Oraibi [key], pueblo, N Ariz., on a mesa N of Winslow. It was built c.1150 and was discovered in 1540 by Pedro de Tovar, a lieutenant of Coronado. The mission of San Francisco, established on the site in 1629, was destroyed in the Pueblo revolt of 1680. Oraibi was long the most important pueblo of the Hopi, but because of economic disturbances and internal dissension many of the inhabitants left in 1907 to form the pueblos of Hotevila and Bakavi. Oraibi is now little more than a ruin.
See M. Titiev, Old Oraibi: A Study of the Hopi Indians of the Third Mesa (1944, repr. 1967).
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