Then our
people, except those who went to the Second Mesa, traveled to the
northeast as far as the Tsegi (Canyon de Chelly), but I can not tell
whether our people built the louses there. Then they came hack to
this region again and built houses and had much trouble with the
Walpi, but we have lived here ever since.
[Illustration: Plate XI. Masonry on the outer wall of the Fire-House,
detail.]
Groups of the Water people, as already stated, were distributed among
all the villages, although the bulk of them remained at the Middle Mesa;
but it seems that most of the remaining groups subsequently chose to
build their permanent houses at Oraibi. There is no special tradition of
this movement; it is only indicated by this circumstance, that in
addition to the Water families common to every village, there are still
in Oraibi several families of that people which have no representatives
in any of the other villages. At a quite early day Oraibi became a place
of importance, and they tell of being sufficiently populous to establish
many outlying settlements. They still identify these with ruins on the
detached mesas in the valley to the south and along the Moen-kopi
("place of flowing water") and other intermittent streams in the west.
These sites were occupied for the purpose of utilizing cultivable tracts
of land in their vicinity, and the remotest settlement, about 45 miles
west, was especially devoted to the cultivation of cotton, the place
being still called by the Navajo and other neighboring tribes, the
"cotton planting ground.
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