opi
("place of flowing water") and other intermittent streams in the west.
These sites were occupied for the purpose of utilizing cultivable tracts
of land in their vicinity, and the remotest settlement, about 45 miles
west, was especially devoted to the cultivation of cotton, the place
being still called by the Navajo and other neighboring tribes, the
"cotton planting ground." It is also said that several of the larger
ruins along the course of the Moen-kopi were occupied by groups of the
Snake, the Coyote, and the Eagle who dwelt in that region for a long
period before they joined the people in Tusayan. The incursions of
foreign bands from the north may have hastened that movement, and the
Oraibi say they were compelled to withdraw all their outlying colonies.
An episode is related of an attack upon the main village when a number
of young girls were carried off, and 2 or 3 years afterward the same
marauders returned and treated with the Oraibi, who paid a ransom in
corn and received all their girls back again. After a quiet interval the
pillaging bands renewed their attacks and the settlements on the
Moen-kopi were vacated. They were again occupied after another peace was
established, and this condition of alternate occupancy and abandonment
seems to have existed until within quite recent time.

While the Asa were still sojourning in Canyon de Chelly, and before the
arrival of the Hano, another bloody scene had been enacted in Tusayan.
Since the time of the Antelope Canyon feuds there had been enmity
between Awatubi and some of the other villages, especially Walpi, and
some of the Sikyatki refugees had transmitted their feudal wrongs to
their descendants who dwelt in Awatubi. They had long been perpetrating
all manner of offenses; they had intercepted hunting parties from the
other villages, seized their game, and sometimes killed the hunters;
they had fallen upon men in outlying corn fields, maltreating and
sometimes slaying them, and threatened still more serious outrage.
Awatubi was too strong for Walpi to attack single-handed, so the
assistance of the other villages was sought, and it was determined to
destroy Awatubi at the close of a feast soon to occur. This was the
annual "feast of the kwakwanti," which is still maintained and is held
during the month of November by each village, when the youths who have
been qualified by certain ordeals are admitted to the councils. The
ceremonies last several days, and on th