d
that, when exposed to sunlight, some of them fell into dust. There
were likewise fragments of green carbonate of copper and kaolin, a
yellow ocher, and considerable vegetal matter mixed with the sand. All
these facts tend to the belief that this crypt was an ancient shrine
in the floor of a chamber which may have been a kiva.

The position of this room with a shrine in the middle of the court is
interesting in comparison with that of similar shrines in some of the
modern Hopi pueblos. Shrines occupy the same relative position in
Sichomovi, Hano, Shipaulovi, and elsewhere, and within them sacred
prayer-offerings are still deposited on ceremonial occasions. At
Walpi, in the middle of the plaza, there is a subterranean crypt in
which offerings are often placed, as I have elsewhere described in
treating of certain ceremonies. This shrine is not visible, for a slab
of stone which is placed over it lies on a level with the plaza, and
is securely luted in place with adobe. There are similar subterranean
prayer crypts in other Tusayan villages. They represent the
traditional opening, or _sipapu_, through which, in Pueblo cosmogony,
races crawled to the surface of the earth from an underworld. In
Awatobi also there is a similar shrine, for the deposit of
prayer-offerings, almost in the middle of a plaza bounded on three
sides by the mission, the spur of many-storied houses, and the wall
with a gateway, while the remaining side was formed by the great
communal houses of the western part of the pueblo.

While we were taking from their ancient resting places the slabs of
stone which formed this Awatobi shrine, the workmen reminded me how
closely it resembled the _pahoki_ used by the _katcinas_, and when, a
month later, I witnessed the _Niman-katcina_ ceremony at Walpi, and
accompanied the chief, Intiwa, when he deposited the prayer-sticks in
that shrine,[76] I was again impressed by the similarity of the two,
one in a ruin deserted two centuries ago, the other still used in the
performance of ancient rites, no doubt much older than the overthrow
of the great pueblo of Antelope mesa.

OLD AWATOBI

The western mounds of Awatobi afford satisfactory evidence that they
cover the older rooms of the pueblo, and show by their compact form
that the ancient village in architectural plan was similar to modern
Walpi. They indicate that Awatobi was of pyramidal form, was
symmetrical, three or four stories high,[77] without a central pl