Connecticut western news., 1920-03-18
MARTYRS TOFAITH
Hopi People Punished for En-
 bracing Christianity.
Government Ethnologist, lnvestigat- ing Mound of Death," Finds Evi- dence of Truth of Story Long
 Current In the Southwest.


 
 Ethnologically speaking, the South west is region of many mysteries. There, in fortified villages built on shelves of rock high up on canyon walls, lived the cliff dwellers, nobody knows how long ago. Perched on lofty heights are ruined castles and towers. Over the mesa tops are scattered the remains of many ancient towns.
 One of these ruined towns Is rela- lively recent, having been destroyed in he year 17O0. and its history, fortu- nately preserved, is most remarkable. It was called Awatobi, and all that re- mains of 1t today is a huge rubbish heap, which Is known to the Hopi h. dians as the Mound of Death. ..
 It was a Hopi town, populous and thriving, and was attacked and razed by the inhabitants of seven other Pueblo villages, who killed all the men and carried off the young women and children. ..#
 Dr. J. Walker Fewkes, government ethnologist in chief, having learned the story, undertook to excayate the mound of rubbish, and thereby obtained ample evidence of the truth of, the tradition.
 It seems that Awatobi was first to welcome the early Spainsh priests, and to embrace Christianity. To this cir circumstance the neighoring villages attributed failure of rain. The new religion was suspected to be a kind of sorcery, and 1t was decided that the only remedy lay in wiping out the offending town, together with its pop ulation, which, according to the Span- ish mission records, numbered about eight hundred souls.
 From the viewpoint of the Hopi people to be sorcerer was and Is to- day the worst of crimes. After all the good folks have prayed all night for rain wizard may blow away the clouds with single puff of his breath. Sickness Is always due to sorcery, and persons suspected of witchcraft are even nowadays made away with in secret.
 The attack was decided upon at a secret meeting in the pueblo of Walpi. A certain spring was appointed as the meeting place for bands of warriors, each man carrying, besides his weap- ons, an unlighted torch and bundle of greasewood. Before dawn they marched silently up the mesa to the east end of the doomed town, the gate of which had been left open by agree ment with traitorous Awatobi chief tain.
 Choice was made of time when most of Awatobi's warriors would be engaged in rites of religious ceremo- nial in large subterranean chamber or "kiva."
 The attacking force invaded tho town without causing alarm, surround ed the kiva and plucked up the ladder which afforded the only means of exit from it. Then they lighted their torches and threw them down, together with lighted bundles of greasewood The interior of the underground cham Der was thus converted into literal furnace and, further to torment the burning men, the ruthless witch hunt CTS tore from the nearby house walls strings of red peppers that hung there drying, crushed them in their hands and flung them into the fire.
 The story that led Doctor Fewkes to undertake his inquiry and excava- ton of the Mound of Death was told to him by an aged Indian woman whose great-great-great-grandmother was one of the survivors of the mas sacre. She was even able to point out to him the approximate location of the subterranean chamber in which the men'of Awatobi were burned to death.