My maternal ancestor had recognized a woman chief (_Mamzrau monwi_), and saved her at the place of massacre called Maski, and now he asked her whether she would be willing to initiate the women of Walpi in the rites of the Mamzrau. She complied, and thus the observance of the ceremony called Mamzrauti came to the other villages. This _Mamzrau monwi_ had no children and hence my maternal ancestor's sister became chief, and her badge of office, or tiponi, came to me. Some of the other Awatobi women knew how to bring rain, and such of them as were willing to teach their songs were spared and went to different villages. The Oraibi chief saved a man who knew how to cause the peach to grow, and that is why Oraibi has such an abundance of peaches now. The Miconinovi chief saved a prisoner who knew how to make the sweet, small-ear corn grow, and this is why it is more abundant there than elsewhere. All the women who knew prayers and were willing to teach them were spared, and no children were designedly killed, but were divided among the villages, most of them going to Miconinovi. The remainder of the prisoners, men and women, were again tortured and dismembered and left to die on the sand hills, and there their bones are, and the place is called Mastcomo, or Death Mound. This is the story of Awatobi told by my people.[17]
[17] "Preliminary account of an expedition to the cliff villages of the Red Rock country; and the Tusayan ruins of Sikyatki and Awatobi, Arizona, in 1895." By J. Walter Fewkes, from the Smithsonian Report for 1895, pp. 568-569.
It is difficult to conceive of the conservatism of some of the older Hopi. A glimpse of the clinging to the myth of the golden age is shown by the speech of the old chief Nashihiptuwa, to whom the past was an ideal time of plenty and contentment under the bright sky of Tusayan.
It was Sunday and the camp by a peach orchard in a deep valley at the Middle Mesa was made lively by the presence of about thirty Indian laborers, mostly Walpi "boys." Far above on the rocky mesas could be seen three Hopi towns which bear names difficult of pronunciation, "The place of peaches" being most picturesque. To the West were innumerable barren hillocks, furrowed and gullied, rising toward the warm sandstone cliffs bearing the pueblos at the top. Along the wash which from time immemorial had been carving out this wonderfully sculptured valley were the bean and melon patches of the Indians, and on the higher ground dark green peach orchards. Out of the mouth of the valley there stretched the wide plain, merging into the many-hued desert.