Kinishba, Home of a Phantom Race

By DOROTHY CHALLIS MOTT

Newly Excavated Pueblo Reveals Ancestors of Hopi Clans, Dr. Byron Cummings Believes.

BRILLIANT September moon climbed slowly upward, deepening the already black shadows, and casting an efflorescent glow about the little group who were raptly listening to the words of a master magician, one who with shovel, trowel and broom uncovers the lives of people long gone, long forgotten. The story he was re-lating was of the people who had inhabited the homes, now in ruins, which were huddled precariously on the edges of a deep wash where the little group were camped. The story-teller was Dr. Byron Cummings, head of the Archaeology Department of the University of Arizona.

lating was of the people who had inhabited the homes, now in ruins, which were huddled precariously on the edges of a deep wash where the little group were camped. The story-teller was Dr. Byron Cummings, head of the Archaeology Department of the University of Arizona.

The shortened shadows bespoke a late hour, but still the group lingered, hungrily drinking in the fascinating tales which Dr. Cummings unfolded.

In the heart of Kinishba, with ruined walls towering above on either side, it was not difficult to go back hundreds of years to the time when Kinishba was not a ruin but a thriving community. It was not hard to imagine the night sounds as those made perhaps by dim figures moving here and there about the village concluding the day's toil. A night-bird's song might, perchance, have been a lover's call beneath his sweetheart's window. The dying embers of the cook-fire could have been the remnants of a council or the beginning of a ceremonial.

To Dr. Cummings, these things were no figments of imagination. To him, the lives of these phantom people were very real, for in the things which they left behind them, was unfolded a clear record of accomplishment to one versed in reading them aright.

Out of that long narrative told by Dr. Cummings are adduced these facts about Arizona's newest major archaeological discovery.

Kinishba, called so from the Apache word meaning "Brown House" is in the(Continued on Page 24)