RUIN B AT MARSH PASS
One of the most interesting landmarks visible from the road, after leaving Indian Tanks, is called Superstition mountain, an elevation situated to the north. According to Navaho stories, phantom fires are sometimes seen on this mountain on dark nights, recalling an incident, mentioned in the Snake legend, which occurred when the Snake clans came south in their early migration from Tokónabi. This legend states that all this land once belonged to their Fire God, Masauû, who was likewise god of the surface of the earth. Lights moving around the mesas are said to have been seen by these ancient inhabitants much as they are now ascribed to Superstition mountain.
The traveler over the recent lava beds and cinder plains in the neighborhood of the San Francisco mountains can readily accept the statement that the early Hopi saw flames issuing from the earth or the glow of hot lava, which gave substance to the legend still preserved among this people. It was so natural for them to regard such a country as the property of their Fire God that their legends state they inherited the land from him.
The legends of the Snake clans recount also that when their ancestors migrated from Tokónabi they went south and west until they reached the Little Colorado river, where they built many houses of stone. They remained there several years, but later left these houses and continued in an easterly direction to Walpi. Where are the ruins of these ancient houses of the Snake clans on the Little Colorado? There are several Little Colorado ruins, as Homolobi near Winslow, but Hopi traditions affirm these were built by people who came from the south. Lower down the river at the Great Falls are other ruins, but these likewise are ascribed to southern clans. The cluster of stone buildings near the Black Falls conforms in position and direction from Walpi to Hopi legends of the site of Wukóki, the Great Houses built by Snake clans before they went to Walpi. In their migration from Tokónabi, probably the Snake people tarried here and built houses, and then went on to the Bear settlements or the Hopi pueblos, where their descendants now live. More extensive archeologic work on these ruins may shed additional light on this identification, and it is interesting to compare in point of architecture the buildings at Black Falls[17] with those of extreme northern Arizona.
An obscure trail branches from the Tuba road to the Black Falls ruins just beyond the cedars below Indian Tanks, and the black walls of the so-called “citadel” of this cluster are conspicuous for a considerable distance before one leaves the main road. The ruin here figured is some distance beyond the “citadel” and is hidden from view by intervening hills and mesas, but from the time the traveler crosses the valley of the Little Colorado and goes down into the Moenkopi wash he follows approximately the old trail the Snake people took in their southerly migration from Tokónabi.
Near Tanners crossing on the left bank, a short distance down the river, Mr. Janus[18] has cemented a small basin above the highest level of the flood, into which always flows pure water. The road from the river to Moenkopi wash passes through a region where there is very little wood for camping and no water. The distance from Flagstaff to Tuba, about 90 miles, may be traveled in two days by taking the midday meal of the first day at Indian Tanks and camping the first night at Halfway House, where there is water for horses.
The pueblo settlement of Moenkopi (“place of the running water”), which lies not far from Tuba, will give the visitor a fair idea of a small Hopi pueblo. This settlement is said to be comparatively modern and to have been made by colonists from Oraibi, but there are reasons to believe that it dates back to the middle of the eighteenth century. The pueblo is inhabited mainly by Pakab (Reed) clans, a people of late advent in the Hopi country, whose arrival therein was subsequent, at all events, to that of the Snake clans. The houses of Moenkopi are arranged in rows, and it has one ceremonial room, or kiva, not unlike the kivas of Walpi. None of the great nine-days ceremonies of the Hopi is performed at Moenkopi; such dances as exist, called katcinas, are conducted by masked participants. Possibly the presence of Pakab clans in this pueblo is accounted for by need of warriors in its exposed position, for the chief of the Hopi Warrior society (at Walpi) belongs to the Pakab clan. The ruins about Moenkopi are small and inconspicuous, but those between this pueblo and Oraibi are of considerable size.
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
BULLETIN 50 PLATE 6