THE LAND OF THE HOPIS
In starting for Hopiland, that little island set in the ocean of the
Navajo’s country, we had anything but a definite idea whether we should
arrive at our destination, but we hoped for the best. We were used by
now to steering our craft by desert signs, as a navigator steers his
ship. The desert continually impresses one with its resemblance to the
sea,--opalescent, glittering in the sun, its sands ribbed as by waves;
sky and horizon meeting in unbroken monotony, and mesas floating on its
surface like purple islands. We were dazed by its vast distances and
always changing beauty. We made for great promontories looming up in
a sea of sand; tacked and veered to the next landmark; skirted reefs
of rock; and looked for windmills, arroyos and buttes to guide us as
a mariner does for lighthouses and buoys. For us who had always known
the restriction of well-marked, prim highways, it was a keen pleasure
to rely on our newly awakened primitive faculties. For the first time
we sensed the reality of expressions that the protected artificiality
of cities had made valueless before. For the first time water was
not a commodity which inevitably flows when a tap is turned; but the
difference between life and death. Old Bible phrases became real in
their vivid poetry. “Cattle upon a thousand hills,”--we passed them
every day. “The shadow of a great rock in a weary land” we learned to
avail ourselves of from the pitiless heat with deep gratitude. For a
brief time, we had become as pastoral and elemental as David or Jacob.
Keams Canyon we reached at sundown,--a tiny, jagged little place, oddly
charming, with hills packed behind it and a few government buildings
striding the canyon. In that easy-going land, those who directed us
had taken for granted that we should be looked after, regardless
or perhaps because of the fact that Hopiland has neither hotel nor
boarding house in its confines. The traveler must camp or depend on
private hospitality, which is not, probably because of frequent abuse,
as ungrudging as it is reported to be. We could have camped, but desert
touring is exhausting, and by nightfall we seldom had strength left
to attempt it. We were dog-weary from the heat and bad roads, but no
hospitable door opened to us, as we had been assured they would. The
agent was away, and we were directed from house to house, no inmate
wanting us himself, but each thinking his neighbor might. At last a man
more solicitous than the rest thought the minister might take us in.
And he did, most cordially.
Here and there on the reservations we heard talk among traders and
old settlers against the missionaries;--they were officious, or lazy,
or ignorant of Indian psychology, or bigoted. Yet by far the finest
hospitality we met on Indian reservations was from missionaries,
and altogether we gained a general impression that they were mainly
disinterested and sincere. Their work is far from remunerative, and
they are resigned to constant discouragement.
After serving us with supper, the missionary invited us to a prayer
meeting in his parlor. Four Indians and two babies comprised the prayer
meeting. Slicked up and awkward, their faces shining with soap, they
proved once more that clothes make the man. An Indian who is terrifying
and dignified in beaded buckskin is only stolid in overalls and
necktie. To the tune of a parlor melodeon they dismally sang “Brighten
Up the Corner Where You Are,” though it was obvious from their
expressions and the wails of the babies that if it were left to them
the Corner would stay just as it Was. I could not help wondering, with
all respect to the sincerity of our host, what advantage there was in
offering Billy Sunday’s elementary twaddle to a people whose language
is so subtle that a verb paradigm often has 1500 forms. But surely,
when the Indian is taught to discard his own arts and crafts and
culture, let us give him substitutes of an equally high standard from
our viewpoint. Pater might pass over his head, but Poor Richard would
not, for his homely commonsense would find an echo in the Indian’s own
native philosophy. Probably the most valuable thing the missionary
and his wife had to offer they thought the least of,--their warm
friendliness and human interest in each convert and backslider, their
folksy neighborliness with red people, and the unconscious example of
their straightforward lives.
Keams Canyon is only eleven miles from the first mesa, and our car was
soon climbing dunes of sand toward the base of the long, bold mesa
on which Walpi is built. From below we could hardly discern the tiny
villages perched on the cliff, so perfectly were the buildings fused
with the gray rock itself, both in color and mass. Even the black
specks which marked the position of doors and windows seemed like
natural crevices in the rock. Mont St. Michel is the only other place I
know where architecture is so completely one with its foundations.
As we climbed to Polacca, the Indian hamlet at the base of Walpi, the
ruts became so deep that at the last we were buried to the hubs. A
dozen little Indians, giggling and shy like boys the world over, ran to
help us push, but their help was of little value. All our questions,
though they are taught English at school, passed over their heads, and
their replies were limited to “Yes” or “No,” shouted so hoarsely that
we jumped involuntarily whenever they spoke. For an hour we chopped
brush in the broiling sun, backed and shifted gears till the wheels
caught at last, and we plunged up hill to the trader’s. He told us we
were the first of a dozen cars stalled there that week to extricate
ourselves.
The village seemed deserted as we passed through. Finally we met with
a red-haired man with a vague chin who advised us to camp near the
spring, to which he promised to direct us.
“Everybody in town seems to have gone to the next mesa,” commented Toby.
“They have,” said he, while a sheepish expression came over his
aimless face. “They’re holding an inquiry into a white man’s fighting
an Indian. You can’t lay a finger on these Hopis, they baby them so.
Fact is,” he said in a burst of confidence, “I’m the man that did it.
A buck called me something I wouldn’t stand from no one, so I jest lit
into him. I was goin’ to kill him, but I kinder changed my mind,--and
slapped him instead.”
He looked as if his mind would make such changes. He went on with much
violence of expression to give his opinion of the white settlers on
the reservations, especially the missionaries,--“they stay here so long
they git all dried up, and jest nachally hate themselves and everybody
else.”
His annoyance against the world was so large that we made haste to
leave him. It was too hot to champion anyone’s grievances, and his
seemed dubious. I felt sorry for the Indians who had to deal with him.
Indian reservations, as we saw them, always seemed to harbor a certain
proportion of white vultures who were not calculated to increase the
Indian’s gratitude or respect for the Great Father, and some of them,
unhappily, were in government employ.
We engaged a little boy to act as our guide to the villages on the
mesa in which he lived, who thought more, we afterward discovered, of
getting a ride in an automobile,--the delight of all Indians--than of
his duties as guide. Not many white drivers, I dare say, have been up
that rocky and primitive road which leads to the ancient village of
Walpi. The natives told us we could do it, so we started. Two roads led
to the wagon trail. Our little guide, who was as tongue-tied as most
Indian children, was for directing us toward one, when a fat woman,
hung with jewels, and clad in a cerise wrapper, leaned over a fence and
argued the point with him. Polacca sees more strangers than any other
Hopi village, owing to its position, and the importance of the snake
dance which takes place there every September, yet visitors were rare
enough for us and our car to be objects of interest. So we followed
her advice and took the other road, and a few rods further, came to a
dead stop in the deep beach sand which surrounds the town. It was only
the third or fourth time it had happened, so that we did not despair,
though we did not relish the thought of another half hour’s digging and
shoving under the burning, sickening heat of the desert sun. Our guide
took the inevitable quarter hour for reflection common to Indians,
then he summoned his juvenile playmates, and they cut bush for us, and
tramped it into the bad places until we were able to go on sooner than
we expected. We branched on to a road, roughly paved with great rocks,
and rutted by the cart wheels of three centuries, like the dead streets
of Pompeii. The nose of the car began to point skyward, and climbed up,
up, while the desert dropped away from us. To go over that road once
is an experience, but I should not care to repeat it often. It wound
up the side of the mesa, with sometimes a low parapet to keep us from
dropping off, and sometimes nothing at all. A boulder now and then or
rough ledge cropping across the road would tilt the old lady at an
uncomfortable angle. Heights and climbs over dangerous switchbacks had
become commonplaces of travel by now, and we had gained confidence from
learning the tremendous flexibility of which a motor car is capable.
We were willing, without taking credit for extraordinary courage,
to undertake almost any road wide enough for our tracks. People who
confine their driving to perfect boulevards and city roads have no idea
of the exhilarating game motoring really is. My wrists were like iron,
and I had developed a grip in my fingers it would have taken years to
acquire otherwise. No grade seemed too steep for the “old lady,”--how
we relied on her pulling power! Much of the climb we accomplished on
high, though at the final grade, where she fairly stood on end, we
shifted to low. And at last we were in the street of Walpi, looking
down on a blue-gray sea several hundred feet below us, and surrounded
by a group of interested natives, who with great presence of mind had
filled their hands with pottery to sell.
What is commonly called Walpi is really three towns, Walpi, Sichomovi,
and a Tewa village called Hano. The people in the last village, which
is the first as you enter the towns from the road, have little traffic
with the Walpi people, but the division line is well nigh invisible
between Sichomovi and Hano. Beyond the second town the mesa narrows,
and over a slender tongue of rock, part of which has fallen away in
recent years during a severe storm, we looked across to the most
interesting village of Walpi.
Against an intense blue sky it blocked its irregular outline high
above the delicate desert, with gnarled sticks of ladders angling out
from the solid mass of buildings. The crazy but fascinating stone
houses merging into one another, now swallowing up the road and later
disgorging it, made with their warm sandstone color an effective
background for the people who came and went in the streets, or sat in
the doorways in silver and scarlet. The housetops were lively with
children and women in native costume, or, more comfortably and less
picturesquely in the ginghams and plaid shawls beloved of Indians. The
squat houses, the women bending their necks to great water jars, the
desert, all suggested a new-world Palestine.
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE OF WALPI.]
[Illustration: OLDEST HOUSE IN WALPI.]
Compared with Walpi, the first two villages are neat and tidy, their
interiors whitewashed clean, and little pots of flowers almost
invariably on the window sills. The Indian love of flowers impressed
us everywhere. House after house we entered, to receive a soft smile of
welcome from the old grandfather squatted on the floor dangling a naked
brown baby, or from the grandmother, busy with a bowl of clay which she
shaped and painted with quick fingers, while she talked to us through
her English-speaking daughter.
In these Hopi houses, ropes of dark crimson jerked beef buzzing with
flies fill the hot room with a fragrance loved only by the Indians;
strings of wampum, worth sometimes two horses and a burro, rugs, native
woven and of the gaudy Pendleton variety, coats, overalls, dried herbs
and peppers hang from convenient beams. In another corner, in the
older houses, is a row of two or three metate bins, for grinding corn,
with a smooth round stone lying beside it. If one arrives during the
season, he can witness the corn grinding ceremony. A Pueblo woman,
loaded with beads and silver, stands behind each bin, which is filled
with varied colored grains. In the corner an old man sits, beating the
tombé in rhythmical strokes and singing the Song of the Corn Grinders,
to which the women bend back and forth in perfect time, rubbing their
flat stones over the corn. No man except the singer of the ceremonial
song can be present in the room while this grinding is in process. To
violate this rule is a grave offense.
Most of the houses have a small Mexican fireplace in the corner. At the
side of some rooms is a loom with a half finished rug on it, but this
is becoming a rare sight. The Hopis, who originally were expert weavers
and taught their art to the Navajos, gradually relinquished it to the
Navajos, who were able to get a superior quality of wool. Now the
Hopis trade their baskets and pottery to the Navajos for their rugs, or
buy the less beautiful but more gaudy commercial rugs from traders.
Being a native of Hano, our little guide hesitated to take us into
Walpi. It was evident that no great love was lost between the two
villages, for a reason we learned later, so we preceded him across the
uneven, narrow tongue of rock which led to the tip of the mesa. The
late afternoon sun lighted the stony pile with glory, and cast rich,
violet shadows the length of the houses. It was almost impossible to
disentangle the stairs of one house from the roof of another. Stairways
terraced into the mortar of the houses led to roofs, and ladders
pointed still higher.
Somehow Walpi reminded me of the little hill town of Grasse, and the
old parts of San Remo, on the Riviera. There was the same tolerance
toward live stock in the narrow, unevenly paved streets; there were
the same outside stairways, and roofed-in alleys and houses tumbling
on each other, and looking into each other’s mouths; the same defiant
position on the height, watchful of enemies, the same warm stucco and
brightly painted doorways. Even the dark, velvety eyed children bore
out the resemblance to Italy, as they slouched against a wall, as
Italians love to do. A small army of children in one or less garments
was watching us from the parapets; we pointed the camera at them, and
snapped. When the film was developed only one child remained,--the rest
had ducked.
We met with less hospitality in Walpi than in the other two villages
on the mesa. Doors were tightly closed, for the most part. A few
inhabitants, mostly old women, let their curiosity overcome their
pride, and called out to us. One woman was baking pottery in an oven
edging the lane which was Walpi’s Main Street. She had buried it, and
was raking sheep-dung over it to insure its being burned the peculiar
reddish brown which the Hopis prefer in their pottery. A tiny burro
wandered about at will, and the usual array of dogs yapped at us. At
the great rock, the most conspicuous identifying mark in Walpi, which
bisects the narrow street, and is so shaped that in a Northern country
it would have to be called Thor’s Anvil, my eye was attracted by little
sticks bound with feathers in the crevices of the rock. I pulled one
out, and asked our guide what they were.
“Don’t know,” he shouted, in the tone he used when speaking to us,
perhaps thinking it more official. His face was stolid and stupid. Of
course he knew. They were, as we afterward learned, the prayer sticks
used in the Hopi ceremonies for rain.
Across from Walpi, looking west over the desert, is a low long mesa.
There the Indian youths go to hunt wild eaglets, to be used in the
Snake Dance ceremonies. We saw a group of men, Indians and white,
clustered with great interest about a rough box made of wooden slabs.
As we came nearer, curious, we saw them jump quickly back, wary and
respectful. A young eagle, with a heavy chain on one ankle, angry and
ruffled stood at bay, its eyes gleaming red, its beak wide open and
the feathers on its neck standing straight out. It was not a creature
to tamper with, even chained as it was. Never have I seen anything so
angry in my life. It was the embodiment of Fury, of rage that, silent
and impotent as it was, stays with me ever now. How far we Easterners
have traveled from the life that was a commonplace to our ancestors!
Here was the creature so native to our country that its likeness is on
our national coin, yet outside a zoo it was the first eagle I had seen.
I only recognized it as an eagle because its feather-trousered legs
looked so like the St. Gaudens designs.
Between the little painted prayer sticks in the big rock at Walpi, the
long mesa on the horizon, and the captured fighting creature in the
cage at Polacca, is an interesting connection. Rain, rain, is always
the prayer on every desert Indian’s lips. When the spring freshets are
finished, and the land lies exhausted under the metallic glow of an
August sun, life itself hinges on breaking the drought. Because the
eagle is the bird which reaches nearest to Heaven, and hence is most
apt to carry his prayer to the gods, the Hopis make excursions to that
distant mesa where eagle’s nests are still found, and bring back a
young eagle. This they keep in captivity until the time approaches for
the Snake Dance, which is really a dance for rain, the snake being the
ancestor god of the Walpi people. Then they kill the eaglet, not by a
gun or an axe, but without shedding its blood, they gently stroke its
neck until it is numb and in a stupor. Then they wring its neck, and
pluck out the downy feathers to wing their prayer sticks to the gods
above.
[Illustration: YOUNG EAGLET CAPTURED FOR USE IN THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE
CEREMONIES.]
Inextricably woven with the legends of the Hopi, and especially those
inhabiting Walpi, is the Snake myth, which began when a chief’s son
living north of the Grand Canyon decided to learn where the Colorado
River went. His father put him in a box, and thus he reached the ocean,
where the Spider Woman (the wise-woman of Hopi mythology) made him
acquainted with a strange island people who could change at will
into snakes. Passing through all the various tests imposed on him,
with the help of the Spider Woman, the young man was given a bride
from the Snake people. They wandered until they came finally to the
foot of Walpi, and here the Snake woman gave birth to many children,
all snakes. Some of these bit the Hopi children; therefore the chief’s
son and his wife returned all the snake offspring to her people. On
their return the Walpi folk permitted them to live on top of the mesa,
and after that time the woman’s children took human form, and were the
ancestors of the Snake clan today.
The Hopi were originally migratory people moving slowly down to their
present home from the north. Probably the cliff dwellings in Colorado
and the southern Utah country, and certainly in the Canyon du Chelley,
were built by them. After Walpi had been settled, other tribes came to
Sichomovi. Meanwhile the Spanish monks had discovered Tusayan, and had
thoroughly disciplined and intimidated the unhappy people. Like the
parent who gives his son a thrashing, they did it for the Hopi’s good,
but their methods were tactless. Great beams a foot thick and twenty
long may today be seen in the old houses in Walpi, which these sullen
Hopis dragged from San Francisco mountains a hundred miles away, under
the lash of the zealous monks. The Walpis seem to have a morose nature,
which one observes today in their attitude toward visitors. Perhaps the
regime of the Spaniards cured them forever of hospitality. They joined
enthusiastically in the rebellion of 1680. When every Spaniard was
killed, the Walpis went back contentedly to their reactionary ways.
The Hano people are of the Tewa tribes, some of whom still live near
Santa Fé. On the invitation of the Walpi, they migrated to Tusayan, but
the Walpi treated them abominably, refusing to share their water with
them, or to allow them on their mesa. When the Hano asked for food,
the Walpi women poured burning porridge on their hands. When the Hano
helped defeat the Utes they were allowed to build the third village on
top of the mesa. They still speak a different tongue from the Walpi,
though they lived for centuries within a quarter of a mile of them. The
reason is interesting, if true.
“When the Hano first came, the Walpi said, ‘Let us spit in your mouths
and you will learn our tongue,’ and to this the Hano consented. When
the Hano moved to the mesa they said to the Walpi, ‘Let us spit in your
mouths, that you may learn _our_ tongue,’ but the Walpi refused, saying
it would make them vomit. Since then, all the Hano can talk Hopi, and
none of the Hopis can talk Hano.”
However that may be, our little guide was uneasy when we crossed into
Walpi, and exchanged no words with its inhabitants, who as they passed
gave him uncordial looks.
As we left Walpi, it was almost twilight. It had been a burning hot
day, but the coolness of evening at high altitude had settled on the
sizzling rock. Shadows that in midday had actually been, not purple,
but deep crimson, had lengthened and become cool blue-gray. We
carefully steered our car, loaded with Hopi pottery, down the rocky and
uneven wagon trail. At times, the ledges projected so high in the road
that we heard an unpleasant scraping noise of loosening underpinnings.
We used our brake constantly, and braked with our engine at the
steepest turns. At last we reached the sandy stretch at the bottom, and
with the advantage of a downgrade, managed to get through it safely.
[Illustration: SECOND MESA, HOPI RESERVATION.]
[Illustration: A HOTAVILLA SYBIL.]
Still below us and as far as eyes could view, we were surrounded by the
desert. Now, as the sun sank lower, and the shadows increased, it was
no longer a dazzle of gold and silver, as at noonday. All the colors in
the world had melted and fused together, a wonderful rose glow tinged
rocks and sky alike. Distant, purple mesas floated on the surface of
the desert. The sun was a golden ball tracing its path to the horizon.
A sea-mist of bluish gray hung over the desert, and undulating waves
carried out the semblance of the ocean. The great rock of Walpi seemed
like the prow of a ship, or a promontory against which the waves beat.
Here in the crowded East, it is hard to write down the satisfying
emotion the tremendous vastness created in us. In this world of rocks
and sand, something infinitely satisfied us who had been used to green
trees and shut in spaces all our lives. We did not want to go back; the
desert was all we needed.