Other shrines abound near each pueblo and are likely to be happened upon in out-of-the-way places among the rocks where the offerings are scattered about, some new with fresh paint and feathers and some much weather-worn. Near the Sun Spring at Walpi there is a spot where many rounded blocks of wood lie on the ground. This is the Eagle Shrine and the bits of wood represent eagle eggs; the green paint and cotton string with the prayer feather decorating them soon disappear in the sun and wind.
While it is not good policy to pry around these sacred places, knowing that the keen eyes of the Hopi watch from the mesa top, yet casually some of the more interesting shrines may be visited.
At the point of the Walpi mesa where the old town stood several centuries ago, are several shrines, to one of which the kachinas after the ceremonies go in order to deposit their wreaths of pine brought from the San Francisco Mountains and to make “breath-feather” offerings of paint and meal. Here also they make offerings of food to the dead. At another spot the bushes are hung with little disks of painted gourd, each with a feather representing the squash flower.
A heap of small stones is a Mas a uah shrine, and a stone is added by each one who passes as an offering to the terrible god of the earth, death, and fire. No orthodox Hopi would dare to omit throwing a stone accompanied with a prayer to Masauah, of whom all speak in fear and with bated breath. For a good reason, then, many shrines to this god may be seen in Hopiland, as it is necessary to appease this avenging being.
Everyone who goes to Walpi sees the great shrine in the gap which is called the “shrine of the end of the trail.” The base and sides are large slabs of stone, and within are various odd-shaped stones surrounding a coiled fossil believed by the Hopi to be a stone serpent. During the winter Sun ceremony this whole stone box blossoms with feathered prayer-sticks, almost hiding the shrine, and converting it into a thing of beauty.
Other holy places, most of them ruins of abandoned towns, are visited at times by this people, who cheerfully make long journeys to mountains and running streams for sacred water, pine boughs, or herbs. They carry with them feather prayer-sticks and sacred meal as offerings to the gods of the place. One of the streams from which holy water is brought is Clear Creek near the town of Winslow, seventy-five miles south of Walpi.
Each field has a shrine and pahos are often seen there; this is also the custom among the Zuñi and other of the Pueblos. In the center of the main plaza of each pueblo may be seen a stone box with a slab of stone for a door which opens to the east. This is called the pahoki, or “house of the pahos,” the central shrine of the village, and it is carefully sealed up when not in use.
It is to be expected that the shrines of the ancient pueblos would have vanished, and it is true that such remains are the rarest encountered in exploring ruins. Still a few traces reward a careful search in the outskirts of many of the ruins. A shrine made of slabs of stone painted with symbolic designs of the rain cloud was found at the ancient town of Awatobi, and is now in the National Museum.
In caves and rock recesses of the mesas are deposits of the sacred belongings of the societies. These places, while not shrines perhaps, are kept inviolably sacred, and no curious white visitors have peered into them, even those highest in the good graces of the priests.
Once by chance two explorers came upon such a treasure house and with some trepidation took a photograph of it. In a dark cleft under the rocks were the jars in which the “snake medicine” is carried. These were arranged without much order near a most remarkable carved stone figure of Talatumsi, the “dawn goddess” painted and arrayed in the costume of that deity. In truth, this little cavern had a gruesome look, and knowing also the prohibition against prying, one breathed more freely on getting away from the neighborhood.