But chiefly I write of Life and Death, and men and women,
and Love and Fate, according to the measure of my ability.
—Kipling to Gobind
The Hopi people are bound up in clanships, rituals, and ceremonies.
Herbert E. Gregory, in his remarkable volume of statistics, entitled
The Navajo Country, has this to say of them:—
These people have maintained themselves and preserved their race
from extinction in a singularly unfriendly environment. With
incredible skill they have practised the art of conservation of
water, and that the mind of the race is intent on this one problem
is shown by the organization of the clans and the elaborate
ceremonies devised to enlist the coöperation of unseen Powers which
are believed to control the rainfall. Endless toil and endless
prayer, both directed to increase and to preserve the precious
water, constitute the life of the Hopi.
We find in their desert cairns of rock something different from an
ordinary monument to mark land or to point a road, having in them
special gifts of feathers or painted sticks. That certain clans may
never be without the feathers of the eagle, these birds are captured
young and reared in cages or at the ends of chains on the housetops. A
curious sight to see: a captive eagle, baleful of eye, morose, sullen,
posed at the edge of a roof, a brooding, vicious prisoner with beak and
talons like razors, a dangerous thing to approach carelessly. These
birds must be reared unharmed, therefore the nests are robbed of the
young. A wounded or crippled sacrifice will not be accepted; for, aside
from being the source of feathers, it is said that eagles are smothered
to death in certain ceremonies.
In distant places, the far-away headlands of the Butte country and the
sky-drifting mountains, it is said the Hopi have altars. There is one,
a young Hopi told me, atop “Sist-ter-vung-ter-we,” or “one that is
farthest west,” in the long line of volcanic piles bordering their
southern boundary. And once I received a handful of round, painted
sticks, a miniature faggot, from the distant Apache Reservation, with
an inquiry from that Agent as to their meaning.
“Yes,” said a Hopi, “they are from the Rain altar down there. The Hopi
go to those places at times. I have no doubt you could find some in the
San Francisco Mountains, if you knew where to look.”
Prayer-sticks, tied in little bundles, offered to the gods. And reflect
for a moment. The Apache was an enemy, a most bitter and sinister
enemy. The most southerly and westerly ruins of Hopi civilization are
to be found along the Rio del Lino, or Flax River, as the Little
Colorado was named by the Spanish. Their dawn settlements are far to
the north, in hidden cañons close to the Utah line; and it is not
likely that their eastern pueblos, those of the Hopi proper, were ever
beyond the upper reaches of the Jedito Wash country. But these
prayer-sticks are found far beyond those limits. They suggest religious
pilgrimages into enemy provinces. Perhaps the early Hopi accepted even
this dangerous means of placating his deities. Primitive knowledge
would have located the sources of rain in the western range, where the
San Francisco peaks lift their snow-capped heads, and in the White
Mountains of the Apache country. The Navajo fastened his legends to
that highest desert elevation, Navajo Mountain, and it is not likely
the Hopi ventured there. But his Rain gods, those powerful to relieve
the aridity of his country and ensure against famine, dwelt in
mountains somewhere, and therefore, trembling perhaps, muttering
incantations, he went to them.
Anything that is strange, and possibly potent, has been absorbed into
their embroidered religion. The clans like to procure colored glass.
They make much of tortoise shells, and other things speaking of the
sea. President Roosevelt was petitioned by them to forward a jar of
sea-water. They have—or had—a Parrot clan, a fantastic touch
reminiscent of some lonely friar who had a mission garden and in it
kept his pets.
Close to their homes are many shrines that excite the curiosity of
tourists and that sometimes get visitors into trouble. Once a couple of
the overly curious were thrashed with whips by Hopi of the Chimopovi
district—for which the guilty were severely punished by the Agent then
in charge. But more than one Agent has ordered busybodies to replace
bahoos and gifts taken from such places. While I had a hand in this,
and finally stopped the plundering of old graves, and once prevented
the sale and removal of an entire Hopi altar, still I must admit that I
never caught a tourist or a “scratcher” pillaging a newly made grave.
Most of the clans must have been intermingled in so small a population.
We have Youkeoma’s statement that there is a Ghost clan, subdivided
into a Ghost-and-Bird clan. A more intelligent member of the tribe once
endeavored to recall for me the numerous fraternities of his people. He
said: “The Sun, Salt, Crow, and Ant clans are dead. There are no more
of those people. The Parrot clan now has but one member, a woman. The
Bear clan is the largest, and next come the Sand and Snake clans. There
are the Spider and Evergreen clans. Some of them go in groups, so we
have the Bear, Spider, and Evergreen clans associated, as is the Rabbit
clan with the Tobacco clan. We have the Eagle, the Horn, the Fire, and
the Flute clan; the Antelope, the Lizard, and the Corn clan.” And when
that group of progressive head-men petitioned Washington in 1886 for a
school, they signed themselves as leaders of the Mountain-sheep clan,
the Coyote and Badger clans, the Rain, the Reed, and the Katchina
clans. But one of these men is living to-day—Honani, of Chimopovi,
always one of the friendlies. The most interesting and impressive of
them, Shupula, father of the chief Snake priest, died July 4, 1916, a
benign old man whose features are preserved in a splendid piece of
modeling by Mr. Emri Kopte, the sculptor who has lived for many years
among the Hopi Indians.
Next to these phases of his religion are the red pages of his
life-calendar. The Hopi is born to a heritage of toil in an unfriendly
environment, and perhaps to misunderstanding and small sympathy; but
the poetry of his life begins at once. The paternal grandmother acts as
his nurse. After bathing the child she anoints it with wood ashes, that
he may have a smooth body. The mother is supposed not to let the sun
shine on her for the period of twenty days, at the end of which time
the child is named. Only the women of the husband’s family are present
at this ceremony. They bring a blanket of Hopi weave, and a bowl of
sacred water to place before the mother. They wash her hair with this
water. Each of these godmothers brings an ear of corn as an offering.
They dip the corn in the water and stroke the head of the infant four
times, making at the same time a wish for its health and happiness.
Each of them suggests a name. The child will belong to the mother’s
clan, but will be named for something denoting the father’s clan. If
the father happens to be a member of the Sand clan, his children will
be named for things common to the desert sand.
On the twenty-first day after the birth these women have assembled and
washed the mother’s hair. This is before sunrise: they are a
dawn-loving people. Then the grandmother takes the infant in one arm
and the mother by the hand. Imagine that little ceremony upon the
craggy mesa-top in the gray chill of the desert morning, high in the
thin air, overlooking all the dim sleeping valleys. They step to the
mesa edge to view the rising sun. Sacred meal, mixed with corn-pollen,
is strewn on the air. Then, as that mellow light flames the farthest
east, radiating from the hearts of all the people, gilding Yucca Point
and the Terrace of the Winds, plashing warmly the cold walls of the
mesa fortress, the grandmother speaks the name she has selected from
those suggested for the child.
If the child be a girl, she will receive another name on reaching
maturity, when her hair will be washed and arranged in the symbolic
whorls as a sign of womanhood. If a boy, he will receive another name
at a certain ceremony entitling him to wear a mask and to dance. These
names then last through life.
One can understand from this little baptismal scene how my friend of
the Second Mesa, Ta-las-we-huma, got his name. It must have been a
beautiful sunrise, and the little fellow must have been well-favored in
the sight of his sponsors; for his name may be translated, “Glow of the
Rising Sun.”
The Hopi do not name their children with the frank vulgarity that so
often is found among the Navajo and other tribes. Many of their titles
are pure poetry. We have Lo-may-ump-tewa—something Going Straight and
Good, as an arrow—and Se-you-ma—one who Carries a Flower. Then there
are many names such as we commonly associate with Indians: Sah-mee or
Green Corn, and Qua-ku-ku, or Eagle Claws.
The Hopi maiden is most frequently given a tender name, and she is
often a pretty little thing deserving it. We find Tawa-mana, or Girl of
the Sun, and Pole-mana and Pole-see, meaning Butterfly Girl and
Butterfly Flowers (buttercups).
They are equally tasteful in naming places. I have already mentioned
Huh-kwat-we, the Terrace of the Winds. Of their closer and more
intimate places we find Ta-wah-pah Spring, the Spring of the Sun, at
one time a most precious waterhole, however roiled and muddy. And
Pah-lots-quabbie, the “place where we get red paint for the face,” a
point of particular interest to the women who wish to preserve their
complexions. Despite their copper-colored skins, the intense rays of
the desert sunlight cause them to take measures for protection. Much of
Indian face-painting is cosmetic, and not for the brilliant
color-scheme that a tourist connects with war-parties and potential
scalpings.
Many of their names are difficult to translate in a word or two, since
they most often describe things fully. The desert Indian is not a
word-maker, and for unfamiliar objects he does not create nouns. There
is Dah-vuph-cho-mah: this spot white men call the Hill of the
Water-Witch, for it is where the Water Development chief has his home,
shops, and office. He calls it a “camp.” Camp or not, it is a haven of
welcome for rare souls, including itinerant artists, poets, and
depressed Indian Agents. A disappointed candidate for the much-coveted
mayoralty of Polacca, probably actuated by bitterness, once dubbed this
prominence Pisgah. The Hopi named it, long before the mystery of
well-rigs and peach-tree wands was known, Dah-vuph-cho-mah: “the place
where we dry rabbit-skins for the quilts.” Quite simple, is it not?
The Hopi once made many robes of rabbit-skins. It was necessary to bury
the pelts in the sand before removal to the mesa-top, a ceremonial
matter; and Dah-vuph-cho-mah was the place to do it. The skins were
then rolled into ropes, thick and soft, and sewed together. I last saw
these coverings at Hotevilla, where so many traditions are preserved.
And this suggests the methods of rabbit-hunting. The Hopi does not seek
bunny with .22 rifle, or bow and arrow, or snares. Actually he drops
the swift creature with the Hopi rabbit-stick or boomerang, a curved
piece of mountain-oak that these Indians throw skillfully. But the
answer to the inquiring tourist is—“He runs the rabbit down.” The Hopi
are fleet of foot, and of course our touring friend devours this
explanation literally. Hopi rabbit-hunts are joyous community-affairs,
and they do run the rabbit down. They encircle a very large area of
desert valley, all runners, all bearing rabbit-sticks. Then they begin
contracting the circle. As the rabbits flee before one advancing line
of beaters, they are turned back by other lines. From every bush, it
seems, Hopi are bobbing up, with menacing blows and wild cries. The
game is thus run down and killed when tiring. Patient burros bear home
the spoils. I have seen these beasts covered with dead rabbits, while
afar in the plain still arose the merry shouts of the running hunters.
The language of the Tewa is composed of shorter terms.
“What do you call these?” I asked, showing some local beans.
“We call them ‘tdo.’”
“What does that mean?”
“It means ‘beans.’ When a Tewa means beans, he says ‘beans.’ But when a
Hopi speaks of these, he says: ‘Kotcha-cha-chi-morzree,’ ‘the beans
that are soft when boiled a long time.’” So he described them first,
when experimenting with their cooking, and he has never seen fit to
shorten his nomenclature.
Compared with the stalwart Sioux or the equally tall and vigorous
Navajo of the mountains, men of the horses, the Hopi are at first
glance a little people. This has brought them some sympathy from those
who seize on superficial appearances. The mature Hopi has a thick
figure, not inclined to fatness, but with barrel-like lungs and a
sturdy back. He would make a fine wrestler. As he has accepted things
of civilization via the trader, and absorbed so much from his neighbor,
the Navajo, his costume is not radically different to-day. The curious
dresses of the olden-time, of buckskin, cloth of native weave, and
feathers, such as may be seen in the Harvey collection at Albuquerque,
have disappeared from the mesas and to the younger generation are
unknown. A shirt of velveteen, loose trousers of some light cloth,
often pure white, moccasins of red-stained buckskin and his own
peculiar design, a handkerchief twisted about his head, these form his
costume. Most of his ornaments are bought of the Navajo, save that an
occasional Hopi silversmith will hammer the metal into Hopi patterns,
such as butterflies and snakes with turquoise eyes. When you see these
forms, they are Hopi. The Navajo does not use them.
But in this dress of the men the resemblance to the nomad ceases. The
true Hopi is marked by his short stature, his broader and radically
different physiognomy, and especially by the dressing of his hair. The
Navajo is usually a sloven with his hair. Do not get too close to him.
The Navajo draws his hair tightly back from the brow, and catches it in
a knot or a queue at the back of his head. And there is little
difference between the men and their women. The Hopi wears the bang and
the straight bobbed effect that came out of Egypt. When it is possible,
he takes scrupulous care of his mane. Hair-washing is an important
feature of all ceremonies. He was the first bobbed American.
To-day this effect will be found among the orthodox only. The younger
men, home from schools, have adopted the comb and shears as they drift
away from many fetishes. But hair-cutting has produced some serious
wrangles with the Hopi. Long ago an Agent zealously interpreted a
Washington order to mean that all Indians, not only those in schools,
should be made to cut their hair in white man’s fashion—as if this
would produce civilization overnight. To the elders of the tribe this
was a terrible heresy, and they resisted very naturally. It is too bad
that orders cannot be transmitted in the form of blue-prints.
The women of the tribe are the strongholds of conservatism. I recall
holding a council of mixed sexes, the talk relating to some form of
community improvement along modern lines. And when it was over, I asked
my interpreter:—
“Do you believe they understood?”
“The men, of course,” he replied, emphatically; “but do you think it
possible to get that stuff through a Hopi woman’s head? Epten. The men
will try to carry out your wishes; but they are in for a very
unpleasant time of it with their women. A Hopi woman! She is like a
piece of sandrock. The winds wear it away, but it will take many
years.”
The younger women, who have had schooling, wear the gingham and calico
dresses they have learned to make and launder, and the field matrons
assist them in renewing these garments. But the old ones, and the
students of middle-age, are most likely to be found wearing the ancient
Hopi weaves. A dress may be of thick cloth caught at one shoulder,
leaving the opposite arm bare, belted at the waist with a woven sash,
the wearer’s legs and feet bare most of the time, unless for some
special journey she dons the woman’s wrapping and shoe of buckskin. She
grows thick and fat, her countenance rounding into a broad, complacent
face that can smile pleasantly or become stolidly impervious as the
mood strikes her. Once married, her hair is parted and hangs down her
back in thick plaits. Her hands are thick and coarsened from hard
labor, the making of pottery, and especially from the baking of piki
bread.
This baking is done on a red-hot stone over the fire. The Hopi woman
sits before it, at her side a pan of batter, sometimes colored red or
blue. She dips her hand into the batter and smears it deftly over the
hot stone. Before it has burned and curled, she wipes over it a second
layer. This last cooks perfectly in a thin wafer, quite like
tissue-paper, crinkled and brittle. This she peels off and places in a
pile of such sheets. All day she does this, often until her palm is
perfectly cooked with the bread. The sheets are then rolled, again
resembling a packet of tissue, quite like those we used to buy at
Christmas time for decorations. A dozen of these rolls, and the Hopi
man will take the trail, fully provided with provender.
Some rather reject the thought of eating piki bread, but I have sampled
Indian foods more than once, and with different results. An old Navajo
shemah can broil mutton ribs and prepare a pot of coffee over a hogan
fire in such a way that one who has had a hard trip,—and more of it to
come,—thinks them delicious. And piki bread is not half bad, although
rather flat in taste, and gritty, for the sand will intrude; and I
suppose if one accepted it as a steady diet his teeth would be worn
down in time, like those of the older Hopi. As for the cooked hand, one
should gratefully accept and eat piki without being too curious as to
its making. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Next in the Hopi life-calendar appears the urgent necessity for
marriage. The happy man has very little to do with this affair. The
bride-elect—self-elected—and her mother, a wily dowager who has
contrived a large part of the proceedings, decide most of these things
for themselves. I cannot say how early negotiations have been opened by
the aunts and uncles of both signatories, but of course they have been
consulted. At any rate, on a day the girl and her mother pay a visit to
the eligible young man’s home, and tender his parents a present of piki
bread and cornmeal on a woven-reed plaque. Most Southwest tribes use a
wedding-basket symbol; the Navajo import from another tribe a wedding
basket of definite design, and will use no other. If the boy’s parents
accept these presents and replace them with a portion of mutton on the
same plaque, they have signified their consent to the union. If there
has been dissension between the Montagues and Capulets and a plague on
both houses, so to speak, the disdaining parents give this piki and
meal to others, signifying their lack of interest in mere foreigners,
and these receiving diplomats break the sad news that a perfectly good
offer has been declined.
But if the present is accepted, the uncles of the bride-elect gather at
her home to advise her concerning the duties of a good wife, and at an
appointed time the girl, accompanied by her parents and close
relatives, headed by the one who named her, proceed to the home of the
groom’s parents for a feast. This gathering is held at night, and when
they depart the bride remains. She spends four nights in her husband’s
people’s home, doing the housework for the whole family. Very early in
the morning she begins the corn-grinding, to pay for her husband.
During these four days there is a ceremony of hair-washing, and her
hair is given a peculiar cut to mark her as a married woman. Ever after
she wears it so. And during these four days the boy’s uncles bring in
cotton for her wedding-robe. They are paid for it in meal, and they
depart to the kiva to weave it. While at this weaving, they are fed by
the girl’s family. At the end of the four days the robe is finished.
The uncles heap a wealth of advice on the groom before he departs from
the home of his birth. Then the bride dons the white robe and goes with
her husband to the home of her own parents; that is to say, she is
accompanied by her husband. If he has had any ideas of a home of his
own, away from the precincts of mother-in-law, he has not announced
them, and apparently discretion is the better part of valor.
In this manner a young lady has gone to the home of a desirable young
man, proposed for him, married him, partially paid for him, decked
herself with apparel manufactured by his people, and then led him to
her home in triumph.
There is nothing new under the sun. Vamping was reduced to a precise
science by the Hopi many centuries before the pueblo de Los Angeles was
dreamed of.
“And—hark! As I live, again the villagers!”
All this has not been enough to establish cordial relationship between
the families. There must be something in the nature of a riotous
shivaree. These folk who have captured our darling boy must not be
permitted to crow too loud. So the mother of the groom, his influential
aunts and other female relatives, especially those whose temperaments
will lend verve to the affair, proceed to the rival house. They go upon
an errand of mock-seriousness that may assume proportions. They will
say unpleasant things in loud voices, especially for the benefit of the
neighbors, to the effect that this bride has numerous and glaring
defects, and that, if the truth be told, perhaps their paragon has not
acquired the most beautiful and gracious of the village maidens.
The women of the bride’s household reply in kind, their language not
always the most decorous. Personal references are made, involving the
cleanliness and habits of both parties, and a friendly fight is on.
These ladies proceed to sling mud,—at first verbally, and then
actually,—real mud, over the house and each other. The bride and her
mother will have to have a vigorous house-cleaning after this, and
fresh plastering on the interior walls. Perhaps that is the idea of
it—to make them furbish the domicile.
The masculine element is conspicuous by its utter absence. The men know
better than to appear. Like white men on house-cleaning day, they seek
the highest roof or the lowest cellar, along with their disconsolate
dogs. Woe betide any absent-minded one who strays within the field.
Both parties are likely to turn on him with more than words and mud. It
is not likely that the men will dare come home until after sunset,
when, no doubt, their attention will be distracted by recitals of the
affair, and the condition of the home will cause them much grief.
A friendly, if undignified, roughhouse, to show the world that these
two families, now having common interests, can endure the most
unpleasant conditions and survive.
And would you imagine that the groom is ever to have a home of his very
own, with a fireside, and slippers, and everything? Not unless he has
his Agent behind him and bravely kicks over the sacred traditions,
risking ostracism possibly and at least a great deal of home-town
misery. Just how long Jacob will serve that family for Rachel, I am not
aware; and unlike Jacob, he serves after having been snared. He draws
and transports the water, if he has a wagon; he cuts the wood and
attends the field; he wrangles horses, herds cattle, and helps manicure
the sheep. He is owned by this old mother who directed her daughter’s
attention toward him.
To be fair, sometimes the girl has fancied him for herself, without too
much urging of family; and I recall asking more than one diffident
groom, when about to publish banns:—
“Do you really, of yourself, wish to marry this woman?”
“Well, sir—she wants me to marry her.”
In delicate matters of this kind, the Hopi young man is pleasantly
agreeable and strives to please.
And I succeeded in getting very few of them to take another point of
view. There were several determined Romeos who had selected girls for
themselves, who paid court despite all family disapproval, and who
finally won out in their suits. But they were shrewdly wise to fortify
themselves in Governmental positions: interpreters, policemen,
laborers, or assistants, otherwise they would likely have been
ostracized and come close to starvation. Having joined the Moungwi’s
official family, however, and being endowed with monthly salary “fresh
and fresh,” they could assert a bit of independence, could demand
immunity from the bitterest of traditions; and I suppose they made much
of their closeness to the Big Chief. Most Indians do. “I will tell my
white uncle” has throttled many a threatened unpleasantness.
Then too, they were regarded by those less fortunate as rich men,
having, besides a monthly surety, certain perquisites and a supposed
subtle influence in foreign affairs.
“This Moungwi speaks to Washington by papers and the singing wires; and
do you not know, stupid one, that I often talk with him?”
Their family visitors and retainers increased and were many. Not an
enviable position, a place at court, despite its reflected importance
and privilege. And the fall thereof when, Fate decreeing, the Moungwi
with loud words dismissed one of these believed favorites! A return to
the kiva influences was not a happy experience. Sanctuary had not been
copied or absorbed from those early Spaniards and their holy friars.
Indian ridicule and Indian persecution can be very cruel.
Few of the young men have the wherewithal to build a home or to buy
one, either at the mesa or in the valley, so they are tied for years to
this feudal family-system, waiting to inherit from their elders.
Even when one is so fortunate, so energetic, or so rash as to throw
aside the traditions, he simply accepts bondage without mother-in-law,
since no part of the house nor anything he brings to it, other than his
personal belongings, may be claimed by him. The woman owns and rules
the home, and this includes the children and the harvest. The children
are of the mother’s clan. The man may disport himself, gaily dressed
and agile as a panther, in the ceremonies; he may be a leader in the
hunt; he may declaim in the kiva; but his authority ceases at the
threshold of the Hopi home.
For has not this woman, during the first year of her married life,
ground from one to two thousand pounds of corn meal in payment for her
man and her wedding dress? She has, indeed. And since she has purchased
him, she has the right to divorce him. He may slave in the hot fields
and the sand-blows, running to and from the patches, hoe on shoulder,
to charm a crop of corn. He has planted with ceremony—so many grains
for the hot wind, so many for the field rat, so many for the katchina,
and so many for himself; but once he has harvested it, and packed the
Hopi share to the home cellar, his ponies may starve for the lack of a
hatful of grain if his wife is not generous. One thing with another, I
think the Hopi male has a rather tough time of it. Sometimes he grows a
bit fretful and proceeds to push his wife about, rarely going so far as
to box her jaws, which she very often thoroughly deserves and earns.
Then, if she still likes him, she appeals amid tears to the Agent, with
view to having him reprimanded and, unless it be crop-time, jailed. But
if she does not care for him overmuch, having, as related of an
Ethiopian matron, “entirely lost her taste for that man,” she abruptly
divorces him.
This action calls for no assemblage of the family circle or of
chieftains, no personal complaint, no service of notice, as one might
imagine. Friend husband returns at evening from the sheep-camp or
cornfield, probably crooning an old kiva hymn, at peace with all the
Desert and its demons, to find his saddlegear, his cow-rope, and his
other shirt on the doorstep. The decree is thus handed down, recorded,
and confirmed. There is no appeal. He is out. He hoists his few
belongings on his back and departs away from there.
If a young man, he will likely return to the parental roof; if not, he
becomes a solitary and a wanderer for a season, roosting about where
nightfall catches him, to be found later in company with some divorced
woman or widow, cheerfully toiling to harvest corn for children not his
own. When this thing has been repeated a number of times, and
throughout a whole tribe, the Agent’s job of keeping vital statistics
of clarity begins to loom into proportions. A Hopi genealogical record
resembles a war-map. The keeping of it becomes abstract science, having
both biological and anthropological phases.
I have known Hopi men of middle age who long maintained a fatherly
interest in their children after such a social cataclysm; but they were
not many, most of them growing careless of any and all responsibility;
and I have found women as the heads of households to which—to adjust
the records—I had to assign four husbands, all living and none present.
But to return to the Hopi wedding. After the four days spent in the
home of her husband’s people, and her triumphant return with the
captive to the house of her mother, the bride is supposed to deny
herself the pleasure of all Hopi revelry and ceremony until the next
Neman Katchina Dance. This occurs about a fortnight prior to the Snake
Dance of August, and is an appeal for rain and harvest fruition. Then
she arrays herself once more in the pure white robe, and appears for a
few moments at the ceremony. This is to be her last bid for public
attention and the bride’s centre of the stage, before settling down to
a life of toil certainly, the rearing of many children probably, and
perhaps a number of alliances. But it matters not how troubled her
life, how peaceful, pure, how hectic; this first marriage is the only
one to be distinguished by a ceremony and a symbol. This is the last
time she wears the robe—save one. When next we see her in its white
folds, she, having fulfilled the monotonous duties of a true Hopi or
having, like Emma Bovary, tested all of life’s experiences, is waiting,
peacefully uncaring, to be carried to her last bed in the shadow of the
great, immutable mesa.
My introduction to the importance of the wedding robe came about
through an effort to eliminate the evil power of the tribe’s old women.
The weddings were arranged entirely too early, and operated to defy
both Arizona State Law and Service regulation. It was a foxy method and
held to with savage determination. An appeal to the Bureau would have
brought only the hopeless decision that a tribal marriage had been
declared a legal marriage by great Eastern Solons bent on pushing
Orientals into Occidental grooves. Often too, young people were forced
into these marriages. And the results were highly pleasing to the Hopi
elders, and four-fold: Rachel’s mother procured labor in the form of
Jacob. Jacob’s family received the ton of corn meal that Rachel would
grind. Certainly Rachel, and often both contracting parties, were
prevented from attending the schools, as the old Hopi earnestly
desired; and Hopi traditions as to fruition were completely satisfied.
There was an even more serious result. This grinding of corn meal early
and late, crouched over the stone metate, ended in the young mother’s
losing her first-born. At one time there was no Hopi woman at the First
Mesa whose first-born child was living.
So, as Moungwi, I gave them fair warning that these things must stop.
They did not stop. An Indian, of whatever tribe, will always chance a
test. They are a great people for stolid experiments. My first idea of
punishment was, the child-wife to the boarding-school, the groom and
his father to the Agency jail.
“But,” these male unfortunates finally convinced me, “you are punishing
the wrong persons. We men have had nothing to do with the matter. Get
the old women.”
And when this was done there were lamentations and floods of tears. One
old virago nearly washed me from her home. It was a wet season at the
mesa. And the virus worked about as successfully as a local philosopher
of the Hopi described another’s conversion to Christianity via baptism.
“First time they get him, just like vaccinate him—no take. He
backsliding now—dance all time—old Hopi again. But next time they get
him baptized, mebbeso it take all right—mebbeso.”
Not all of my efforts produced success.
You may ask, Why not secure the girl in school before this untoward
happening? The younger children of the Hopi all attend day schools,
located close to their homes, and often a girl will reach maturity
before the matrons have knowledge of a marriage scheme. With the
child-wife in the boarding-school, caught during those first four days,
there was no procession to mamma’s house, no corn-grinding, no
attendance of the Katchina dance, and no robe. The joy had been taken
out of life. There was mourning in both camps; for, as Jacob was in
jail, there was no water-hauling, no woodcutting, no unpaid laboring in
the field. It was a very sad state of affairs, tribally, and apparently
this strange Moungwi had little sympathy for the human race,—at least
the Hopi division of it, and its urge to perpetuate itself.
One day, about two years after the imposition of such a sentence, I met
an old man at a distant mesa who asked for a talk.
“His daughter is home now,” said the interpreter, “and he wants your
permission to have her robe woven.”
“Robe—you mean a wedding robe?”
“Yes. You recall she had no tribal ceremony; and it is like this: When
the white people marry, they have a ring. The white robe is our ring.
If she dies, there will be no robe to bury her in.”
Such is the stupidity of the alien when he seeks to rule the so-called
heathen. My method was justified to protect the weak and the young, but
I had cast out sentiment.
It may be they shall give me greater ease
Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities.
Quite so many Lispeths. I promptly gave permission for the weaving of a
robe, and I hope she has had no use for it, nor will have, these many
years.
The mid-West moralist may interpolate a question here. Without their
own service, did you permit them to go unmarried? This had little in it
of the material compared with that robe episode. But as Moungwi, a
commissioned Head of the people, vested also with the authority of the
State of Arizona, I would solemnize a legal ceremony if events had
proved one necessary and the parties had attained a legal age. I never
married a woman to a scoundrel. But I have married four couples in one
morning, issuing first the State license as a deputized clerk of the
court, solemnizing the ceremony as a magistrate, blessing the bride,
and immediately thereafter summoning into open court the groom and all
other guilty persons for trial on a charge of child-prostitution. This
method was drastic, and very wearing on one who had other things to
engage his attention. And it was not a very cheering family-event. But
it finally produced obedience. There came a time when the Hopi would
consult the Agency records as to their children’s ages, and would
inquire about school terms, and what Moungwi thought about it, before
framing-up family alliances.
The happiest of the Hopi marriages were those following my permission
to schoolboys and girls to arrange their own courting, sometimes at the
school, thus breaking down old mesa-lines. Boys of the First Mesa
married Hotevilla girls: a thing that would never have been tolerated
by the parents on either side. Close as are the mesas, housing the one
people, they might as well be separate provinces. Seldom will a First
Mesa marry an Oraibi, for instance, and vice versa. A local form of
derision among the Hopi is to mock the differences in pronunciation and
intonation of their common language. Oraibi is less than thirty miles
from Walpi, and yet an Oraibi is a being recognizing a different
civilization.
When last I visited Phœnix, I entered a shop to make a purchase. A
fine-looking Hopi came forward and greeted me. We talked about the
folks at home, of his summer visit to the mesas, who had died and who
had married.
“Now let me see,” I parleyed, for it is hard to remember all
individuals of a tribe. “You are married—what is your wife’s name?”
“Why, you know her; she was Youkeoma’s granddaughter.”
“Sure enough—Viola—the one who hid in the wagon and ran away to school
at Phœnix, for fear I would send her back to Hotevilla.”
Birth and baptism; marriage and divorce; many dances; a lifetime of
endless toil and endless prayer; many harvests, rich and meagre. Then
comes the time when he has planted his last crop, or she has finished
the last of household labors. Something happens to end things, and to
serve summons to the Judgment Seat, that lonely prominence overlooking
the Oraibi-Dinnebito Washes in the west. The tireless feet will no
longer cover the steep trails to the pueblo on the heights; the mesa
and the valley will know them no more. Death, as to us all, comes as a
surprise. There is a sad wailing that is soon hushed.
A woman of the family prepares the body for burial and washes the hair.
Then someone is nominated to sit with the dead, to express the common
grief. When first I heard of this, he was described as “the one who has
to be angry with the dead.” But the explanation was somewhat distorted.
The person who has this duty does talk to the dead, saying:—
“Oh! why did you leave us? Were you angry with us, that you have gone
away never to return? We are left here, lonely. What was it we did to
make you angry with us—that you have left us....”
If death occurs in the night, the burial is early the next morning. No
food is eaten. The body is arranged for burial in a sitting position. A
corn-planting stick is placed so as to project above its head. Then the
father or nearest male relative carries the body to the sand-mounds
below the mesa where adults are interred and buries it. Young children
have shallow graves in another place, for it is believed that their
spirits are weak, too weak to struggle through deeper soil.
Then the father returns to the home, procures food that he carries to
the grave in a ceremonial bowl, and leaves it there. One finds these
bowls, broken, in the sand; and of course it is expected that they will
not be disturbed. Above the graves of children one may find weathered
toys and the remnants of a doll.
Returning to the house a second time, he gathers all the mourning ones
around a common bowl of food, and they break their fast.
A simple life, simply ended.
These people succumb quickly to disease. Their mode of living invites
infection and spreads contagion. They suffer epidemics periodically,
and these are like the plagues of Egypt. Measles is a scourge; they
have known smallpox many times; the Spanish influenza decimated them.
But while these are swift and virulent enemies, they may be fought
vigorously and checked at last. There is one disease as fateful as
themselves, stealthy, insidious, that cannot be mastered. The white man
ensnared by it finds in the Desert a place of refuge, of hope; but the
Hopi refuge has not been found.
There is among my photographs one of a Hopi girl wearing the tribal
dress, her hair in whorls, a wistful expression on her face. I will not
tell you that this is an Indian princess, for there are no Indian
“princesses” outside vaudeville. She is simply Stella, of the First
Mesa. When she was not more than six years old, I found her on the
mesa-top, very dirty and ill-nourished, an orphan, a waif, being passed
around from one family to another. I packed her off to the Cañon
boarding-school, and almost immediately thereafter, upon advice of the
physician, to a sanatorium. When I next saw her there, she was a
contented little girl, very pretty, with a red bow of ribbon in her
dark hair and a taste for chocolates in her mouth. And then more years
rolled away, and again I visited the place. This time she had grown
swiftly into young womanhood. She had suffered a relapse and was in
bed.
The physician in charge accompanied me through the wards, for a number
of my Hopi were there, and finally we stopped for a little chat with
Stella. She still had a taste for candy, and so informed me. This being
“uncle” to several thousands has its responsibilities.
“She has been here a long time,” I said when we came away.
“Yes—an uneven case, erratic chart; and that sort seldom make a
complete recovery. By the way, did you notice anything peculiar in her
expression?”
“Well,” I replied, “she was a very pretty little child, and she has n’t
quite lost all that. There is something wistfully patient about her—a
half-smiling sadness—”
“The very thing,” said the doctor. “I wondered if you would notice it.
The Mona Lisa look: Fishberg mentions it. Stella is a perfect example.”
But when I last visited the mesa Stella had a home in which to welcome
me. She had tired of the long years at the sanatorium, and they were
many; she had returned, as they all endeavor, to her people on the
mesa-top; and she still liked candy, and she still had that placid,
melancholy expression. [4] I have sought to rescue many Hopi from that
dread disease, with varying success, but she is the only Gioconda I
have found among the Indians.