it
attributed its origin to Sikyatki.

HUMAN FIGURES

Very few figures of men or women are found on the pottery, and these
are confined to the interior of food basins (plate CXXIX).[121] They
are ordinarily very roughly drawn, apparently with less care and with
much less detail than are the figures of animals. From their character
I am led to the belief that the drawing of human figures on pottery
was a late development in Tusayan art, and postdates the use of animal
figures on their earthenware. There are, however, a few decorations in
which human figures appear, and these afford an interesting although
meager contribution to our knowledge of ancient Tusayan art and
custom.

[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. CXXIV

DECORATED POTTERY FROM SIKYATKI]

As is well known, the Hopi maidens wear their hair in two whorls, one
over each ear, and that on their marriage it is tied in two coils
falling on the breast. The whorl is arranged on a U-shape stick called
a _gnela_; it is commonly done up by a sister, the mother, or some
friend of the maiden, and is stiffened with an oil pressed from squash
seeds. The curved stick is then withdrawn and the two puffs held in
place by a string tightly wound between them and the head. The habit
of dressing the hair in whorls is adopted after certain puberty
ceremonials, which have elsewhere been described. When on betrothal a
Hopi maid takes her gifts of finely ground cornmeal to the house of
her future mother-in-law, her hair is dressed in this fashion for the
last time, because on her return she is attacked by the women of the
pueblo, drawn hither and thither, her hair torn down, and her body
smeared with dirt. If her gifts are accepted she immediately becomes
the wife of her lover, and her hair is thenceforth dressed in the
fashion common to matrons.

The symbolic meaning of the whorls of hair worn by the maidens is said
to be the squash-flower, or, perhaps more accurately speaking, the
potential power of fructification. There is legendary and other
evidence that this custom is very ancient among the Tusayan Indians,
and the data obtainable from their ritual point the same way. In the
personification of ancestral "breath-bodies," or spirits by men,
called _katcinas_, the female performers are termed _katcina-manas_
(katcina-virgins), and it is their custom to wear the hair in the
characteristic coiffure of maidens. In the personificatio