A considerable number of the pottery objects had been broken when the soil and stones were thrown on the corpse at interment. So many were entire, however, that I do not believe any considerable number were purposely broken at that time, and none were found with holes made in them to "kill" or otherwise destroy their utility.
No evidences of cremation—no charred bones of man or animal in or near the mortuary vessels—were found. From the character of the objects obtained from neighboring graves, rich and poor were apparently buried side by side in the same soil. Absolutely no evidence of Spanish influence was encountered in all the excavations at Sikyatki—no trace of metal, glass, or other object of Caucasian manufacture such as I have mentioned as having been taken from the ruins of Awatobi—thus confirming the native tradition that the catastrophe of Sikyatki antedated the middle of the sixteenth century, when the first Spaniards entered the country.
It is remarkable that in Sikyatki we found no fragments of basketry or cloth, the fame of which among the Pueblo Indians was known to Coronado before he left Mexico. That the people of Sikyatki wore cotton kilts no one can doubt, but these fabrics, if they were buried with the dead, had long since decayed. Specimens of strings and ropes of yucca, which were comparatively abundant at Awatobi, were not found at Sikyatki; yet their absence by no means proves that they were not used, for the marks of the strings used to bind feathers to the mortuary pahos, on the green paint with which the wood was covered, may still be readily seen.
The insight into ancient beliefs and practices afforded by the numerous objects found at Sikyatki is very instructive, and while it shows the antiquity of some of the modern symbols, it betrays a still more important group of conventionalized figures, the meaning of which may always remain in doubt. This is particularly true of the decoration on many specimens of the large collection of highly ornamented pottery found in the Sikyatki cemeteries.
If we consider the typical designs on modern Hopi pottery and compare them with the ancient, as illustrated by the collections from Awatobi and Sikyatki, it is noted, in the first place, how different they are, and secondly, how much better executed the ancient objects are than the modern. Nor is it always clear how the modern symbols are derived from the ancient, so widely do they depart from them in all their essential characters.
POTTERY
Characteristics—Mortuary Pottery
The pottery exhumed from the burial places of Sikyatki falls in the divisions known as—
I—Coiled and indented ware.
II—Smooth undecorated ware.
III—Polished decorated ware.
a. Yellow.
b. Red.
c. Black-and-white.