Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/260

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RUSSELL]
RELIGION
255

Patʼanĭkäm, Place of the Bad One, is the name of a grave at Gila Crossing. It seems probable that the grave of some Hohokam medicine-man has been taken for that of the son of Kâkanyp.

There is another similarly inclosed but unnamed grave at Gila Crossing, also one between Sweetwater and Casa Blanca, and there are three at Blackwater. Such inclosures are called oʼnamûksk, meaning unknown. Beads are to be found strewn about all of them.

Maʼvĭt Vâ-âk, Puma Lying, or Tciʼapatak, Place of the Mortar, is a heap of small stones (pl. XLI, c) between the Double buttes, 10 miles west of Sacaton. Stones are there piled over a shallow mortar in which beads have been placed and partly broken. Bunches of fresh creosote branches were mingled with the decaying fragments of arrow shafts at the time of the writer's visit, showing that while the shrine
Fig. 102. Hâ-âk altar.
is yet resorted to it is of considerable antiquity, for wood does not decay rapidly in that climate.

Evil spirits dwell in the Picacho and Estrella mountains, but this belief may be presumed to be an inheritance from the Apache period. The writer has not learned of any shrines being located in those ranges.

It is said that in the Santa Rosa mountains there was once a tightly covered medicine basket which was kept on a mountain top by a Papago medicine-man who carried offerings to it. All others were forbidden to touch it; but someone found it and when he lifted the cover all the winds of heaven rushed forth and blew away all the people thereabout.