SEARCH FOR HOPI RUINS EAST OF TEBUNGKI
After having visited Fire House and verified to his satisfaction that it was a former home of a Hopi clan, as recounted in legends of that clan, the author sought still further evidence of an archeological character in the region east of Fire House, as recorded in migration stories. The area between Fire House and Jemez is extensive and rich in ruins of all kinds, open air pueblos predominating. It is too great a task to visit all of these ruins during one summer, and the work accomplished in a single month seems small, but a beginning was made in the hope that the cumulative work of many summers will make it important.
The farther we recede from the Hopi country the more obscure become their clan trails, and the more difficult it is to identify the localities mentioned in legends. The inhabitants of some of the pueblos now in ruins between Jemez and Hopi, may have died out without leaving any representatives; others, when they left their village, may have gone to Zuñi or elsewhere. In the country east of Fire House, as far as Fort Defiance, several ruins were observed, but none of them seemed to show close archeological likeness to the oval Fire House, or to corroborate the traditions of the descendants of the clans now absorbed into the population of Walpi. A large ruin near Ganado was visited, and an imperfect sketch made of its ground plan. Its walls are so much worn down by the encroachment of the stream on one side, and the road on the other, that little could be learned from superficial examination. Although it is not a circular ruin like Fire House, yet an extended excavation might reveal some interesting details of ceramic symbolism[5] which would be important.