a shrine in its floor on the night Awatobi fell.

In 1892, while removing the soil from a depression about the middle of
the eastern court of Awatobi, about 100 feet north of the northern
wall of the mission, I laid bare a room 28 by 14 feet, in which were
found a skull and many other human bones which, from their
disposition, had not been buried with care. The discovery of these
skeletons accorded with the Hopi traditions that this was one of the
rooms in which the men of Awatobi were gathered on the fatal night,
and the inclosure where many died. I was deterred from further
excavation at that place by the horror of my workmen at the
desecration of the chamber. In 1895, however, I determined to continue
my earlier excavations and to trace the course of the walls of
adjacent rooms. The results obtained in this work led to a new phase
of the question, which sheds more light on the character of the rooms
in the middle of the eastern court of Awatobi. Instead of a single
room at this point, there are three rectangular chambers side by side,
all of about the same size (plate CVIII). In the center of the floor
of the middle room, 6 feet below the surface, I came upon a cist or
stone shrine. As the workmen approached the floor they encountered a
stone slab, horizontally placed in the pavement of the room. This slab
was removed, and below it was another flat stone which was perforated
by a rectangular hole just large enough to admit the hand and forearm.
This second slab was found to cover a stone box, the sides of which
were formed of stone slabs about 2-1/2 feet square. On the inner faces
of the upright slabs rain-cloud symbols were painted. These symbols
were of terrace form, in different colors outlined with black lines.
One of the stones bore a yellow figure, another a red, and a third
white. The color of the fourth was not determinable, but evidently,
from its position relatively to the others, was once green. This
arrangement corresponds with the present ceremonial assignment of
colors to the cardinal points, or at least the north and south, as at
the present time, were yellow and red, respectively, and presumably
the white and green were on the east and west sides of the cist. The
colors are still fairly bright and may be seen in the restoration of
this shrine now in the National Museum.

There was no stone floor to this shrine, but within it were found
fragments of prayer-plumes or pahos painted green, but so decaye