Plate III. General view of Awatubi.
All the people that were permitted to come to the surface were collected and the different families of men were arranged together. This was done under the direction of twins, who are called Pekónghoya, the younger one being distinguished by the term Balíngahoya, the Echo. They were assisted by their grandmother, Kóhkyang wúhti, the Spider woman, and these appear in varying guises in many of the myths and legends. They instructed the people in divers modes of life to dwell on mountain or on plain, to build lodges, or huts, or windbreaks. They distributed appropriate gifts among them and assigned each a pathway, and so the various families of mankind were dispersed over the earth’s surface.
The Hopituh,[2] after being taught to build stone houses, were also divided, and the different divisions took separate paths. The legends indicate a long period of extensive migrations in separate communities; the groups came to Tusayan at different times and from different directions, but the people of all the villages concur in designating the Snake people as the first occupants of the region. The eldest member of that nyumu tells a curious legend of their migration from which the following is quoted:
At the general dispersal my people lived in snake skins, each family occupying a separate snake skin bag, and all were hung on the end of a rainbow, which swung around until the end touched Navajo Mountain, where the bags dropped from it; and wherever a bag dropped, there was their house. After they arranged their bags they came out from them as men and women, and they then, built a stone house which had five sides. [The story here relates the adventures of a mythic Snake Youth, who brought back a strange woman who gave birth to rattlesnakes; these bit the people and compelled them to migrate.] A brilliant star arose in the southeast, which would shine for a while and then disappear. The old men said, “Beneath that star there must be people,” so they determined to travel toward it. They cut a staff and set it in the ground and watched till the star reached its top, then they started and traveled as long as the star shone; when it disappeared they halted. But the star did not shine every night, for sometimes many years elapsed before it appeared again. When this occurred, our people built houses during their halt; they built both round and square houses, and all the ruins between here and Navajo Mountain mark the places where our people lived. They waited till the star came to the top of the staff again, then they moved on, but many people were left in those houses and they followed afterward at various times. When our people reached Wipho (a spring a few miles north from Walpi) the star disappeared and has never been seen since. They built a house there and after a time Másauwu (the god of the face of the earth) came and compelled them to move farther down the valley, to a point about half way between the East and Middle Mesa, and there they stayed many plantings. One time the old men were assembled and Másauwu came among them, looking like a horrible skeleton, and his bones rattling dreadfully. He menaced them with awful gestures, and lifted off his fleshless head and thrust it into their faces; but he could not frighten them. So he said, “I have lost my wager; all that I have is yours; ask for anything you want and I will give it to you.” At that time our people’s house was beside the water course, and Másauwu said, “Why are you sitting here in the mud? Go up yonder where it is dry.” So they went across to the low, sandy terrace on the west side of the mesa, near the point, and built a house and lived there. Again the old men were assembled and two demons came among them and the old men took the great Baho and the nwelas and chased them away. When they were returning, and were not far north from their village, they met the Lenbaki (Cane-Flute, a religious society still maintained) of the Horn family. The old men would not allow them to come in until Másauwu appeared and declared them to be good Hopituh. So they built houses adjoining ours and that made a fine, large village. Then other Hopituh came in from time to time, and our people would say, “Build here, or build there,” and portioned the land among the new comers.
The site of the first Snake house in the valley, mentioned in the foregoing legend, is now barely to be discerned, and the people refuse to point out the exact spot. It is held as a place of votive offerings during the ceremony of the Snake dance, and, as its name, Bátni, implies, certain rain-fetiches are deposited there in small jars buried in the ground. The site of the village next occupied can be quite easily distinguished, and is now called Kwetcap tutwi, ash heap terrace, and this was the village to which the name Walpi was first applied—a term meaning the place at the notched mesa, in allusion to a broad gap in the stratum of sandstone on the summit of the mesa, and by which it can be distinguished from a great distance. The ground plan of this early Walpi can still be partly traced, indicating the former existence of an extensive village of clustering, little-roomed houses, with thick walls constructed of small stones.
The advent of the Lenbaki is still commemorated by a biennial ceremony, and is celebrated on the year alternating with their other biennial ceremony, the Snake dance.
The Horn people, to which the Lenbaki belonged, have a legend of coming from a mountain range in the east.
Its peaks were always snow covered, and the trees were always green. From the hillside the plains were seen, over which roamed the deer, the antelope, and the bison, feeding on never-failing grasses. Twining through these plains were streams of bright water, beautiful to look upon. A place where none but those who were of our people ever gained access.
This description suggests some region of the head-waters of the Rio Grande. Like the Snake people, they tell of a protracted migration, not of continuous travel, for they remained for many seasons in one place, where they would plant and build permanent houses. One of these halting places is described as a canyon with high, steep walls, in which was a flowing stream; this, it is said, was the Tségi (the Navajo name for Canyon de Chelly). Here they built a large house in a cavernous recess, high up in the canyon wall. They tell of devoting two years[3] to ladder making and cutting and pecking shallow holes up the steep rocky side by which to mount to the cavern, and three years more were employed in building the house. While this work was in progress part of the men were planting gardens, and the women and children were gathering stones. But no adequate reason is given for thus toiling to fit this impracticable site for occupation; the footprints of Másauwu, which they were following, led them there.
The legend goes on to tell that after they had lived there for a long time a stranger happened to stray in their vicinity, who proved to be a Hopituh, and said that he lived in the south. After some stay he left and was accompanied by a party of the “Horn,” who were to visit the land occupied by their kindred Hopituh and return with an account of them; but they never came back. After waiting a long time another band was sent, who returned and said that the first emissaries had found wives and had built houses on the brink of a beautiful canyon, not far from the other Hopituh dwellings. After this many of the Horns grew dissatisfied with their cavern home, dissensions arose, they left their home, and finally they reached Tusayan. They lived at first in one of the canyons east of the villages, in the vicinity of Keam’s Canyon, and some of the numerous ruins on its brink mark the sites of their early houses. There seems to be no legend distinctly attaching any particular ruin to the Horn people, although there is little doubt that the Snake and the Horn were the two first peoples who came to the neighborhood of the present villages. The Bear people were the next, but they arrived as separate branches, and from opposite directions, although of the same Hopituh stock. It has been impossible to obtain directly the legend of the Bears from the west. The story of the Bears from the east tells of encountering the Fire people, then living about 25 miles east from Walpi; but these are now extinct, and nearly all that is known of them is told in the Bear legend, the gist of which is as follows: