There is no reason to suppose that the kiva was a necessity in the ancient performance of the Tusayan ritual, and there are still performed many ceremonials as secret and as sacred as any others which occur in rooms used as dwellings or for the storage of corn. Thus, the Flute ceremony, one of the most complicated in Tusayan, is not, and according to legends never was, performed in a kiva. On the contrary, the secret rites of the Flute society are performed in the ancestral Flute chamber or home of the oldest woman of the Flute clan. Originally, I believe, the same was true in the case of other ceremonials, and that the kiva was of comparatively recent introduction into Tusayan.[75]
Speaking of the sacred rooms of Awatobi, Mindeleff says: "No traces of kivas were visible at the time the ruin was surveyed," but Stephen is quoted in a legend that "the people of Walpi had partly cleaned out one of these chambers and used it as a depository for ceremonial plume-sticks, but the Navaho carried off their sacred deposits, tempted probably by their market value as ethnologic specimens." It is true that while from a superficial examination of the Awatobi mounds the position of the kivas is difficult to locate, a little excavation brings their walls to light. It is likewise quite probable that the legend reported by Stephen has a basis in fact, and that the people at Walpi may have used old shrines in Awatobi, after its destruction, as the priests of Mishoñinovi do at the present time; but I very much doubt if the Navaho sold any of the sacred prayer emblems from these fanes. It is hardly characteristic of these people to barter such objects among one another, and no specimens from the shrines appear to have made their way into the numerous collections of traders known to me. There is, however, archeological evidence revealed by excavations that the room centrally placed in the court north of the mission contained a shrine in its floor on the night Awatobi fell.
In 1892, while removing the soil from a depression about the middle of the eastern court of Awatobi, about 100 feet north of the northern wall of the mission, I laid bare a room 28 by 14 feet, in which were found a skull and many other human bones which, from their disposition, had not been buried with care. The discovery of these skeletons accorded with the Hopi traditions that this was one of the rooms in which the men of Awatobi were gathered on the fatal night, and the inclosure where many died. I was deterred from further excavation at that place by the horror of my workmen at the desecration of the chamber. In 1895, however, I determined to continue my earlier excavations and to trace the course of the walls of adjacent rooms. The results obtained in this work led to a new phase of the question, which sheds more light on the character of the rooms in the middle of the eastern court of Awatobi. Instead of a single room at this point, there are three rectangular chambers side by side, all of about the same size (plate CVIII). In the center of the floor of the middle room, 6 feet below the surface, I came upon a cist or stone shrine. As the workmen approached the floor they encountered a stone slab, horizontally placed in the pavement of the room. This slab was removed, and below it was another flat stone which was perforated by a rectangular hole just large enough to admit the hand and forearm. This second slab was found to cover a stone box, the sides of which were formed of stone slabs about 2-1/2 feet square. On the inner faces of the upright slabs rain-cloud symbols were painted. These symbols were of terrace form, in different colors outlined with black lines. One of the stones bore a yellow figure, another a red, and a third white. The color of the fourth was not determinable, but evidently, from its position relatively to the others, was once green. This arrangement corresponds with the present ceremonial assignment of colors to the cardinal points, or at least the north and south, as at the present time, were yellow and red, respectively, and presumably the white and green were on the east and west sides of the cist. The colors are still fairly bright and may be seen in the restoration of this shrine now in the National Museum.