Keam, the first to sell Pueblo and Native products to the tourist trade, remained the most influential of the early merchants. He and an assistant had discovered shards of ancient pottery at a ruin called Sikyátki, at the base of First Mesa. The fragments they found probably date from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and are distinguished for their polychrome decoration. Keam showed them to the Pueblo potters, including Nampeyo, and encouraged them to make contemporary versions for sale. In 1895 a formal excavation was conducted at Sikyátki, under the auspices of the Smithsonian, and
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