* * * * *
=Government=
In government, the village is the unit, and a genuinely democratic
government it is. There is a house chief, a Kiva chief, a war chief, the
speaker chief or town crier, and the chiefs of the clans who are
likewise chiefs of the fraternities; all these making up a council which
rules the pueblo, the crier publishing its decisions. Laws are
traditional and unwritten. Hough[5] says infractions are so few that it
would be hard to say what the penalties are, probably ridicule and
ostracism. Theft is almost unheard of, and the taking of life by force
or law is unknown.
[Footnote 5: Hough, Walter, The Hopi: Torch Press, Cedar Rapids, 1915.]
To a visitor encamped at bedtime below the mesa, the experience of
hearing the speaker chief or town crier for the first time is something
long to be remembered. Out of the stillness of the desert night comes a
voice from the house tops, and such a voice! From the heights above, it
resounds in a sonorous long-drawn chant. Everyone listens breathlessly
to the important message and it goes on and on.
The writer recalls that when first she heard it, twenty years ago, she
sat up in bed and rousing the camp, with stage whispers (afraid to speak
aloud), demanded: "Do you hear that? What on earth can it mean? Surely
something awful has happened!" On and on it went endlessly. (She has
since been told that it is all repeated three times.) And not until
morning was it learned that the long speech had been merely the
announcement of a rabbit hunt for the next day. The oldest traditions of
the Hopi tell of this speaker chief and his important utterances. He is
a vocal bulletin board and the local newspaper, but his news is
principally of a religious nature, such as the announcement of
ceremonials. This usually occurs in the evening when all have gotten in
from the fields or home from the day's journey, but occasionally
announcements are made at other hours.
The following is a poetic formal announcement of the New Fire Ceremony,
as given at sunrise from the housetop of the Crier at Walpi:
"All people awake, open your eyes, arise,
Become children of light, vigorous, active, sprightly:
Hasten, Clouds, from the four world-quarters.
Come, Snow, in plenty, that water may abound when summer appears.
Come, Ice, and cover the fields, that after planting they may yield
abundantly.
Let all hearts be glad.
The Wuwutchimtu will assemble in four days;
They will encircle the villages, dancing and singing.
Let the women be ready to pour water upon them
That moisture may come in plenty and all shall rejoice."[6]
[Footnote 6: Hough, Walter, Op. cit., p. 43.]
As to the character of their government, Hewett says:[7] "We can
truthfully say that these surviving pueblo communities constitute the
oldest existing republics. It must be remembered, however, that they
were only vest-pocket editions. No two villages nor group of villages
ever came under a common authority or formed a state. There is not the
faintest tradition of a 'ruler' over the whole body of the Pueblos, nor
an organization of the people of this vast territory under a common
government."
[Footnote 7: Hewett, E.L., Ancient Life in the American Southwest:
Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis, 1929, p. 71.]
=The Clan and Marriage=
Making up the village are various clans. A clan comprises all the
descendants of a traditional maternal ancestor. Children belong to the
clan of the mother. (See Figure 1.) These clans bear the name of
something in nature, often suggested by either a simple or a significant
incident in the legendary history of the people during migration when
off-shoots from older clans were formed into new clans. Thus a migration
legend collected by Voth[8] accounts for the name of the Bear Clan, the
Bluebird Clan, the Spider Clan, and others.
[Footnote 8: Voth, H.R., Traditions of the Hopi: Field Columbian Museum
Pub. 96, Anthropological series, vol. 8, pp. 36-38, 1905.]
Sons and daughters are expected to marry outside the clan, and the son
must live with his wife's people, so does nothing to perpetuate his own
clan. The Hopi is monogamous. A daughter on marrying brings her husband
to her home, later building the new home adjacent to that of her
mother. Therefore many daughters born to a clan mean increase in
population.
[Illustration: Figure 1.--Hopi Family at Shungopovi.
--Photo by Lockett.]
Some clans have indeed become nearly extinct because of the lack of
daughters, the sons having naturally gone to live with neighboring
clans, or in some cases with neighboring tribes. As a result, some large
houses are pointed out that have many unoccupied and even abandoned
rooms--the clan is dying out. Possibly there may be a good many men of
that clan living but they are not with or near their parents and
grandparents. They are now a part of the clan into which they have
married, and must live there, be it near or far. Why should they keep up
such a practice when possibly the young man could do better,
economically and otherwise, in his ancestral home and community? The
answer is, "It has always been that way," and that seems to be reason
enough for a Hopi.
=Property, Lands, Houses, Divorce=
Land is really communal, apportioned to the several clans and by them
apportioned to the various families, who enjoy its use and hand down
such use to the daughters, while the son must look to his wife's share
of her clan allotment for his future estate. In fact, it is a little
doubtful whether he has any estate save his boots and saddle and
whatever personal plunder he may accumulate, for the house is the
property of the wife, as well as the crop after its harvest, and divorce
at the pleasure of the wife is effective and absolute by the mere means
of placing said boots and saddle, etc., outside the door and closing it.
The husband may return to his mother's house, and if he insists upon
staying, the village council will insist upon his departure.
Again, why do they keep doing it this way? Again, "Because it has always
been done this way." And it works very well. There is little divorce and
little dissension in domestic life among the Hopi, in spite of
Crane's[9] half comical sympathy for men in this "woman-run"
commonwealth. Bachelors are rare since only heads of families count in
the body politic. An unmarried woman of marriageable age is unheard of.
[Footnote 9: Crane, Leo, Indians of the Enchanted Mesa: Little, Brown &
Co., Boston, 1925.]
=Woman's Work=
The Hopi woman's life is a busy one, the never finished grinding of corn
by the use of the primitive metate and mano taking much time, and the
universal woman's task of bearing and rearing children and providing
meals and home comforts accounting for most of her day.
She is the carrier of water, and since it must be borne on her back from
the spring below the village mesa this is a burden indeed. She is, too,
the builder of the house, though men willingly assist in any heavy
labor when wanted. But why on earth should so kindly a people make woman
the carrier of water and the mason of her home walls? Tradition! "It has
always been this way."
Her leisure is employed in visiting her neighbors, for the Hopi are a
conspicuously sociable people, and in the making of baskets or pottery.
One hears a great deal about Hopi pottery, but the pottery center in
Hopiland is the village of Hano, on First Mesa, and the people are not
Hopi but Tewas, whose origin shall presently be explained.
Not until recent years has pottery been made elsewhere in Hopiland than
at Hano. At present, however, Sichomovi, the Hopi village built so close
to Hano that one scarce knows where one ends and the other begins, makes
excellent pottery as does the Hopi settlement at the foot of the hill,
Polacca. Undoubtedly this comes from the Tewa influence and in some
cases from actual Tewa families who have come to live in the new
locality. For instance, Grace, maker of excellent pottery, now living at
Polacca, is a Tewa who lived in Hano twenty years ago, when the writer
first knew her, and continued to live there until a couple of years ago.
Nampeo, most famous potter in Hopiland, is an aged Tewa woman still
living at Hano, in the first house at the head of the trail. Her
ambitious study of the fragments of the pottery of the ancients, in the
ruins of old Sikyatki, made her the master craftsman and developed a new
standard for pottery-making in her little world.
Mention was made previously of the women employing their leisure in the
making of baskets or pottery. An interesting emphasis should be placed
upon the "or," for no village does both. The women of the three villages
mentioned at First Mesa as pottery villages make no baskets. The three
villages on Second Mesa make a particular kind of coiled basket found
nowhere else save in North Africa, and no pottery nor any other kind of
basket. The villages of Third Mesa make colorful twined or wicker
baskets and plaques, just the one kind and no pottery. They stick as
closely to these lines as though their wares were protected by some
tribal "patent right." Pottery for First Mesa, coiled baskets for Second
Mesa, and wicker baskets for Third Mesa.
The writer has known the Hopi a long time, and has asked them many
times the reason for this. The villages are only a few miles apart, so
the same raw materials are available to all. These friends merely laugh
good naturedly and answer: "O, the only reason is, that it is just the
way we have always done it."
Natural conservatives, these Hopi, and yet not one of them but likes a
bright new sauce-pan from the store for her cooking, and a good iron
stove, for that matter, if she can afford it. There is no tradition
against this, we are told.
[Illustration: Figure 2.--Walpi.
--Photo by Bortell.]
More than two centuries ago, these Tewas came from the Rio Grande
region, by invitation of the Walpi, to help them defend this village
(See Figure 2) from their Navajo, Apache, and Piute enemies. They were
given a place on the mesa-top to build their village, at the head of the
main trail, which it was their business to guard, and fields were
allotted them in the valley below.
They are a superior people, intelligent, friendly, reliable, and so
closely resemble the Hopi that they can not be told apart.
The two peoples have intermarried freely, and it is hard to think of the
Tewas otherwise than as "one kind of Hopi." However, they are of a
distinctly different linguistic stock, speaking a Tewa language brought
from the Rio Grande, while the Hopi speak a dialect of the Shoshonean.
It is an interesting fact that all Tewas speak Hopi as well as Tewa,
whereas the Hopi have never learned the Tewa language. The Hopi have a
legend accounting for this:
"When the Hano first came, the Walpi said to them, 'Let us spit in your
mouths and you will learn our tongue,' and to this the Hano consented.
When the Hano came up and built on the mesa, they said to the Walpi,
'Let us spit in your mouths and you will learn our tongue,' but the
Walpi would not listen to this, saying it would make them vomit. This is
the reason why all the Hano can speak Hopi, and none of the Hopi can
talk Hano."[10]
[Footnote 10: Mindeleff, Cosmos, Traditional History of Tusayan (After
A.M. Stephen): Bureau American Ethnology, vol. 8, p. 36, 1887.]
=Man's Work=
The work of the men must now be accounted for lest the impression be
gained that the industry of the women leaves the males idle and
carefree.
It is but fair to the men to say that first of all they carry the
community government on their shoulders, and the still more weighty
affairs of religion. They are depended upon to keep the seasonal and
other ceremonies going throughout the year, and the Hopi ceremonial
calendar has its major event for each of the twelve months, for all of
which elaborate preparation must be made, including the manufacture and
repair of costumes and other paraphernalia and much practicing and
rehearsing in the kivas. Someone has said much of the Hopi man's time is
taken up with "getting ready for dances, having dances, and getting over
dances." Yes, a big waste of time surely to you and me, but to the Hopi
community--men, women, and children alike--absolutely essential to their
well-being. There could be no health, happiness, prosperity, not even an
assurance of crops without these ceremonies.
The Hopi is a good dry farmer on a small scale, and farming is a
laborious business in the shifting sands of Hopiland. Their corn is
their literal bread of life and they usually keep one year's crop
stored. These people have known utter famine and even starvation in the
long ago, and their traditions have made them wise. The man tends the
fields and flocks, makes mocassins, does the weaving of the community
(mostly ceremonial garments) and usually brings in the wood for fuel,
since it is far to seek in this land of scant vegetation, in fact
literally miles away and getting farther every year, so that the man
with team and wagon is fortunate indeed and the rest must pack their
wood on burros. Both men and women gather backloads of faggots wherever
such can be found in walking distance, and said distance is no mean
measure, for these hardy little people have always been great walkers
and great runners.
Hough says:[11] "Seemingly the men work harder making paraphernalia and
costumes for the ceremonies than at anything else, but it should be
remembered that in ancient days everything depended, in Hopi belief, on
propitiating the deities. Still if we would pick the threads of religion
from the warp and woof of Hopi life there apparently would not be much
left. It must be recorded in the interests of truth, that Hopi men will
work at days labor and give satisfaction except when a ceremony is about
to take place at the pueblo, and duty to their religion interferes with
steady employment much as fiestas do in the easy-going countries to the
southward. Really the Hopi deserve great credit for their industry,
frugality, and provident habits, and one must commend them because they
do not shun work and because in fairness both men and women share in the
labor for the common good."
[Footnote 11: Hough, Walter, Op. cit, pp. 156-58.]