on
Middle Mesa were also apparently not made with an absorbing idea of
inaccessibility. All the Jeditoh villages, however, were on the mesa
tops, these sites having been selected evidently with a view to
protection, since they were not convenient to the farms.

For many reasons it would seem that the people who occupied the now
ruined Jeditoh villages were later arrivals in Tusayan than those of
East and Middle Mesas, and that, as a rule, they came from the
eastward, while those of Middle Mesa arrived from the south. The first
colonists of all, however, appear to have been the East Mesa clans,
the Bear and Snake families. If this conjecture be true, we may
believe that the oldest pueblos in Tusayan were probably the house
groups of the Snake clan of East Mesa, for whom their traditionists
claim a northern origin.

THE MIDDLE MESA RUINS

SHUNOPOVI

The site of Old Shunopovi (plate CV) at the advent of the first
Spaniards, and for a century or more afterward, was at the foot of the
mesa on which the present village stands. The site of the old pueblo
is easily detected by the foundations of the ancient houses and their
overturned walls, surrounded by mounds of soil filled with fragments
of the finest pottery.

The old village was situated on a ridge of foothills east of the
present town and near the spring, which is still used. On the highest
point of the ridge there rise to a considerable height the massive
walls of the old Spanish mission church, forming an inclosure, now
used as a sheep corral. The cemeteries are near by, close to the outer
walls, and among a clump of peach trees about half a mile east of the
old houses. The pottery,[38] as shown by the fragments, is of the
finest old Tusayan ware, cream and red being the predominating colors,
while fragments of coiled and black-and-white ware are likewise
common.

MISHONINOVI

The ruins of Old Mishoninovi lie west of the present pueblo in the
foothills, not far from the two rocky pinnacles at that point and
adjacent to a spring. In strolling over the site of the old town I
have noted its ground plan, and have picked up many sherds which
indicate that the pottery made at that place was the fine cream-color
ware for which Tusayan has always been famous. The site offers unusual
opportunities for archeological studies, but excavation there is not
practicable on account of the opposition of the chiefs.

Old Mishoninovi was a pueblo of considerable size, and