The date of this last feudal atrocity can be made out with some degree
of exactness, because in 1692, Don Diego Vargas with a military force
visited Tusayan and mentions Awatubi as a populous village at which he
made some halt. The Hano (Tewa) claim that they have lived in Tusayan
for five or six generations, and that when they arrived there was no
Awatubi in existence; hence it must have been destroyed not long after
the close of the seventeenth century.
Since the destruction of Awatubi only one other serious affray has
occurred between the villages; that was between Oraibi and Walpi. It
appears that after the Oraibi withdrew their colonies from the south and
west they took possession of all the unoccupied planting grounds to the
east of the village, and kept reaching eastward till they encroached
upon some land claimed by the Walpi. This gave rise to intermittent
warfare in the outlying fields, and whenever the contending villagers
met a broil ensued, until the strife culminated in an attack upon Walpi.
The Oraibi chose a day when the Walpi men were all in the field on the
east side of the mesa, but the Walpi say that their women and dogs held
the Oraibi at bay until the men came to the rescue. A severe battle was
fought at the foot of the mesa, in which the Oraibi were routed and
pursued across the Middle Mesa, where an Oraibi chief turned and
implored the Walpi to desist. A conciliation was effected there, and
harmonious relations have ever since existed between them.
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