The greater number of them retired to Oraibi and the remainder to
Siky?tki, and the feud was still maintained between them and the Walpi.
[Illustration: Plate VII. Horn House ruin, plan.]
Some of the incidents as well as the disastrous termination of this feud
are still narrated. A party of the Siky?tki went prowling through Walpi
one day while the men were afield, and among other outrages, one of them
shot an arrow through a window and killed a chief's daughter while she
was grinding corn. The chief's son resolved to avenge the death of his
sister, and some time after this went to Siky?tki, professedly to take
part in a religious dance, in which he joined until just before the
close of the ceremony. Having previously observed where the handsomest
girl was seated among the spectators on the house terraces, he ran up
the ladder as if to offer her a prayer emblem, but instead he drew out a
sharp flint knife from his girdle and cut her throat. He threw the body
down where all could see it, and ran along the adjoining terraces till
he cleared the village. A little way up the mesa was a large flat rock,
upon which he sprang and took off his dancer's mask so that all might
recognize him; then turning again to the mesa he sped swiftly up the
trail and escaped.
And so foray and slaughter continued to alternate between them until the
planting season of some indefinite year came around. All the Siky?tki
men were to begin the season by planting the fields of their chief on a
certain day, which was announced from the housetop by the Second Chief
as he made his customary evening proclamations, and the Walpi, becoming
aware of this, planned a fatal onslaught.
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