. Standing walls of Awatubi.]
The Fire-people, who, some say, were of the Horn people, must have abandoned their dwelling at the Oval House or must have been driven out at the time of their conflict with the Bears, and seem to have traveled directly to the neighborhood of Walpi. The Snakes allotted them a place to build in the valley on the east side of the mesa, and about two miles north from the gap. A ridge of rocky knolls and sand dunes lies at the foot of the mesa here, and close to the main cliff is a spring. There are two prominent knolls about 400 yards apart and the summits of these are covered with traces of house walls; also portions of walls can be discerned on all the intervening hummocks. The place is known as Sikyátki, the yellow-house, from the color of the sandstone of which the houses were built. These and other fragmentary bits have walls not over a foot thick, built of small stones dressed by rubbing, and all laid in mud; the inside of the walls also show a smooth coating of mud plaster. The dimensions of the rooms are very small, the largest measuring 9? feet long, by 4? feet wide. It is improbable that any of these structures were over two stories high, and many of them were built in excavated places around the rocky summits of the knolls. In these instances no