Earl H. Morris

Prayer Sticks in Walls of Mummy Cave Tower, Canyon del Muerto

R EPAIR of Mummy Cave Tower, Canyon del Muerto, was begun by the Bureau of American Ethnology and the American Museum of Natural History in 1924 and completed by the National Park Service and Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1932. The final stage consisted of the replacement of the southeast corner, the lower part of which had fallen previous to Mindeleffs study of the structure in 1882,1 and the rest of it, between that time and my first visit in 1922. As the work of rebuilding neared the top, where less of the masonry had fallen, there was found an alignment of prayer sticks, set vertically in the hearting between the face courses. The lowest remaining member of the series was a peeled twig, a,2 placed slender end upward and bent into a crook at the tip. Beside the butt of it, 1.5 m. from the top of the wall was the cast of a well-finished stick of larger size, perhaps b, which came from the debris cleared away to provide a new foundation for the corner. For a distance above the first stick, where the rent was wider, there were no others, nor casts of them. Where the masonry drew in again, there stood a stick of small finger size, c, with carved end upward, reaching half its length above the secondary roof supports. Beside the butt of it was the broken-off stub of a crook. The head of c overlapped by about 5 cm. the butts of another pair, that is, one with carved head, d, and one of crook shape, e. Bound to d, in the constriction just back of the head, were two slender, well-finished sticks, f and g, round in cross section and curved like miniature bows. The attachment in each case was a slim, looselytwisted strand of yucca fiber tied to leave about 4 cm. play between the midpoints of the curved sticks and the large one. The head of d overlapped the bottoms of two more carved sticks, h and i. The northern one, h, stood alone, but since the masonry on all but one side of it was gone, probably it once had an accompaniment of crook and bows. (j was found in the debris at the foot of the tower.) The carved stick, i, the crook, k, and the curved niembers, 1, m, still were firmly embedded in the masonry. The tip of i was flush with the top of the wall, which, however, originally had been two or three courses higher. Reaching downward 38 cm. between h and i was a socket in which