Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology / to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1886-1887, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891

by Unknown

In any case, these hapless monks were engaged in a perilous mission in seeking to supplant the primitive faith of the Tusayan, for among the native priests they encountered prejudices even as violent as their own. With too great zeal they prohibited the sacred dances, the votive offerings to the nature-deities, and similar public observances, and strove to suppress the secret rites and abolish the religious orders and societies. But these were too closely incorporated with the system of gentes and other family kinships to admit of their extinction. Traditionally, it is said that, following the discontinuance of the prescribed ceremonies, the favor of the gods was withdrawn, the clouds brought no rain, and the fields yielded no corn. Such a coincidence in this arid region is by no means improbable, and according to the legends, a succession of dry seasons resulting in famine has been of not infrequent occurrence. The superstitious fears of the people were thus aroused, and they cherished a mortal hatred of the monks.

In such mood were they in the summer of 1680, when the village Indians rose in revolt, drove out the Spaniards, and compelled them to retreat to Mexico. There are some dim traditions of that event still existing among the Tusayan, and they tell of one of their own race coming from the river region by the way of Zuñi to obtain their cooperation in the proposed revolt. To this they consented.

Only a few Spaniards being present at that time, the Tusayan found courage to vent their enmity in massacre, and every one of the hated invaders perished on the appointed day. The traditions of the massacre center on the doom of the monks, for they were regarded as the embodiment of all that was evil in Spanish rule, and their pursuit, as they tried to escape among the sand dunes, and the mode of their slaughter, is told with grim precision; they were all overtaken and hacked to pieces with stone tomahawks.

It is told that while the monks were still in authority some of the Snake women urged a withdrawal from Walpi, and, to incite the men to action, carried their mealing-stones and cooking vessels to the summit of the mesa, where they desired the men to build new houses, less accessible to the domineering priests. The men followed them, and two or three small house groups were built near the southwest end of the present village, one of them being still occupied by a Snake family, but the others have been demolished or remodeled. A little farther north, also on the west edge, the small house clusters there were next built by the families of two women called Tji-vwó-wati and Si-kya-tcí-wati. Shortly after the massacre the lower village was entirely abandoned, and the building material carried above to the point which the Snakes had chosen, and on which the modern Walpi was constructed. Several beams of the old mission houses are now pointed out in the roofs of the kivas.

There was a general apprehension that the Spaniards would send a force to punish them, and the Shumopavi also reconstructed their village in a stronger position, on a high mesa overlooking its former site. The other villages were already in secure positions, and all the smaller agricultural settlements were abandoned at this period, and excepting at one or two places on the Moen-kopi, the Tusayan have ever since confined themselves to the close vicinity of their main villages.

The house masses do not appear to bear any relation to division by phratries. It is surprising that even the social division of the phratries is preserved. The Hopituh certainly marry within phratries, and occasionally with the same gens. There is no doubt, however, that in the earlier villages each gens, and where practicable, the whole of the phratry, built their houses together. To a certain extent the house of the priestess of a gens is still regarded as the home of the gens. She has to be consulted concerning proposed marriages, and has much to say in other social arrangements.

While the village of the Walpi was still upon the west side of the mesa point, some of them moved around and built houses beside a spring close to the east side of the mesa. Soon after this a dispute over planting ground arose between them and the Sikyátki, whose village was also on that side of the mesa and but a short distance above them. From this time forward bad blood lay between the Sikyátki and the Walpi, who took up the quarrel of their suburb. It also happened about that time, so tradition says, more of the Coyote people came from the north, and the Pikyás nyu-mu, the young cornstalk, who were the latest of the Water people, came in from the south. The Sikyátki, having acquired their friendship, induced them to build on two mounds, on the summit of the mesa overlooking their village. They had been greatly harrassed by the young slingers and archers of Walpi, who would come across to the edge of the high cliff and assail them with impunity, but the occupation of these two mounds by friends afforded effectual protection to their village. These knolls are about 40 yards apart, and about 40 feet above the level of the mesa which is something over 400 feet above Sikyátki. Their roughly leveled summits measure 20 by 10 feet and are covered with traces of house walls; and it is evident that groups of small-roomed houses were clustered also around the sloping sides. About a hundred yards south from their dwellings the people of the mounds built for their own protection a strong wall entirely across the mesa, which at that point is contracted to about 200 feet in width, with deep vertical cliffs on either side. The base of the wall is still quite distinct, and is about 3 feet thick.

But no reconciliation was ever effected between the Walpi and the Sikyátki and their allies, and in spite of their defensive wall frequent assaults were made upon the latter until they were forced to retreat. The greater number of them retired to Oraibi and the remainder to Sikyátki, and the feud was still maintained between them and the Walpi.

Some of the incidents as well as the disastrous termination of this feud are still narrated. A party of the Sikyátki went prowling through Walpi one day while the men were afield, and among other outrages, one of them shot an arrow through a window and killed a chief’s daughter while she was grinding corn. The chief’s son resolved to avenge the death of his sister, and some time after this went to Sikyátki, professedly to take part in a religious dance, in which he joined until just before the close of the ceremony. Having previously observed where the handsomest girl was seated among the spectators on the house terraces, he ran up the ladder as if to offer her a prayer emblem, but instead he drew out a sharp flint knife from his girdle and cut her throat. He threw the body down where all could see it, and ran along the adjoining terraces till he cleared the village. A little way up the mesa was a large flat rock, upon which he sprang and took off his dancer’s mask so that all might recognize him; then turning again to the mesa he sped swiftly up the trail and escaped.

And so foray and slaughter continued to alternate between them until the planting season of some indefinite year came around. All the Sikyátki men were to begin the season by planting the fields of their chief on a certain day, which was announced from the housetop by the Second Chief as he made his customary evening proclamations, and the Walpi, becoming aware of this, planned a fatal onslaught. Every man and woman able to draw a bow or wield a weapon were got in readiness and at night they crossed the mesa and concealed themselves along its edge, overlooking the doomed village. When the day came they waited until the men had gone to the field and then rushed down upon the houses. The chief, who was too old to go afield, was the first one killed, and then followed the indiscriminate slaughter of women and children, and the destruction of the houses. The wild tumult in the village alarmed the Sikyátki and they came rushing back, but too late to defend their homes. Their struggles were hopeless, for they had only their planting sticks to use as weapons, which availed but little against the Walpi with their bows and arrows, spears, slings, and war clubs. Nearly all of the Sikyátki men were killed, but some of them escaped to Oraibi and some to Awatubi. A number of the girls and younger women were spared, and distributed among the different villages, where they became wives of their despoilers.