Three great fingers of rock from a gigantic and misshapen hand, roughly speaking, pointing southward, the hand a great plateau, the fingers mesas of solid rock thrust into the heart of a sandy valley,—this is the home of the Hopi, commonly and wrongly termed the Moki. The fingers are from seven to ten miles apart, and a visitor can go from one finger-nail to another either by descending and ascending the steep trails zigzagged on the fingers' sides, or he can circle around on the back of the hand and thus in a round-about manner reach any one of the three fingers. These mesa fingers are generally spoken of as the first or east mesa, the second or middle mesa, and the third or west mesa. They gain their order from the fact that in the early days of American occupancy Mr. T. V. Keam established a trading-post in the canyon that bears his name, and this canyon being to the east of the eastern mesa, this mesa was reached first in order, the western mesa naturally being third.

On the east mesa are three villages. The most important of all Hopi towns is Walpi, which occupies the "nail" of this first "finger." It is not so large as Oraibi, but it has always held a commanding influence, which it still retains. Half a mile back of Walpi is Sichumavi, and still further back Hano, or, as it is commonly and incorrectly called, Tewa.

About seven miles—as the crow flies—to the west is the second or middle mesa, and here are Mashonganavi, Shipauluvi, and on an offshoot from this second mesa, separated from it by a deep, sand-filled ravine, is Shungopavi.

Ten miles farther to the west is Oraibi, which marks the farthest western boundary of pueblo civilization.

Oh! the pathos, the woe, the untold but clearly written misery of the centuries in these cliff-built houses of the mesas, these residences that are fortresses, these steep trail-approached and precipice-protected homes. In a desert land, surrounded by relentless, wary, and vigilant foes, ever fighting a hard battle with the adverse conditions of their environment, short of water, of firewood, and with food grown in the desert-rescued lands below where at any moment the ruthless marauder might appear, there is no wonder that almost every elderly face is seamed and scarred; furrowed deeply with the accumulated centuries of never-ceasing care. Mystery here seems at first to reign supreme. It stands and faces one as a Presence. It hovers and broods, and you feel it even in your sleep. The air is full of it. The very clouds here are mysterious. Who are these people? From whence came they? What is their destiny? What fearful battles, race hatreds, devastating wars, led them to make their homes on these inaccessible cliffs? How did they ever conceive such a mass of elaborate ceremonial as now controls them? Solitary and alone they appear, a vast question mark, viewed from every standpoint. Whichever way one looks at them a great query stares him in the face. They are the chief mystery of our country, an anachronism, an anomaly in our twentieth-century civilization.

When we see the ruins of Egypt, India, Assyria, we look upon something that is past. Those peoples were: they pertain to the ages that are gone. Their mysteries are of lives lived in the dim ages of antiquity. But here are antique lives being lived in our own day; pieces of century-old civilizations transplanted, in time and place, and brought into our time and place; the past existent in the present; the lapse of centuries forgotten, and the days of thousands of years ago bodily transferred into our commercial, super-cultured, hyper-refined age.

The approach to the first mesa from Keam's Canyon is through a sandy country, which, in places, is dry, desolate, and bare. But here and there are patches of ground upon which weeds grow to a great height, plainly indicating that with cultivation and irrigation good crops could be raised. As we leave the mouth of the canyon the singular character of this plateau province is revealed. To the south the sandy desert, in lonesome desolation, stretches away as far as the eye can reach, its wearisome monotony relieved only by the close-by corn-fields of the Hopis and the peculiar buttes of the Mogollons. With the sun blazing down upon it, its forbidding barrenness is appalling. Neither tree, shrub, blade of grass, animal, or human habitation is to be seen. The sand reflects the sun's rays in a yellow glare which is irritating beyond measure, and which seems as if it would produce insanity by its unchangeableness.

To the right of us are the extremities of the sandstone plateaus, of which the Hopi mesas are the thrust out fingers. Here and there are breaks in the plateau which seem like openings into rocky canyons. Before us, ten or more miles away, is the long wall of the first mesa, its falling precipices red and glaring in the sun. Immense rocks of irregular shape lie about on its summit as if tumbled to and fro in some long-ago-forgotten frolic of prehistoric giants. Right before us, and at about the mid distances of the "finger" from the main plateau, the mesa wall is broken down in the form of a U-shaped notch or gap,—from which Walpi, "the place of the gap," obtains its name; and it is on the extremity of the mesa, beyond this notch, that the houses of the Hopi towns can now clearly be discerned. Just beyond the notch a little heap of houses, apparently of the same color as the mesa itself, appears. Then a little vacant space and another small heap, followed by another vacancy with a larger heap at the extreme end of the mesa. These heaps, beginning at the notch, are respectively Tewa, Sichumavi, and Walpi.

Dotting the slopes of the talus at the foot of the mesa precipices are corn-fields, peach orchards, and corrals for burros, sheep, and goats.

As we approach nearer we see that the first mesa is rapidly losing its distinctively Indian character. The policy of the United States Government, in its treatment of these Indians, is to induce them, so far as possible, to leave their mesa homes and reside in the valley nearer to their corn-fields. As their enemies are no longer allowed to molest them, their community life on these mesa heights is no longer necessary, and the time lost and the energy wasted in climbing up and down the steep trails could far better be employed in working in the fields, caring for their orchards, or attending to their stock. But while all this sounds well in theory, and on paper appears perfectly reasonable, it fails to take into consideration the influence of heredity and the personal passions, desires, and feelings of volitional beings. As a result, the government plan is not altogether a success. The Indian agents, however, have induced certain of the Hopis, by building houses for them, to consent to a partial abandonment of their mesa homes. Accordingly, as one draws nearer, he sees the stone houses with their red-painted corrugated-iron roofs, the schoolhouse, the blacksmith's shop, and the houses of the teachers, all of which speak significantly of the change that is slowly hovering over the Indian's dream of solitude and desolation.

But after our camp is made and the horses sent out in the care of willing Indians to the Hopi pastures, we find that the trails to the mesa summit are the same; the glaring yellow sand is the same; the red and gray rocks are the same; the fleecy and dark clouds that occasionally appear at this the rainy time are the same; the glaring, pitiless sun with its infernal scorching is the same; and we respire and perspire and pant and struggle in our climb to the summit in the same old arduous fashion. Above, in Hano, Sichumavi, and Walpi, the pot-bellied, naked children, the lithe and active young men, the not unattractive, shapely, and kindly-faced young women, with their peculiar symbolic style of hair-dressing, the blear-eyed old men and women, the patient and stolid burros, the dim-eyed and pathetic captive eagles, the quaint terraced-houses with their peculiar ladders, grotesque chimneys, passageways, and funny little steps, are practically the same as they have been for centuries.

There are two trails from the valley to the summit of the first mesa on the east side, one at the point, and three on the west side. We ascend by the northeastern trail, which, on reaching the "Notch" or "Gap," winds close by an enclosure in which is found a large fossil, bearing a rude resemblance to a stone snake. All around this fossil, within the stone enclosure, are to be found "bahos," or prayer sticks, which have been brought by the devout as their offerings to the Snake Divinities. From time immemorial this shrine has been in existence, and no Hopi ever passes it without some offering to "Those Above," either in the form of a baho, a sprinkling of the sacred meal, the ceremonial smoking to the six cardinal points, or a few words of silent but none the less devout and earnest prayer.

At the head of this trail is Hano, and from this pueblo we can gain a general idea of Hopi architecture, for, with differences in minor details, the general styles are practically the same. Where they gained their architectural knowledge it is hard to tell, and who they are is yet an unsolved problem. It is pretty generally conceded, however, that all the pueblo peoples of Arizona and New Mexico—of whom the Hopis are the most western—are the descendants of the race, or races, who dotted these territories and southern Colorado with ruins, and who are commonly known as the Cliff and Cave Dwellers. But this is thrusting the difficulty only a few generations, or scores of generations, further back. For we are at once compelled to the agnostic answer, "I don't know!" when asked who are the Cliff Dwellers. Who they are and whence they came are still problems upon which such patient investigators as J. Walter Fewkes is working. He has clearly confirmed the decision of Bancroft and others which affirmed the identity of the Cliff and Cave Dwellers with the Hopis and other pueblo-inhabiting Indians of the Southwest.

Hano, (Tewa) from the Head of the Trail.

Although of different linguistic stocks and religion, the homes of the pueblo Indians are very similar. Almost without exception the pueblos built on mesa summits are of sandstone or other rock, plastered with adobe mud brought up from the water-courses of the valley. Those pueblos that are located in the valley, on the other hand, are generally built of adobe.

No one can doubt that the Indians chose these elevated mesa sites for purposes of protection. With but one or two almost inaccessible trails reaching the heights, and these easily defendable, their homes were their fortresses. Their fields, gardens, and hunting-grounds were in the valleys or far-away mountains, whither they could go in times of peace; but, when attacked by foes, they fled up the trails, established elaborate methods of defence, and remained in their fortress-homes until the danger was past.

The very construction of the houses reveals this. In none of the older houses is there any doorway into the lowest story. A solid wall faces the visitor, with perhaps a small window-hole. A rude ladder outside and a similar one inside afford the only means of entrance. One climbs up the ladder outside, drops through a hole in the roof, and descends the ladder inside. When attacked, the outer ladder could be drawn up, and thus, if we remember the crude weapons of the aborigines when discovered by the white man, it is evident that the inhabitants would remain in comparative security.

Of late years doors and windows have been introduced into many of the ancient houses.

It is a picturesque sight that the visitor to the Hopi towns enjoys as he reaches the head of the trail at Hano. The houses are built in terraces, two or three stories high, the second story being a step back from the first, so that a portion of the roof of the first story can be used as the courtyard or children's playground of the people who inhabit the second story. The third story recedes still farther, so that its people have a front yard on the roof of the second story. At Zuni and Taos these terraces continue for six and seven stories, but with the Hopis never exceed three. The first climb is generally made on a ladder, which rests in the street below. The ladder-poles, however, are much longer than is necessary, and they reach up indefinitely towards the sky. Sometimes a ladder is used to go from the second to the third story, but more often a quaint little stairway is built on the connecting walls. Equally quaint are the ollas used as chimneys. These have their bottoms knocked out, and are piled one above another, two, three, four, and sometimes five or six high. Some of the "terraces" are partially enclosed, and here one may see a weaver's loom, a flat stone for cooking piki (wafer bread), or a beehive-like oven used for general cooking purposes. Here and there cord-wood is piled up for future use, and now and again a captive eagle, fastened with a rawhide tether to the bars of a rude cage, may be seen. The "king of birds" is highly prized for his down and feathers, which are used for the making of prayer plumes (bahos).

There does not seem to have been much planning in the original construction of the Hopi pueblos. There was little or no provision made for the future. The first houses were built as needed, and then as occasion demanded other rooms were added.

It will doubtless be surprising to some readers to learn that the Hopi houses are owned and built (in the main) by the women, and that the men weave the women's garments and knit their own stockings. Here, too, the women enjoy other "rights" that their white sisters have long fought for. The home life of the Hopis is based upon the rights of women. They own the houses; the wife receives her newly married husband into her home; the children belong to her clan, and have her clan name, and not that of the father; the corn, melons, squash, and other vegetables belong to her when once deposited in her house by the husband. She, indeed, is the queen of her own home, hence the pueblo Indian woman occupies a social relationship different from that of most aborigines, in that she is on quite equal terms with her husband.

In the actual building of the houses, however, the husband is required to perform his share, and that is the most arduous part of the labor. He goes with his burros to the wooded mesas or cottonwood-lined streams and brings the roof-timbers, ladder-poles, and door-posts. He also brings the heavier rocks needed in the building. Then the women aid him in placing the heavier objects, after which he leaves them to their own devices.

Being an intensely religious people, the shamans or priests are always called upon when a new house is to be constructed. Bahos—prayer plumes or sticks—are placed in certain places, sacred meal is lavishly sprinkled, and singing and prayer offered, all as propitiation to those gods whose especial business it is to care for the houses.

It is exceedingly interesting to see the women at work. Without plumb-line, straight line, or trowel they proceed. Some women are hod-carriers, bringing the pieces of sand or limestone rock to the "bricklayers" in baskets, buckets, or dish pans. Others mix the adobe to the proper consistency and see that the workers are kept supplied with it. And what a laughing, chattering, jabbering group it is! Every tongue seems to be going, and no one listening. Once at Oraibi I saw twenty-three women engaged in the building of a house, and I then got a new "side light" on the story of the Tower of Babel; The builders of that historic structure were women, and the confusion of tongues was the natural result of their feminine determination to all speak at once and never listen to any one else.

I photographed the builders at Oraibi, and the next day contributed a new dress to each of the twenty-three workers. Here are some of their names: Wa-ya-wei-i-ni-ma, Mo-o-ho, Ha-hei-i, So-li, Ni-vai-un-si, Si-ka-ho-in-ni-ma, Na-i-so-wa, Ma-san-i-yam-ka, Ko-hoi-ko-cha, Tang-a-ka-win-ka, Hun-o-wi-ti, Ko-mai-a-ni-ma, Ke-li-an-i-ma.

The finishing of the house is as interesting as the actual building. With a small heap of adobe mud the woman, using her hand as a trowel, fills in the chinks, smooths and plasters the walls inside and out. Splashed from head to foot with mud, she is an object to behold, and, as is often the case, if her children are there to "help" her, no mud-larks on the North River, the Missouri, or the Thames ever looked more happy in their complete abandonment to dirt than they. Then when the whitewashing is done with gypsum, or the coloring of the walls with a brown wash, what fun the children have. No pinto pony was ever more speckled and variegated than they as they splash their tiny hands into the coloring matter and dash it upon the walls.

Hopi Women building a House at Oraibi.

Mashonganavi from the Terrace Below.

Inside the houses the walls also are whitewashed or colored, and generally there is some attempt made to decorate them by painting rude though symbolic designs half-way between the floor and ceiling. The floor is of earth, well packed down with water generally mixed with plaster, and the ceiling is of the sustaining poles and cross-beams, over which willows and earth have been placed. Invariably one can find feathered bahos, or prayer plumes, in the beams above, and no house could expect to be prospered where these offerings to "Those Above" were neglected.

The chief family room serves as kitchen, dining-room, corn-grinding-room, bedroom, parlor, and reception-room. In one corner a quaint, hooded fireplace is built, and here the housewife cooks her piki and other corn foods, boils or bakes her squash, roasts, broils, or boils the little meat she is able to secure, and sits during the winter nights while "the elders" tell stories of the wondrous past, when all the animals talked like human beings and the mysterious people—the gods—from the upper world came down to earth and associated with mankind.

The corn-grinding trough is never absent. Sometimes it is on a little raised platform, and is large or small as the size of the family demands. The trough is composed either of wooden or stone slabs, cemented into the floor and securely fastened at the corners with rawhide thongs. This trough is then divided into two, three, four, or more compartments (according to its size), and in each compartment a sloping slab of basic rock is placed. Kneeling behind this, the woman who is the grinder of the meal (the true lady, laf-dig, even though a Hopi) seizes in both hands a narrower flat piece of the same kind of rock, and this, with the motion of a woman over a washboard, she moves up and down, throwing a handful of corn every few strokes on the upper side of her grinder. This is arduous work, and yet I have known the women and maidens to keep steadily at it during the entire day.

When the meal is ground, a small fire is made of corn cobs, over which an earthern olla is placed. When this is sufficiently heated the meal is stirred about in it by means of a round wicker basket, to keep it from burning. This process partially cooks the meal, so that it is more easily prepared into food when needed.

In one corner of the house several large ollas will be found full of water. Living as they do on these mesa heights, where there are no springs, water is scarce and precious. Every drop, except the little that is caught in rain-time or melted from the snows, has to be carried up on the backs of the women from the valley below. In the heat of summer, this is no light task. With the fierce Arizona sun beating down upon them, the feet slipping in the hot sand or wearily pressing up on the burning rocks, the olla, filled with water, wrapped in a blanket and suspended from the forehead on the back, becomes heavier and heavier at each step. Those of us who have, perforce, carried cameras and heavy plates to the mesa tops know what strength and endurance this work requires.

For dippers home-made pottery and gourd shells are commonly used. Now and again one will find the horn of a mountain sheep, which has been heated, opened out into a large spoon-like dipper; or a gnarled or knotty piece of wood, hacked out with flint knife into a pretty good resemblance to a dipper.

Near the water ollas one can generally see a shelf upon which the household utensils are placed. Here, too, when corn is being ground, a half-dozen plaques of meal will stand. This shelf serves as pantry and meat safe (when there is meat), and the hungry visitor will seldom look there in vain for a basket-platter or two piled high with piki, the fine wafer bread for which the Hopis are noted. Piki is colored in a variety of ways. Dr. Hough says the ashes of Atriplex canescens James are used to give the gray color, and that Amaranthus sp. is cultivated in terrace gardens around the springs for use in dyeing it red; a special red dye from another species is used for coloring the piki used in the Katchina dances; and the ashes of Parryella filifolia are used for coloring. Saffron (Carthamus tinctorius) is used to give the yellow color.

It is fascinating in the extreme to see a woman make piki. Dry corn-meal is mixed with coloring matter and water, and thus converted into a soft batter. A large, flat stone is so placed on stones that a fire can be kept continually burning underneath it. As soon as the slab is as hot as an iron must be to iron starched clothes it is greased with mutton tallow. Then with fingers dipped in the batter the woman dexterously and rapidly sweeps them over the surface of the hot stone. Almost as quickly as the batter touches, it is cooked; so to cover the whole stone and yet make even and smooth piki requires skill. It looks so easy that I have known many a white woman (and man) tempted into trying to make it. Once while attending the Snake Dance ceremonials at Mashonganavi, a young lady member of my party was sure she could perform the operation successfully. My Hopi friend, Kuchyeampsi, gladly gave place to the white lady, and laughingly looked at me as the latter dipped her fingers into the batter, swept them over the stone, gave a suppressed exclamation of pain, tried again, and then hastily rose with three fingers well blistered. My cook, who was a white man, was sure he could accomplish the operation, so he was allowed to try. Once was enough. He was a religious man, and bravely kept silence, which was a good thing for us.

When the piki is sufficiently cooked, it is folded up into neat little shapes something like the shredded wheat biscuits. One thing I have often noticed is that a quick and skilful piki maker will keep a sheet flat, without folding, so that she may place it over the next sheet when it is about cooked. This seems to make it easier to remove the newly cooked sheet from the cooking slab.

If you are ever invited into a Hopi house you may rest assured you will not be there long before a piled-up basket of piki will be brought to you, for the Hopis are wonderfully hospitable and enjoy giving to all who become their guests.

Another object seldom absent is the "pole of the soft stuff." This is a pole suspended from the roof beams upon which all the blankets, skins, bedding, and wearing apparel are placed. Once upon a time these were very few and very crude. The skins of animals tanned with the hair on, blankets made of rabbit skins, and cotton garments made from home grown, spun, and woven cotton, comprised their "soft stuff." But when the Spaniards brought sheep into the province of Tusayan, and the Hopis saw the wonderful improvement a wool staple was over a cotton one, blankets and dresses of wool were slowly added to the household treasures, until now the "garments of the old," except antelope, deer, fox, and coyote skins, are seldom seen.

It is a remarkable fact that the Hopis wore garments made from cotton which they grew themselves, prior to the time of the Spanish invasion. They also knew how to color the cotton from unfading mineral and vegetable dyes, and in the graves of ancient cliff and cave dwellings, well-woven cotton garments often have been taken.

Sometimes to-day one may see an old man or woman weaving a blanket from the tanned skins of rabbits. Such a garment is far warmer and more comfortable than one would imagine. The dressed pelts are twisted around a home-woven string made of shredded yucca fibre, wild flax, or cotton, and thus a long rope is formed many yards in length. This rope is then woven in parallel strings with cross strands of the same kind of fibre, and a robe made some five or six feet square.

The windows of the ancient Hopi houses were either small open holes or sheets of gypsum. Of late years modern doors and windows have been introduced, yet there are still many of the old ones in existence.

Having thus taken a general and cursory survey of Hano, let us, in turn, visit the six other villages on the mesa heights ere we look further into the social and ceremonial life of this interesting people.