The present plan of Walpi shows marked differences from that made twenty years ago, and several houses between the stairway trail and the Wikwaliobi kiva, on the edge of the mesa, which have now fallen into ruin, were inhabited when I first visited Walpi in 1890. The buildings between the Snake kiva and the Nacab kiva are rapidly becoming unsafe for habitation, and most of these rooms will soon be deserted. As many Walpi families are building new houses on the plain, it needs no prophet to predict that the desertion of the present site of Walpi will progress rapidly in the next few years, and possibly by the end of our generation the pueblo may be wholly deserted—one more ruin added to the multitudes in the Southwest.
The site of Old Walpi, at Küchaptüvela, is the scene of an interesting rite in the New-fire ceremony at Walpi, for not far from it is a shrine dedicated to a supernatural being called Tüwapoñtumsi, "Earth-altar-woman." This shrine, or house, as it is called, is about 230 feet from the ruin, among the neighboring bowlders, and consists of four flat slabs set upright, forming an inclosure in which stands a log of fossil wood.
The ceremonials at Old Walpi in the New-fire rites are described in my account[44] of this observance, and from their nature I suspect that the essential part of this episode is the deposit of offerings at this shrine. The circuits about the old ruin are regarded as survivals of the rites which took place in former times at Old Walpi. The ruin was spoken of in the ceremony as the Sipapüni, the abode of the dead who had become katcinas, to whom the prayers said in the circuits were addressed.
KÜKÜCHOMO
The two conical mounds on the mesa above Sikyatki are often referred to that ancient pueblo, but from their style of architecture and from other considerations I am led to connect them with other phratries of Tusayan. From limited excavations made in these mounds in 1891, I was led to believe that they were round pueblos, similar to those east of Tusayan, and that they were temporary habitations, possibly vantage points, occupied for defense. [Plate cvi] illustrates their general appearance, while the rooms of which they are composed are shown in [figure 253]. At the place where the mesa narrows between these mounds and the pueblos to the west, a wall was built from one edge of the mesa to the other to defend the trail on this side. This wall appears to have had watch towers or houses at intervals, which are now in ruins, as shown in [figure 254].
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY—— SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. CVI
THE RUINS OF KÜKÜCHOMO
