Page:The Moki snake dance.djvu/49

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POTTERS.

departed ancestors. Around most plazas in Tusayan the houses are built solidly; at Wolpi the dances take place on a narrow shelf above the dizzy sandstone cliffs; at Oraibi one side of the plaza where the Snake dance is enacted is open and the distant San Francisco mountains stand plainly on the horizon.

Outside the town there is also something to see. The general ash pile with its stray burro engaged in a hopeless task of finding something to eat is passed by, and one looks down over the brow of the mesa at the corrals among the rocks on a narrow ledge crowded with bleating sheep and goats. The trails wind down the mesa, across the fields, and are lost in the country lying spread out below like a map. Under the rocks a woman is digging out clay for pottery, other women are toiling up with jars of water from the


Maude, photo.

A MOKI FAMILY.

springs, while on the steep slope among the jagged fragments of stone is perhaps the last resting place of the inhabitants, strewn with bits of pottery. The springs in Tusayan come out near the base of the mesas, and the labor of carrying water up some 600 feet by means of the female beast of burden puts water at a premium . It is a blessing that the dry, searching air of the elevated region, and the fierce sun, do not render bathing an actual necessity. Most of the springs yield little water, so that a large party

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