The early legends of the Snake clans tell how bags containing their ancestors were dropped from a rainbow in the neighborhood of Navaho mountain. They recount how they built a pentagonal home and how one of their young men married a Snake girl who gave birth to reptiles, which bit the children and compelled the people to migrate. They left their canyon homes and went southward, building houses at the stopping-places all the way from Navaho mountain to Walpi. Some of these houses, probably referring to their kivas and kihus, legends declare, were round[5] and others square.
Some of the ruins here mentioned have been known to white men for many years. There is evidence that they have been repeatedly visited by soldiers, prospectors, and relic hunters. The earliest white visitor of whom there is any record was Lieutenant Bell, of the 2d (?) Infantry, U. S. A.,[6] whose name, with the date 1859, is still to be seen cut on a stone in a wall of ruin A.
A few years ago information was obtained from Navaho by Richard and John Wetherill of the existence of some of the large cliff-houses on Laguna creek and its branches; the latter has guided several parties to them. Among other visitors in 1909 may be mentioned Dr. Edgar L. Hewett, director of the School of American Archæology of the Archæological Institute of America. A party[7] from the University of Utah, under direction of Prof. Byron Cummings, has dug extensively in the ruins and obtained a considerable collection.
The sites of several ruins in the Navaho National Monument,[8] which was created on his recommendation, have been indicated by Mr. William B. Douglass, United States Examiner of Surveys, General Land Office, on a map accompanying the President’s proclamation, and also on a recent map issued by the General Land Office. Although his report has not yet been published, he has collected considerable data, including photographs of Betatakin, Kitsiel (Keetseel), and the ruin called Inscription House, situated in the Nitsi (Neetsee) canyon. While Mr. Douglass does not claim to be the discoverer of these ruins, credit is due him for directing the attention of the Interior Department to the antiquities of this region and the desirability of preserving them.
The two ruins[9] in Nitsi (Neetsee),[10] West canyon, are not yet included in the Navaho Monument, but according to Mr. Douglass these are large ones, being 300 and 350 feet long, respectively,[11] and promise a rich field for investigation. That these ruins will yield large collections is indicated by the fact that the several specimens of minor antiquities in a collection presented to the Smithsonian Institution by Mr. Janus, the best of which are here figured (pls. [15-18]), came from this neighborhood, possibly from one of these ruins.
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
BULLETIN 50 PLATE 4
a. INTERIOR
