“Many ruins of phratry and family houses of the Patuñ people exist on the small watercourses north of the Puerco at various distances eastward from the present village of Walpi. The nearest are almost fifteen miles, the farthest about fifty miles.[28]
“Their wandering course was now stayed. When they essayed to move farther eastward, a nomadic hunting race who occupied that region besought them not to advance farther. Their evil notoriety had preceded them, and the nomads feared the malificent influence of their neighborhood. It would seem, however, that instead of hostile demonstrations the nomads entered into a treaty with them, offering to pay tribute of venison, roots, and grass-seeds, if they would abstain from traversing and blighting their land, to which the Patuñ agreed.
“But these unfortunate wretches were soon again embroiled in factional warfare which finally involved all the Hopi, and the stone images of the Alósaka were lost or destroyed. Famine and pestilence again decimated them, until finally the Alósaka katcina appeared to them and instructed them to carve[29] two wooden images, but threatening them that if these should be lost or destroyed all the people would die.”
Many other but widely divergent legends exist regarding Alósaka, a number of which are associated with the pueblo of Awatobi, which was formerly one of the most populous Hopi towns. At one time this village experienced drouth and famine, and Alósaka, from his home in the San Francisco mountains, observed the trouble of the people. Disguised as a youth he visited Awatobi and became enamored with a maiden of that town. Several times he visited her, but no one knew whence he came or whither he went, for his trail no one could follow. The parents of the girl at last discovered that he came on the rainbow, and recognized him as a divine being. The children of this maid were horned beings, or Alósakas, but their identity was not at first recognized.
Like all the cultus heroes, Alósaka is said, in legends, to have been miraculously born of a virgin. His father was the Sun, his mother an Earth-goddess, sometimes called a maiden. Like many gods, he traveled on the rainbow; he lived at Tawaki, the house of his father, the Sun, or the San Francisco mountains.
It would seem from all these stories that the Alósaka cult was vigorous in Awatobi, the ill-fated pueblo where the zealous Padre Porras lost his life in 1633, and that it was of southern origin, having been introduced into Awatobi by one of the phratries from the south which lived in the now ruined pueblos on the Little Colorado. The most complicated survival of the Alósaka cultus is to be expected in the Middle Mesa pueblos, because the phratry which introduced it founded some of these pueblos[30] and still survives there. The result of an examination of many Alósaka myths would seem to be a conclusion that he is a cultus hero of clans which came from the south.
Totemic Aspect of Alósaka
The Alósaka cult may be regarded as another form of that totemic ancestor worship which appears in all Hopi mythology and ritual. The male and female Alósakas are supposed to be ancestors of a cult society called the Aaltû, and are represented symbolically in the ritual by graven images, pictures, or personations by men. The name Alósaka is simply a sacerdotal name used in this society, but it is applied to a similar conception found in the worship of other societies under other names.
In the Snake-Antelope societies of the Hopi the male and female parents are called Tcüa-tiyo (Snake-youth) and Tcüa-mana (Snake-maid), which beings are personated in the secret exercises of the Snake dance by a boy and a girl appropriately clothed.