handles and
others without them, were obtained in the excavations at Sikyatki. The
variations in their forms may be seen in plates CXXVIII, _a, c,_ and
CXXV, _f_. These are regarded as medicine bowls, and are supposed to
have been used in ancient ceremonials where asperging was performed.
In many Tusayan ceremonials square medicine bowls, some of them
without handles, are still used,[141] but a more common and evidently
more modern variety are round and have handles. The rim of these
modern sacred vessels commonly bears, in its four quadrants, terraced
elevations representing rain-clouds of the cardinal points, and the
outer surface of the bowl is decorated with the same symbols,
accompanied with tadpole or dragon-fly designs.

One of the best figures of the dragon-fly is seen on the saucer shown
in plate CXX, _f_. The exterior of this vessel is decorated with four
rectangular terraced rain-cloud symbols, one in each quadrant, and
within each there are three well-drawn figures of the dragon-fly. The
curved line below represents a rainbow. The terrace form of rain-cloud
symbol is very ancient in Tusayan and antedates the well-known
semicircular symbol which was introduced into the country by the Patki
people. It is still preserved in the form of tablets[142] worn on the
head and in sand paintings and various other decorations on altars and
religious paraphernalia.

BIRDS

The bird and the feather far exceed all other motives in the
decoration of ancient Tusayan pottery, and the former design was
probably the first animal figure employed for that purpose when the
art passed out of the stage where simple geometric designs were used
exclusively. A somewhat similar predominance is found in the part
which the bird and the feather play in the modern Hopi ceremonial
system. As one of the oldest elements in the decoration of Tusayan
ceramics, figures of birds have in many instances become highly
conventionalized; so much so, in fact, that their avian form has been
lost, and it is one of the most instructive problems in the study of
Hopi decoration to trace the modifications of these designs from the
realistic to the more conventionalized. The large series of food bowls
from Sikyatki afford abundant material for that purpose, and it may
incidentally be said that by this study I have been able to interpret
the meaning of certain decorations on Sikyatki bowls of which the best
Hopi traditionalists are ignorant.[143] In order