The bird and the feather far exceed all other motives in the decoration of ancient Tusayan pottery, and the former design was probably the first animal figure employed for that purpose when the art passed out of the stage where simple geometric designs were used exclusively. A somewhat similar predominance is found in the part which the bird and the feather play in the modern Hopi ceremonial system. As one of the oldest elements in the decoration of Tusayan ceramics, figures of birds have in many instances become highly conventionalized; so much so, in fact, that their avian form has been lost, and it is one of the most instructive problems in the study of Hopi decoration to trace the modifications of these designs from the realistic to the more conventionalized. The large series of food bowls from Sikyatki afford abundant material for that purpose, and it may incidentally be said that by this study I have been able to interpret the meaning of certain decorations on Sikyatki bowls of which the best Hopi traditionalists are ignorant.[143] In order to show the method of reasoning in this case I have taken a series illustrating the general form of an unknown bird.
There can be no reasonable doubt that the decoration of the food basin shown in [plate cxxxvii], a, represents a bird, and analogy would indicate that it is the picture of some mythologic personage. It has a round head ([figure 272]), to which is attached a headdress, which we shall later show is a highly modified feather ornament. On each side of the body from the region of the neck there arise organs which are undoubtedly wings, with feathers continued into arrowpoints. The details of these wings are very carefully and, I may add, prescriptively worked out, so that almost every line, curve, or zigzag is important. The tail is composed of three large feathers, which project beyond two triangular extensions, marking the end of the body.
The technic of this figure is exceedingly complicated and the colors very beautiful. Although this bowl was quite badly broken when exhumed, it has been so cleverly mended by Mr Henry Walther that no part of the symbolism is lost.
While it is quite apparent that this figure represents a bird, and while this identification is confirmed by Hopi testimony, it is far from a realistic picture of any known bird with which the ancients could have been familiar. It is highly conventionalized and idealized with significant symbolism, which is highly suggestive.
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY—— SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. CXXXVIII
FOOD BOWLS WITH FIGURES OF BIRDS FROM SIKYATKI
Bearing in mind the picture of this bird, we pass to a second form ([plate cxxxviii], a), in which we can trace the same parts without difficulty. On a round head is placed a feathered headdress. The different parts of the outstretched wings are readily homologized even in details in the two figures. There are, for instance, two terminal wing feathers in each wing; the appendages to the shoulder exist in both, and the lateral spurs, exteriorly and interiorly, are represented with slight modifications.