Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 Part 26

The design in figure 336 is likewise unsymmetrical, but it has two lateral triangles with incurved terrace and dentate patterns. The same general form is exhibited in figure 337, with the introduction of two pointed appendages facing the hypothetical middle line. From the general form of these pointed designs, each of which is double, they have been interpreted as feathers. They closely resemble the tail-feathers of bird figures on several bowls in the collection, as will be seen in several of the ill.u.s.trations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 338--Twin triangles]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 339--Triangle with terraced appendages]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 340--Mosaic pattern]

Figure 338 is composed of two triangular designs fused at the greatest angles. The regularity of these triangles is broken by a square s.p.a.ce at the fusion. At each of the acute angles of the two triangles there are circular designs with radiating lines, a common motive on the exterior of food bowls. Although no new elements appear in figure 338, with the exception of bracket marks, one on each side of a circle, the arrangement of the two parts symmetrically about a line parallel with the rim of the bowl imparts to the design a unique form. The motive in figure 339 is reducible to triangular and rectangular forms, and while exceptional as to their arrangement, no new decorative feature is introduced.

The specimen represented in figure 340 has as its decorative elements, rectangles, triangles, parallel lines, and birds' tails, to which may be added star and crosshatch motives. It is therefore the most complicated of all the exterior decorations which have thus far been considered. There is no symmetry in the arrangement of figures about a central axis, but rather a repet.i.tion of similar designs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 341--Rectangles, stars, crooks, and parallel lines]

The use of crosshatching is very common on the most ancient Pueblo ware, and is very common in designs on cliff-house pottery. This style of decoration is only sparingly used on Sikyatki ware. The crosshatching is provisionally interpreted as a mosaic pattern, and reminds one of those beautiful forms of turquois mosaic on sh.e.l.l, bone, or wood found in ancient pueblos, and best known in modern times in the square ear pendants of Hopi women. Figure 340 is one of the few designs having terraced figures with short parallel lines depending from them. These figures vividly recall the rain-cloud symbol with falling rain represented by the parallel lines. Figure 341 is a perfectly symmetrical design with figures of stars, rectangles, and parallel lines. It may be compared with that shown in figure 340 in order to demonstrate how wide the difference in design may become by the absence of symmetrical relationship. It has been shown in some of the previous motives that the crook sometimes represents a bird's head, and parallel lines appended to it the tail-feathers. Possibly the same interpretation may be given to these designs in the following figures, and the presence of stars adjacent to them lends weight to this hypothesis.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 342--Continuous crooks]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 343--Rectangular terrace pattern]

An indefinite repet.i.tion of the same pattern of rectangular design is shown in figure 342. This highly decorative motive may be varied indefinitely by extension or concentration, and while it is modified in that manner in many of the decorations of vases, it is not so changed on the exterior of food bowls.

There are a number of forms which I am unable to cla.s.sify with the foregoing, none of which show any new decorative design. All possible changes have been made in them without abandoning the elemental ornamental motives already considered. The tendency to step or terrace patterns predominates, as exemplified in simple form in figure 343. In figure 344 there is a different arrangement of the same terrace pattern, and the design is helped out with parallel bands of different length at the ends of a rectangular figure. A variation in the depth of color of these lines adds to the effectiveness of the design. This style of ornamentation is successfully used in the designs represented in figures 345 and 346, in the body of which a crescentic figure in the black serves to add variety to a design otherwise monotonous. The two appendages to the right of figure 346 are interpreted as feathers, although their depart forms widely from that usually a.s.sumed by these designs. The terraced patterns are replaced by dentate margins in this figure, and there is a successful use of most of the rectangular and triangular designs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 344--Terrace pattern with parallel lines]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 345--Terrace pattern]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 346--Triangular pattern with feathers]

In the specimens represented in figures 347 and 348 marginal dentations are used. I have called the design referred to an S-form, which, however, owing to its elongation is somewhat masked. The oblique bar in the middle of the figure represents the body of the letter, the two extremities taking the forms of triangles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 347--S-pattern]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 348--Triangular and terrace figures]

So far as decorative elements are concerned the design in figure 349 can be compared with some of those preceding, but it differs from them in combination. The motive in figure 350 is not unlike the ornamentation of certain oriental vases, except from the presence of the terraced figures. In figure 351 there are two designs separated by an inclined break the edge of which is dentate. This figure is introduced to show the method of treatment of alternating triangles of varying depth of color and the breaks in the marginal bands or "lines of life." One of the simplest combinations of triangular and rectangular figures is shown in figure 353, proving how effectually the original design may be obscured by concentration.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 349--Crook, terrace, and parallel lines]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 350--Triangles, squares, and terraces]

In the foregoing descriptions I have endeavored to demonstrate that, notwithstanding the great variety of designs considered, the types used are very limited in number. The geometrical forms are rarely curved lines, and it may be said that spirals, which appear so constantly on pottery from other (and possibly equally ancient or older) pueblos than Sikyatki, are absent in the external decorations of specimens found in the ruins of the latter village.

Every student of ancient and modern Pueblo pottery has been impressed by the predominance of terraced figures in its ornamentation, and the meaning of these terraces has elsewhere been spoken of at some length.

It would, I believe, be going too far to say that these step designs always represent clouds, as in some instances they are produced by such an arrangement of rectangular figures that no other forms could result.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. CLXVIII

GEOMETRIC ORNAMENTATION FROM AWATOBI]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 351--Bifurcated rectangular design]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 352--Lines of life and triangles]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 353--Infolded triangles]

The material at hand adds nothing new to the theory of the evolution of the terraced ornament from basketry or textile productions, so ably discussed by Holmes, Nordenskiold, and others. When the Sikyatki potters decorated their ware the ornamentation of pottery had reached a high development, and figures both simple and complicated were used contemporaneously. While, therefore, we can so arrange them as to make a series, tracing modifications from simple to complex designs, thus forming a supposed line of evolution, it is evident that there is no proof that the simplest figures are the oldest. The great number of terraced figures and their use in the representation of animals seem to me to indicate that they antedate all others, and I see no reason why they should not have been derived from basketry patterns. We must, however, look to pottery with decorations less highly developed for evidence bearing on this point. The Sikyatki artists had advanced beyond simple geometric figures, and had so highly modified these that it is impossible to determine the primitive form.

As I have shown elsewhere, the human hand is used as a decorative element in the ornamentation of the interior of several food bowls. It is likewise in one instance chosen to adorn the exterior. It is the only part of the human limbs thus used. Figure 354 shows the hand with marks on the palm probably intended to represent the lines which are used in the measurement of the length of pahos or prayer-sticks. From between the index and the middle finger rises a line which recalls that spoken of in the account of the hand on the interior of the food bowl shown in plate Cx.x.xVII.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 354--Human hand]

The limb of an animal with a paw, or possibly a human arm and hand, appears as a decoration on the outside of another food bowl, where it is combined with the ever-constant stepped figure, as shown in figure 355.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 355--Animal paw, limb, and triangle]

PIGMENTS

The ancient Sikyatki people were accustomed to deposit in their mortuary vessels fragments of minerals or ground oxides and carbonates, of different colors, used as paints. It thus appears evident that these substances were highly prized in ancient as in modern times, and it may be mentioned that the present native priests regard the pigments found in the graves as so particularly efficacious in coloring their ceremonial paraphernalia that they begged me to give them fragments for that purpose. The green color, which was the most common, is an impure carbonate of copper, the same as that with which pahos are painted for ceremonial use today. Several shallow, saucer-like vessels contained yellow ocher, and others sesquioxide of iron, which afforded both the ancients and the moderns the red pigment called _cuta_, an especial favorite of the warrior societies. The inner surface of some of the bowls is stained with the pigments which they had formerly contained, and it was not uncommon to find several small paint pots deposited in a single grave. The white used was an impure kaolin, which was found both in ma.s.ses and in powdered form, and there were unearthed several disks of this material which had been cut into definite shape as if for a special purpose.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. CLXIX

ARROWSHAFT SMOOTHERS, SELENITE, AND SYMBOLIC CORN FROM SIKYATKI]

One of these disks or circular plates (figure 356) was found on the head of a skeleton. The rim is rounded, and the opposite faces are concave, with a perforation in the middle. Other forms of this worked kaolin are spherical, oblong, or lamellar, sometimes more or less decorated on the outer surface, as shown in plate CLXXII, _e_.

Another, shown in _f_, of the same plate, is cylindrical, and other fragments of irregular shapes were found. A pigment made of micaceous hemat.i.te was found in one of the Sikyatki paint jars. This material is still used as coloring matter by the Tusayan Indians, by whom it is called _yayala_, and is highly prized by the members of the warrior societies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 356--Kaolin disk (natural size)]

STONE OBJECTS

Almost every grave at Sikyatki contained stone objects which were found either in the bowls or in the soil in the immediate neighborhood of the skeletons. Some of these implements are pecked or chipped, others are smooth--pebbles apparently chosen for their botryoidal shape, polished surface, or fancied resemblance to some animal or other form.

Many of the smooth stones were probably simply polishing stones, used by the women in rubbing pottery to a gloss before it was fired. Others were charm stones such as are still employed in making medicine, as elsewhere described. There were still other stones which, from their resemblance to animals, may have been personal fetishes. Among the unusual forms of stones found in this a.s.sociation is a quartz crystal.

As I have shown in describing several ceremonies still observed, a quartz crystal is used to deflect a ray of sunlight into the medicine bowl, and is placed in the center of a sand picture of the sun in certain rites called _Powalawu_; the crystal is also used in divining, and for other purposes, and is highly prized by modern Tusayan priests.

A botryoidal fragment of hemat.i.te found in a grave reminds me that in the so-called Antelope rock[154] at Walpi, around which the Snake dancers biennially carry reptiles in their mouths, there is in one side a niche in which is placed a much larger ma.s.s of that material, to which prayers are addressed on certain ceremonial occasions, and upon which sacred meal and prayer emblems are placed.

One or two mortuary bowls contained fragments of stalact.i.tes apparently from the Grand canyon of the Colorado or from some other locality where water is or has been abundant.

The loose shaly deposit which underlies the Tusayan mesas contains many cephalopod fossils, a collection of which was made in former years and deposited in the National Museum. Among these the most beautiful are small cephalopods called by the Hopi, _koaitc.o.ko_. Among the many sacred objects in the _tiponi_ baskets of the Lalakonti society, as described in my account[155] of the unwrapping of that fetish, there was a specimen of this ammonite; that the sh.e.l.l was preserved in this sacred bundle is sufficient proof that it is highly venerated. As a natural object with a definite form it is regarded as a fetish which is looked upon with reverence by the knowing ones and p.r.o.nounced bad by the uninitiated. The occurrence of this fossil in one of the mortuary bowls is in harmony with the same idea and shows that it was regarded in a similar light by the ancient occupants of Sikyatki.