George Wharton James

To know any people thoroughly requires many years of studied observation. The work of such men as A. M. Stephen, Dr. Fewkes, Rev. H. R. Voth, and Dr. George A. Dorsey reveals the vast field the Hopis offer to students. To the published results of these indefatigable workers the student is referred for fuller knowledge. There are certain things of interest, however, that the casual observer cannot fail to note.

The costume of the men is undoubtedly a modification of the dress of the white man. Trousers are worn, generally of white muslin, and from the knee down on the outer side they are split open at the seam. Soleless stockings, home-spun, dyed and knit, are worn, fastened with garters, similar in style and design, though smaller, to the sashes worn by the women. The feet are covered with rawhide moccasins. The shirt is generally of colored calico, though on special occasions the "dudes" of the people appear in black or violet velvet shirts or tunics, which certainly give them a handsome appearance. The never-failing banda, wound around the forehead, completes the costume, though accessories in the shape of silver and wampum necklaces, finger rings, etc., are often worn.

The costume of the women is both picturesque and adapted to their life and customs. It is neat, appropriate, and modest. The effort our government feels called upon to make to lead them to change it for calico "wrappers," in accordance with a principle adopted which regards as "bad" and "a hindrance to civilization" anything native, is to my mind vicious and senseless. The Indians are not to be civilized by making them wear white people's costumes, nor by any such nonsense. There are those who condemn their basket weaving, because, forsooth, it is not a Christian art. True civilizing processes come from within, and desire for change must precede the outward manifestation if permanent results are desired.

To return to the costume. It consists mainly of a home-woven robe, dyed in indigo. When made, it looks more like an Indian blanket than a dress, but when the woman throws it over her right shoulder, sews the two sides together, leaving an opening for the right arm, and then wraps one of the highly colored and finely woven sashes around her waist, the beholder sees a dress at once healthful and picturesque. As a rule, it comes down a little below the knee, and the left shoulder is uncovered. Of late years many of the women and girls have learned to wear a calico slip under the picturesque native dress, so that both arms and shoulders are covered.

Most of the time the legs and feet are naked, but when a woman wishes to be fully attired, she wraps buckskins, cut obliquely in half, around her legs, adroitly fastening the wrappings just above the knee with thongs cut from buckskin, and then encases her feet in shapely moccasins. There is no compression of her solid feet, no distortion with senseless high heels. She is too self-poised, mentally, to care anything about Parisian fashions. Health, neatness, comfort, are the desiderata sought and obtained in her dress. The question is sometimes asked, however, if the heavy leg swathings of buckskin are not a mere fashion of Hopi dress. Undoubtedly there is a following of custom here as well as elsewhere, and, as I have before remarked, one of the keys to the Hopi character is his conservatism. But the buckskin leggings have a decided reason for their existence. In a desert country where cacti, cholla, many varieties of prickly shrubs, sharp rocks, and dangerous reptiles abound, it is necessary that the women whose work calls them into these dangers should so dress as to be prepared to overcome them. Many a man wearing the ordinary trousers of civilization and finding himself off the beaten paths of these desert regions has longed for just such protection as the Hopi women give themselves. The cow-boys who ride pell-mell through the brush wear leather trousers, and their stirrups are covered with tough and thick leather to protect their shoes from being pierced by the searching needles of the cactus, cholla, and buck-brush.

The adornments that a Hopi maiden of fashion affects are silver rings and bracelets made by native silversmiths, and necklaces of coral, glass, amber, or more generally of the shell wampum found all over the continent. The finer necklets of wampum are highly prized, and when very old and ornamented with pieces of turquoise, can not be purchased for large sums. Occasionally ear pendants are worn. These are made of wood, half an inch broad and an inch long, inlaid on one side with pieces of bright shell, turquoise, etc.

When a girl reaches the marriageable age, she is required by the customs of her people to fix up her hair in two large whorls, one on each side of her head. This gives her a most striking appearance. The whorl represents the squash blossom, which is the Hopi emblem of purity and maidenhood. Girls mature very early, the young maidens herewith represented being not more than from twelve to fifteen years of age.

Shupela, Father of Kopeli, Late Snake Priest at Walpi.

A Hopi Girl, Oraibi.

When a woman marries she must no longer wear the nash-mi (whorls). A new symbolism must be introduced. The hair is done up in two pendant rolls, in imitation of the ripened fruit of the long squash, which is the Hopi emblem of fruitfulness.

In my book on "Indian Basketry" I have described in detail the basketry of the Hopis. There are two distinct varieties made at the four villages of the middle and western mesas. Those made on the middle mesa are of yucca fibre (mo-hu) coiled around a core of grass or broom-corn (su-u). Those of Oraibi are of willow and approximate as nearly to the crude willow work of civilization as any basketry made by the aborigines. In both cases the splints are dyed, commonly nowadays with the startling aniline dyes, and with marvellous fertility of invention the weavers make a thousand and one geometrical designs, in imitation of natural objects, katchinas, etc. These are mainly plaques, but the yucca fibre weavers make a treasure or trinket basket, somewhat barrel-shaped, oftentimes with a lid, that is both pretty and useful. The name for all the yucca variety is pu-u-ta. The Oraibi willow plaques are called yung-ya-pa, while a bowl-shaped basket is sa-kah-ta, and the bowls made of coiled willow splints bought from the Havasupai are su-ku-wu-ta.

The Hopi weavers when at work invariably keep a blanket full of moist sand near them in which the splints are buried. This keeps them flexible, and the moist sand is better than water.

A reddish-brown native dye is made from Ohaishi (Thelesperma gracile), with which the splints are colored.

Unfortunately, the introduction of aniline dyes has almost killed the industry of making native dyes, but there are some few conservatives—God bless them!—who adhere to the ancient colors and methods of preparing them.

It cannot be said that the Hopis are devoid of musical taste, for in the early morning especially, as the youths and men take their ponies or flocks of goats and sheep out to pasture, they sing with sweet and far-reaching voices many picturesque melodies.

Of the weird singing at their religious ceremonials I have spoken in the chapter devoted to that purpose.

To most civilized ears Hopi instrumental music, however, is as much a racket and din as is Chinese music. The lelentu, or flute, however, produces weird, soft, melancholy music. Their rattles are of three kinds, the gourd rattle (ai-i-ya), the rattle used by the Antelope priests, and the leg rattle of turtle shell and sheep's trotters (y?ng-ush-o-na). The drum and hand tombe are crude affairs, the former made by hollowing out a tree trunk and stretching over each end wet rawhide, the lashings also being of strips of wet rawhide (with the hair on), which, when dry, tightens so as to give the required resonance. The hand tombe is as near like a home-made tambourine as can be. It has no jingles, however. Another instrument is the strangest conception imaginable. It consists of a large gourd shell, from the top of which a square hole has been cut. Across this is placed a notched stick, one end of which is held in the performer's left hand. In the other hand is a sheep's thigh-bone, which is worked back and forth over the notched stick, and the resultant noise is the desired music. This instrument is the zhe-gun´-pi.

They do not seem to have many games, so many of their religious ceremonials affording them the diversion other peoples seek in athletic sports. Their racing is purely religious, as I have elsewhere shown, and they get much fun out of some of their semi-religious exercises.

A game that they are very fond of, and that requires considerable skill to play, is we-la. The game consists in several players, each armed with a feathered dart, or ma-te´-va, rushing after a small hoop made of corn husks or broom-corn well bound together—the we-la, and throwing their darts so that they stick into it The hoop is about a foot in diameter and two inches thick, the ma-te´-va nearly a foot long. Each player's dart has a different color of feathers, so that each can tell when he scores. To see a dozen swarthy and almost nude youths darting along in the dance plaza, or streets, or down in the valley on the sand, laughing, shouting, gesticulating, every now and then stopping for a moment, jabbering over the score, then eagerly following the motion of the thrower of the we-la so as to be ready to strike the ma-te´-va into it, and then, suddenly letting them fly, is a picturesque and lively sight.

The Hopi is quite a traveller. Though fond of home, I have met members of the tribe in varied quarters of the Painted Desert Region. They get a birch bark from the Verdi Valley with which they make the dye for their moccasins. A yellowish brown color, called pavissa, is obtained from a point near the junction of the Little Colorado and Marble Canyon. Here they obtain salt, and at the bottom of the salt springs, where the waters bubble up in pools, this pavissa settles. Bahos, or prayer sticks, are always deposited at the time of obtaining this ochre, as it is to be used in the painting of the face of the bahos used in most sacred ceremonies. The so-called Moki trail is evidence of the long association between the Hopis and the Havasupais in Havasu (Cataract) Canyon, and I have often met them there trading blankets, horses, etc., for buckskin and the finely woven wicker bowl-baskets—ku-us—of the Havasupais, which are much prized by the Hopis.

Occasionally he reaches as far northeast as Lee's Ferry and even crosses into southern Utah, and at Zuni to the southeast he is ever a welcome visitor. The Apaches in the White Mountains tell that on occasions the Hopis will visit them, and when visiting the Yumas in 1902 they informed me that long ago the Snake Dancing Mokis were their friends, and sometimes came to see them.

Dr. Walter Hough has written a most interesting paper on "Environmental Interrelations in Arizona," in which are many items about the Hopis. He says they brought from their priscan home corn, beans, melons, squash, cotton, and some garden plants, and that they have since acquired peaches, apricots, and wheat, and among other plants which they infrequently cultivate may be named onions, chili, sunflowers, sorghum, tomatoes, potatoes, grapes, pumpkins, garlic, coxcomb, coriander, saffron, tobacco, and nectarines. They are great beggars for seeds and will try any kind that may be given to them.

Owing to their dependence upon wild grasses for food when their corn crops used to fail,—that is, in the days before a paternal government helped them out at such times,—every Hopi child was a trained botanist from his earliest years; not trained from our standpoint, but from theirs. We should say much of his knowledge was unscientific, and it goes far beyond the use of grasses and plants as food. Dr. Hough in his paper gives a number of examples of the uses to which the various seeds, etc., are put. The botanist as well as the ethnologist will find this a most comprehensive and useful list. For food forty-seven seeds, berries, stems, leaves, or roots are eaten. The seeds of a species of sporobolus are ground with corn to make a kind of cake, which the Hopis greatly enjoy. The leaves of a number are cooked and eaten as greens.

A large amount of folk-lore connected with plants has been collected by Drs. Fewkes and Hough. From the latter's extensive list I quote. For headache the leaves of the Astragalus mollissimus are bruised and rubbed on the temples; tea is made from the root of the Gaura parviflora for snake bite; women boil the Townsendia arizonica into a tea and drink it to induce pregnancy; a plant called by the Hopi wutakpala is rubbed on the breast or legs for pain; Verbesina enceloides is used on boils or for skin diseases; Croton texlusis is taken as an emetic; Allionia linearis is boiled to make an infusion for wounds; the mistletoe that grows on the juniper (Phoradendron juniperinum) makes a beverage which both Hopi and Navaho say is like coffee, and a species that grows on the cottonwood, called lo mapi, is used as medicine; the leaves of Gilia longiflora are boiled and drank for stomach ache; the leaves of the Gilia multiflora (which is collected forty miles south of Walpi at an elevation of six thousand feet), when bruised and rubbed on ant bites is said to be a specific; Oreocarya suffruticosa is pounded up and used for pains in the body; Carduus rothrockii is boiled and drank as tea for colds which give rise to a prickling sensation in the throat; the leaves of Coleosanthus wrightii are bruised and rubbed on the temples for headache, as also is the Artemisia canadensis; and so on throughout a list as long again as this.

In connection with this list Dr. Hough calls attention to the workings of the Hopi mind in a manner which justifies an extensive quotation:—

"The word 'medicine' as applied by the Hopi and other tribes is very comprehensive, including charms to influence gods, men, and animals, or to cure a stomach ache. As stated, from experiments with the plants some have been discovered which are uniform in action and which would have place in a standard pharmacopoeia. Thus there are heating plasters, powders for dressing wounds, emetics, diuretics, purges, sudorific infusions, etc. Other plants are of doubtful value, and in their use other animistic ideas may enter, though some of them, such as those infused for colds, headache, rheumatism, fever, etc., may have therapeutic properties. The obligation of the civilized to the uncivilized for healing plants is very great. Another class is clearly out of the domain of empirical medicine. Tea made from the thistle is a remedy for prickling pains in the larynx, milkweed will induce a flow of milk, and there are other examples of inferential medicine. Perhaps another class is shown by the employment of the plant named for the bat, in order to induce sleep in the daytime.

"It may be interesting to look into the workings of the Indian mind as shown by his explanation of the uses of certain of these plants.

"A beautiful scarlet gilia (Gilia aggregata Spreng) grows on the talus of the giant mesa on which ancient Awatobi stood. This is the only locality where the plant has been collected in this region, but it grows in profusion on the White Mountains, one hundred and twenty-five miles southeast.

"The herdsman of our party was asked the name and use of the plant. He replied: 'It is the pala katchi, or red male flower, and it is very good for catching antelope. Before going out to kill antelope, hunters rub up the flowers and leaves of the plant and mix them with the meal which they offer during their prayer to the gods of the chase.'

"'Why is that?' was asked.

"'Because,' he replied, 'the antelope is very fond of this plant and eats it greedily when he can find it.' (Animistic idea.)

"Another creeping plant (Solanum triflorum Nutt.), which bears numerous green fruit about the size of a cherry, filled with small seeds, is called cavayo ngahu, or watermelon medicine. The plant may be likened to a miniature watermelon vine. It was explained that if one took the fruit and planted it in the same hill with the watermelon seeds, would there be many watermelons,—that is, the watermelon would be influenced to become as prolific as the small plant.

"Every one is familiar with the clematis bearing fluffy bunches of seeds having long, hair-like appendages. An Indian lecturing on a collected specimen of the clematis said: 'This is very good to make the hair grow. You make a tea of it and rub it on the head, and pretty quick your hair will hang down to your hips,' indicating by a gesture the extraordinary length. For the same reason the fallugia is a good hair tonic."

The Hopi uses a weapon for catching rabbits which, for want of a better name, white men call a boomerang. It possesses none of the strange properties of the Australian weapon, yet in the hands of a skilled Hopi it is wonderfully effective. I have seen fifty Oraibis on horseback, and numbers of men and boys on foot, each armed with one of these weapons, on their rabbit drive. They determine on a certain area and then beat it thoroughly for rabbits, and woe be to the unhappy cottontail or even lightning-legged jack-rabbit if a Hopi throws his boomerang. Like the wind it speeds true to its aim and seldom fails to kill or seriously wound.

Though most of the men have guns and many of the youths revolvers, the bow and arrow as a weapon is not entirely discarded. All the young boys, even little tots that can scarcely walk, use the bow and arrow with dexterity. A small hard melon or pumpkin is thrown into the air and a child will sometimes put two or even three arrows into it before it reaches the ground. Old men who are too poor to own modern weapons are often seen sitting like the proverbial and oft-pictured fox, stealthily watching for a ground squirrel, prairie-dog, or rat to come out of his hole, when the speedy and certain arrow is let fly to his undoing.

Except for a little wild meat of this kind, secured seldom, or a sheep, which is too valuable for its wool to kill on any except very special and rare occasions, the Hopis are practically vegetarians. They are not above taking what the gods send them, however, in the shape of a dead horse. A few years ago Mr. D. M. Riordan, formerly of Flagstaff, conducted a party of friends over a large section of the region presented in these pages, and when near Oraibi a beautiful mare of one of the teams suddenly bloated and speedily died. In less than an hour after they were told they might take the flesh; the Hopis had skinned it, cut up the carcass, and removed every shred of it. I afterwards saw the flesh cut into strips, hung outside the houses of the fortunate possessors to dry, and I doubt not that horse meat made many a happy meal for them during the months that followed.

Hopi Children, at Oraibi, Waiting for a Scramble of Candy.

When a Hopi feels rich he may buy a sheep or a goat from a Navaho, or even kill a burro in order to vary his dietary.

Corn is his staple food. It is cooked in a variety of ways, but the three principal methods are piki, pikami, and pu-vu-lu. Piki is a thin, wafer-like bread, cooked as I have before described.

On one occasion, at Oraibi, an old friend, Na-wi-so-ma, was making piki for the Snake Dancers. When I took my friends to see her, they all ate of the bread and asked her all manner of questions about it.

Na-wi-so-ma was very kind and obliging. One of my party wished to make moving photographs of the operation of making piki, so she cheerfully moved her too-ma (cooking stone) outside. She insisted upon placing it, however, so that her back was to the blazing sun, which rendered it impossible to make the photographs. It was in vain that I explained to her why she must face the sun, and, at last, in desperation, I seized the heavy too-ma and carried it where I desired it to be. In my haste in putting it down—rather, dropping it—it snapped in two, and I had to repair the damage to her stone and feelings with a piece of silver ere we could proceed.

Pikami is made as follows: A certain amount of corn-meal is mixed with a small amount of sugar, and coloring matter made from squash flowers. This mixture is then placed in an earthenware vessel, or olla, and a cover tightly sealed on the vessel with mud. It is now ready to go into the oven. The pikami oven is generally out of doors. Sometimes it is a mere hole in the ground, without a covering, but the better style is where the hole is located in the angle of two walls and partially covered. A broken olla is made to serve as a chimney. To prepare the oven, sticks of wood are placed inside it and set on fire. When these are reduced to flaming coals and the oven is red hot, the coals are withdrawn, and the olla containing the corn-meal mixture is lowered into the hole. This is then covered with a stone slab, sealed with mud, and allowed to remain closed for several hours. When the oven is unsealed and the olla withdrawn, the corn-meal is thoroughly cooked—now pikami—and the dish is both nutritious and delicious.

Pu-vu-lu is a corn-meal preparation that corresponds somewhat to the New England doughnut. On one occasion, just before the Snake Dance at Mashonganavi, I found Ma-sa-wi-ni-ma, Kuchyeampsi's mother, busy preparing the dish. When I induced her to come into the sunshine to be photographed, stirring the meal, just eight other kodak and camera fiends insisted upon "shooting" her at the same time. She was very complacent about it, especially when I collected ten cents a head for her, and handed her ninety cents for her five minutes' pose.

Her method was as follows: Into a cha-ka-ta (bowl) she placed corn-meal and a little coloring matter. Then adding sugar and water, she stirred it with a stick, as shown in the photograph. It was made to a thick dough. In the meantime a pan of water, into which mutton fat had been placed, was on the fire, and when it was hot enough small balls of the corn-meal dough were dropped into the water and fat and allowed to remain until cooked. The result is a not unpleasant food, of which the Hopis are very fond.

One of the common dishes, when a sheep has been killed, is the neu-euck´-que-vi, a stew composed of corn, mutton, and chili.

So far the Hopis have not been a success as traders. It is a slow and long journey from aboriginal life to civilization. One of the young men who had been to school, a bright youth of some twenty-three years,—Kuy-an-im´-ti-wa,—was fired with a desire to trade with his people on his own account. Permission was given him by the agent to start a store. A small building was speedily erected at the foot of the Mashonganavi mesa and a stock of goods purchased. For a while things went well. Then Kuyanimtiwa had to go away on business, and an elderly uncle (I think it was) took charge of the store in his absence. When the embryo trader returned he found his shelves nearly empty, and a lot of trash accumulated under his counter, which the old man had taken "in trade." The credits of many Hopis had been extended and enlarged without proper consulting of Bradstreet's or Dun's, and blank ruin stared poor Kuyanimtiwa in the face. I purchased about eighty dollars' worth of baskets and "truck" from him, for which, however, I was compelled to give him my check. For long weeks, indeed months, the check did not come in, until I feared the poor fellow had lost it. When I inquired I found it was in the hands of the agent, being held as security until some disposal was made of a suit between the old man and Kuyanimtiwa. It ultimately reached the bank, so I assume the trouble was ended, but it will be some time, if what he said has lasting force, before the young Hopi will open store again with an untrained assistant.

In an earlier chapter I have shown that the women build and own the houses. In return the men knit the stockings and weave the women's dresses and sashes. With looms very similar to those described in the chapter on "Navaho Blanketry," they make the dresses we have seen the women wearing. In the days before the Spaniards introduced sheep the Hopis grew cotton quite extensively, dyed it with the simple but beautiful and permanent dyes, and wove it into garments. The blue of the dresses was originally obtained—and is yet by some—from the seeds of the sunflower.

In several cases I have found blind men engaged in knitting stockings. With needles of wood, long and slender, their fingers busily moved as those of the old housewives used to do in my boyhood's days. One was an old man, Tu-ki-i´-ma. He was "si-bo´-si" (blind), and expressed his thankfulness for the occupation. Another poor old man, stone blind, was winding yarn into a ball. He was squatted upon the ground, with the yarn around his feet and knees. It was a pathetic sight to see the old and forlorn creature anxious to make himself useful, even though blind and aged.

There are a score of other interesting matters I should enjoy referring to did space permit, but these must be left for some future time.

That they are picturesque and interesting, and in some of their ceremonies fascinating, there is no question. They are religious (in their way), domestic, honest, faithful, industrious, and chaste. But there is no denying that many of them are dirty,—really, indescribably filthy. One of my old drivers, Franklin French, used to say with a turn up of his nose: "I'd rather associate with a good skunk who was up in the skunk business than get to leeward of a Moki town." Their sanitary accommodations are nil, and their habits accord with their accommodations. Were it not for the fierce rays of the sun and the strong winds that purify their elevated mesa-tops, the accumulated evils would soon render habitation impossible. Water being so scarce, they are not habitually cleanly in person, as are some of the other peoples. Hence the contempt with which many of the Navahoes regard them.

Of course there are exceptions, where both houses and individuals are as neat and clean as can be. Among Hopis as well as among whites, it is not possible to generalize too widely.