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Introduction

A little over ten years ago an Indian living near Keam’s Canyon, Arizona, informed Mr T. V. Keam, who for several years had been making a collection of Hopi curiosities, that there were two idols in a cave near the ruins of the old pueblo of Awatobi. Mr Keam, supposing these images to be so ancient that they no longer were used in the Hopi ritual, especially as they were reported from a point ten miles from the nearest pueblo, visited the place, and brought the idols to his store, several miles distant. When the removal of these objects became known, it created great consternation among some of the Hopi, and a delegation of priests from one of their villages begged Mr Keam to restore the figurines to them, stating that they were still used in their ceremonies. This request was immediately granted, and the two idols were borne away with great reverence by the priests, who sprinkled a line of meal on the ground along the trail as they returned home. The images, however, have never been returned to their old shrine under the Awatobi mesa, but a new fane has been found for them, the situation of which is known to no white man.[2]

From the late Mr A. M. Stephen’s rough sketches, notes, and measurements of these images (which the writer has not seen), it appears that they are made of cottonwood, the larger one about four feet tall, the other five inches shorter. Mr Stephen thought 523that they represented male and female, and his sketches of them show ground for that belief. Each has a well carved head, from which arise two straight projections which will be spoken of as horns.

In his studies of the Hopi Indians the author has several times visited the shrine at Awatobi where these objects were once kept, finding it a depression in a large bowlder, which was formerly walled up with masonry, making a shelf upon which the images stood. The entrance to this shrine faces the east, and the bowlder lies a few feet lower down on the cliff than the foundation of the old mission church of San Bernardino de Awatobi. By interrogating Indians regarding the images, he has found that they represent beings called Alósakas, the cult of which, once practised at Awatobi, still survives in the rites of the modern Hopi pueblos. Many legends concerning Alósaka have been collected, but only during the last few years has the author witnessed ceremonies connected with their cult. As a result of these observations a suggestion in regard to its significance is offered.

The distinctive symbolic feature of these images is the horns (á

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