t stores of food and other plunder. The
village was then evacuated, the houses dismantled, and the material
removed to the high summit, where they reconstructed their dwellings
around the village which thenceforth bore its present name of
Mashongnavi. Some of the Squash people moved over to Oraibi, and
portions of the Katchina and Paroquet people came from there to
Mashongnavi about the same time, and a few of these two groups occupied
some vacant houses also in Shupaulovi; for this village even at that
early date had greatly diminished in population, having sustained a
disastrous loss of men in the canyon affrays east of Walpi.
Shumopavi seems to have been built by portions of the same groups who
went to the adjacent Mashongnavi, but the traditions of the two villages
are conflicting. The old traditionists at Shumopavi hold that the first
to come there were the Paroquet, the Bear, the Bear-skin-rope, and the
Blue Jay. They came from the west--probably from San Francisco Mountain.
They claim that ruins on a mesa bluff about 10 miles south from the
present village are the remains of a village built by these groups
before reaching Shumopavi, and the Paroquets arrived first, it is said,
because they were perched on the heads of the Bears, and, when nearing
the water, they flew in ahead of the others. These groups built a
village on a broken terrace, on the east side of the cliff, and just
below the present village. There is a spring close by called after the
Shunohu, a tall red grass, which grew abundantly there, and from which
the town took its name. This spring was formerly very large, but two
years ago a landslide completely buried it; lately, however, a small
outflow is again apparent.
The ruins of the early village cover a hillocky area of about 800 by 250
feet, but it is impossible to trace much of the ground plan with
accuracy. The corner of an old house still stands, some 6 or 8 feet
high, extending about 15 feet on one face and about 10 feet on the
other. The wall is over 3 feet in thickness, but of very clumsy masonry,
no care having been exercised in dressing the stones, which are of
varying sizes and laid in mud plaster. Interest attaches to this
fragment, as it is one of the few tangible evidences left of the Spanish
priests who engaged in the fatal mission to the Hopituh in the sixteenth
century. This bit of wall, which now forms part of a sheep-fold, is
pointed out as the remains of one of the mission bui
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