ak or depression in the mesa summit
close to the village. Several foot trails give access to the village,
partly over the nearly perpendicular faces of rock. All of these have
required to be artificially improved in order to render them
practicable. Plate XXV, from a photograph, illustrates one of these
trails, which, a portion of the way, leads up between a huge detached
slab of sandstone and the face of the mesa. It will be seen that the
trail at this point consists to a large extent of stone steps that have
been built in. At the top of the flight of steps where the trail to the
mesa summit turns to the right the solid sandstone has been pecked out
so as to furnish a series of footholes, or steps, with no projection or
hold of any kind alongside. There are several trails on the west side of
the mesa leading down both from Walpi and Sichumovi to a spring below,
which are quite as abrupt as the example illustrated. All the water used
in these villages, except such as is caught during showers in the
basin-like water pockets of the mesa top, is laboriously brought up
these trails in large earthenware canteens slung over the backs of the
women.

Supplies of every kind, provisions, harvested crops, fuel, etc., are
brought up these steep trails, and often from a distance of several
miles, yet these conservative people tenaciously cling to the
inconvenient situation selected by their fathers long after the
necessity for so doing has passed away. At present no argument of
convenience or comfort seems sufficient to induce them to abandon their
homes on the rocky heights and build near the water supply and the
fields on which they depend for subsistence.

One of the trails referred to in the description of Hano has been
converted into a wagon road, as has been already described. The Indians
preferred to expend the enormous amount of labor necessary to convert
this bridle path into a wagon road in order slightly to overcome the
inconvenience of transporting every necessary to the mesa upon their own
backs or by the assistance of burros. This concession to modern ideas is
at best but a poor substitute for the convenience of homes built in the
lower valleys.

[Illustration: Fig. 9. Mashongnavi and Shupaulovi from Shumopavi.]

MASHONGNAVI.

Mashongnavi, situated on the summit of a rocky knoll, is a compact
though irregular village, and the manner in which it conforms to the
general outline of the available ground is shown on