Beneath that star there must be
people,' so they determined to travel toward it. They cut a staff and
set it in the ground and watched till the star reached its top, then
they started and traveled as long as the star shone; when it
disappeared they halted. But the star did not shine every night, for
sometimes many years elapsed before it appeared again. When this
occurred, our people built houses during their halt; they built both
round and square houses, and all the ruins between here and Navajo
Mountain mark the places where our people lived. They waited till the
star came to the top of the staff again, then they moved on, but many
people were left in those houses and they followed afterward at various
times. When our people reached Wipho (a spring a few miles north from
Walpi) the star disappeared and has never been seen since."

There is more of the legend, but quoted here are only a few closing
lines relative to the coming of the Lenbaki (the Flute Clan):

"The old men would not allow them to come in until Masauwu (god of the
face of the earth) appeared and declared them to be good Hopitah. So
they built houses adjoining ours and that made a fine large village.
Then other Hopitah came in from time to time, and our people would say,
'Build here, or build there,' and portioned the land among the
new-comers."[24]

[Footnote 24: Mindeleff, Victor, Pueblo architecture (Myths after
Stephen): Bureau American Ethnology, vol. 8, pp. 17-18, 1887.]

The foregoing tradition furnishes the answer to two things one asks in
Hopiland. First, why have these people, who by their traditions wandered
from place to place since the beginning of time, only building and
planting for a period sometimes short, sometimes a few generations, but
not longer, they believe--why have they remained in their present
approximate location for eight hundred years and perhaps much longer?
The answer is their story of the star that led them for "many moves and
many stops" but which never again appeared, to move them on, after they
reached Walpi.

The second point is: The Flute Dance, which is still held on the years
alternating with the Snake Dance, is of what significance? It is the
commemoration of the arrival of this Lenbaki group, a branch of the Horn
people, and the performance of their special magic for rain-bringing,
just as they demonstrated it to the original inhabitants of Walpi, by
way of trial, before they were permitted to settle there.