Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 / Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744

by Jesse Walter Fewkes

CHUKUBI

The ruin of Chukubi bears every evidence of antiquity. It is situated on one of the eastward projecting spurs of Middle Mesa, midway between Payüpki and Shipaulovi, near an excellent spring at the base of the mesa.

Chukubi was built in rectangular form, with a central plaza surrounded by rooms, two deep. There are many indications of outlying chambers, some of which are arranged in rows. The house walls are almost wholly demolished, and in far poorer state of preservation than those of the neighboring ruin of Payüpki. The evidence now obtainable indicates that it was an ancient habitation of a limited period of occupancy. It is said to have been settled by the Patuñ or Squash people, whose original home was far to the south, on Little Colorado river. A fair ground plan is given by Mindeleff in his memoir on Pueblo Architecture; but so far as known no studies of the pottery of this pueblo have ever been made.

PAYÜPKI

One of the best-preserved ruins on Middle Mesa is called Payüpki by the Hopi, and is interesting in connection with the traditions of the migration of peoples from the Rio Grande, which followed the troublesome years at the close of the seventeenth century. In the reconquest of New Mexico by the Spaniards we can hardly say that Tusayan was conquered; the province was visited and nominally subjugated after the great rebellion, but with the exception of repeated expeditions, which were often repulsed, the Hopi were practically independent and were so regarded. No adequate punishment was inflicted on the inhabitants of Walpi for the destruction of the town of Awatobi, and although there were a few military expeditious to Tusayan no effort at subjugation was seriously made.

Tusayan was regarded as an asylum for the discontented or apostate, and about the close of the seventeenth century many people from the Rio Grande fled there for refuge. Some of these refugees appear to have founded pueblos of their own; others were amalgamated with existing villages. Payüpki seems to have been founded about this period, for we find no account of it before this time, and it is not mentioned in connection with ancient migrations. In 1706 Holguin is said to have attacked the "Tanos" village between Walpi and Oraibi and forced the inhabitants to give hostages, but he was later set upon by the Tano and driven back to Zuñi. It would hardly seem possible that the pueblo mentioned could have been Hano, for this village does not lie between Oraibi and Walpi and could not have been surrounded in the way indicated in the account. Payüpki, however, not only lay on the trail between Walpi and Oraibi—about midway, as the chronicler states—but was so situated on a projecting promontory that it could easily have been surrounded and isolated from the other pueblos.

The Hopi legends definitely assert that the Payüpki people came from the "great river," the Rio Grande, and spoke a language allied to that of the people of Hano. They were probably apostates, who came from the east about 1680, but did not seem to agree well with the people of the Middle Mesa, and about 1750 returned to the river and were domiciled in Sandia, where their descendants still live. The name Payüpki is applied by the Hopi to the pueblo of Sandia as well as to the ruin on the Middle Mesa. The general appearance of the ruin of Payüpki indicates that it was not long inhabited, and that it was abandoned at a comparatively recent date. The general plan is not that common to ancient Tusayan ruins, but more like that of Hano and Sichomovi, which were erected about the time Payüpki was built. Many fragments of a kind of pottery which in general appearance is foreign to Tusayan, but which resembles the Rio Grande ware, were found on the mounds, and the walls are better preserved than those of the ancient Tusayan ruins.

A notable absence of fragments of obsidian, the presence of which in abundance is characteristic of ancient ruins, was observed on the site of Payüpki. All these evidences substantiate the Hopi legend that the Tanoan inhabitants of the village of Middle Mesa, above the trail from Walpi to Oraibi, made but a short stay in Tusayan.[39]

There is good documentary evidence that Sandia was settled by Tanoan people from Tusayan. Morfi in 1782 so states,[40] and in a copy of the acts of possession of the pueblo grants of 1748 we find still further proof of the settlement of "Moquinos" in Sandia.[41]