After the Asa came the nest group to arrive was the Water family. Their chief begins the story of their migration in this way:
In the long ago the Snake, Horn, and Eagle people lived here (in Tusayan), but their corn grew only a span high, and when they sang for rain the cloud god sent only a thin mist. My people then lived in the distant Pa-lát Kwá-bi in the South. There was a very bad old man there, who, when he met any one, would spit in his face, blow his nose upon him, and rub ordure upon him. He ravished the girls and did all manner of evil. Baholikonga got angry at this and turned the world upside down, and water spouted up through the kivas and through the fireplaces in the houses. The earth was rent in great chasms, and water covered everything except one narrow ridge of mud; and across this the serpent deity told all the people to travel. As they journeyed across, the feet of the bad slipped and they fell into the dark water, but the good, after many days, reached dry land. While the water was rising around the village the old people got on the tops of the houses, for they thought they could not struggle across with the younger people; but Baholikonga clothed them with the skins of turkeys, and they spread their wings out and floated in the air just above the surface of the water, and in this way they got across. There were saved of our people Water, Corn, Lizard, Horned Toad, Sand, two families of Rabbit, and Tobacco. The turkey tail dragged in the water—hence the white on the turkey tail now. Wearing these turkey-skins is the reason why old people have dewlaps under the chin like a turkey; it is also the reason why old people use turkey-feathers at the religious ceremonies.
In the story of the wandering of the Water people, many vague references are made to various villages in the South, which they constructed or dwelt in, and to rocks where they carved their totems at temporary halting places. They dwelt for a long time at Homólobi, where the Sun people joined them; and probably not long after the latter left the Water people followed on after them. The largest number of this family seem to have made their dwellings first at Mashongnavi and Shupaulovi; but like the Sun people they soon spread to all the villages.
The narrative of part of this journey is thus given by the chief before quoted:
It occupied 4 years to cross the disrupted country. The kwakwanti (a warrior order) went ahead of the people and carried seed of corn, beans, melons, squashes, and cotton. They would plant corn in the mud at early morning and by noon it was ripe and thus the people were fed. When they reached solid ground they rested, and then they built houses. The kwakwanti were always out exploring—sometimes they were gone as long as four years. Again we would follow them on long journeys, and halt and build houses and plant. While we were traveling if a woman became heavy with child we would build her a house and put plenty of food in it and leave her there, and from these women sprang the Pima, Maricopa, and other Indians in the South.
Away in the South, before we crossed the mountains (south of the Apache country) we built large houses and lived there a long while. Near these houses is a large rock on which was painted the rain-clouds of the Water phratry, also a man carrying corn in his arms; and the other phratries also painted the Lizard and the Rabbit upon it. While they were living there the kwakwanti made an expedition far to the north and came in conflict with a hostile people. They fought day after day, for days and days—they fought by day only and when night came they separated, each party retiring to its own ground to rest. One night the cranes came and each crane took a kwakwanti on his back and brought them back to their people in the South.
Again all the people traveled north until they came to the Little Colorado, near San Francisco Mountains, and there they built houses up and down the river. They also made long ditches to carry the water from the river to their gardens. After living there a long while they began to be plagued with swarms of a kind of gnat called the sand-fly, which bit the children, causing them to swell up and die. The place becoming unendurable, they were forced again to resume their travels. Before starting, one of the Rain-women, who was big with child, was made comfortable in one of the houses on the mountain. She told her people to leave her, because she knew this was the place where she was to remain forever. She also told them, that hereafter whenever they should return to the mountain to hunt she would provide them with plenty of game. Under her house is a spring and any sterile woman who drinks of its water will bear children. The people then began a long journey to reach the summit of the table land on the north. They camped for rest on one of the terraces, where there was no water, and they were very tired and thirsty. Here the women celebrated the rain-feast—they danced for three days, and on the fourth day the clouds brought heavy rain and refreshed the people. This event is still commemorated by a circle of stones at that place. They reached a spring southeast from Káibitho (Kumás Spring) and there they built a house and lived for some time. Our people had plenty of rain and cultivated much corn and some of the Walpi people came to visit us. They told ns that their rain only came here and there in fine misty sprays, and a basketful of corn was regarded as a large crop. So they asked us to come to their land and live with them and finally we consented. When we got there we found some Eagle people living near the Second Mesa; our people divided, and part went with the Eagle and have ever since remained there; but we camped near the First Mesa. It was planting time and the Walpi celebrated their rain-feast but they brought only a mere misty drizzle. Then we celebrated our rain-feast and planted. Great rains and thunder and lightning immediately followed and on the first day after planting our corn was half an arm’s length high; on the fourth day it was its full height, and in one moon it was ripe. When we were going up to the village (Walpi was then north of the gap, probably), we were met by a Bear man who said that our thunder frightened the women and we must not go near the village. Then the kwakwanti said, “Let us leave these people and seek a land somewhere else,” but our women said they were tired of travel and insisted upon our remaining. Then “Fire-picker” came down from the village and told us to come up there and stay, but after we had got into the village the Walpi women screamed out against us—they feared our thunder—and so the Walpi turned us away. Then our people, except those who went to the Second Mesa, traveled to the northeast as far as the Tsegi (Canyon de Chelly), but I can not tell whether our people built the louses there. Then they came hack to this region again and built houses and had much trouble with the Walpi, but we have lived here ever since.
Groups of the Water people, as already stated, were distributed among all the villages, although the bulk of them remained at the Middle Mesa; but it seems that most of the remaining groups subsequently chose to build their permanent houses at Oraibi. There is no special tradition of this movement; it is only indicated by this circumstance, that in addition to the Water families common to every village, there are still in Oraibi several families of that people which have no representatives in any of the other villages. At a quite early day Oraibi became a place of importance, and they tell of being sufficiently populous to establish many outlying settlements. They still identify these with ruins on the detached mesas in the valley to the south and along the Moen-kopi (“place of flowing water”) and other intermittent streams in the west. These sites were occupied for the purpose of utilizing cultivable tracts of land in their vicinity, and the remotest settlement, about 45 miles west, was especially devoted to the cultivation of cotton, the place being still called by the Navajo and other neighboring tribes, the “cotton planting ground.” It is also said that several of the larger ruins along the course of the Moen-kopi were occupied by groups of the Snake, the Coyote, and the Eagle who dwelt in that region for a long period before they joined the people in Tusayan. The incursions of foreign bands from the north may have hastened that movement, and the Oraibi say they were compelled to withdraw all their outlying colonies. An episode is related of an attack upon the main village when a number of young girls were carried off, and 2 or 3 years afterward the same marauders returned and treated with the Oraibi, who paid a ransom in corn and received all their girls back again. After a quiet interval the pillaging bands renewed their attacks and the settlements on the Moen-kopi were vacated. They were again occupied after another peace was established, and this condition of alternate occupancy and abandonment seems to have existed until within quite recent time.
While the Asa were still sojourning in Canyon de Chelly, and before the arrival of the Hano, another bloody scene had been enacted in Tusayan. Since the time of the Antelope Canyon feuds there had been enmity between Awatubi and some of the other villages, especially Walpi, and some of the Sikyatki refugees had transmitted their feudal wrongs to their descendants who dwelt in Awatubi. They had long been perpetrating all manner of offenses; they had intercepted hunting parties from the other villages, seized their game, and sometimes killed the hunters; they had fallen upon men in outlying corn fields, maltreating and sometimes slaying them, and threatened still more serious outrage. Awatubi was too strong for Walpi to attack single-handed, so the assistance of the other villages was sought, and it was determined to destroy Awatubi at the close of a feast soon to occur. This was the annual “feast of the kwakwanti,” which is still maintained and is held during the month of November by each village, when the youths who have been qualified by certain ordeals are admitted to the councils. The ceremonies last several days, and on the concluding night special rites are held in the kivas. At these ceremonies every man must be in the kiva to which he belongs, and after the close of the rites they all sleep there, no one being permitted to leave the kiva until after sunrise on the following day.
There was still some little intercourse between Awatubi and Walpi, and it was easily ascertained when this feast was to be held. On the day of its close, the Walpi sent word to their allies “to prepare the war arrow and come,” and in the evening the fighting bands from the other villages assembled at Walpi, as the foray was to be led by the chief of that village. By the time night had fallen something like 150 marauders had met, all armed, of course; and of still more ominous import than their weapons were the firebrands they carried—shredded cedar bark loosely bound in rolls, resinous splinters of piñon, dry greasewood (a furze very easily ignited), and pouches full of pulverized red peppers.