The Hopi Indians. Walter Hough
Hopi man is moderate of stature, well-framed, hard-muscled, and agile, since he depended on his own feet for going anywhere and on his arms for work before the day of the burro and the horse. Black, straight hair worn long, brownish skin, the smooth and expressive face in the young men, intensifying as they grow older, bringing out the high cheek-bones, the nose, the large mouth and accenting them with wrinkles, but never developing a sullen, ferocious cast of countenance, always preserving the lines of worth and dignity and the pleasing curves of humor and good-fellowship to the end of life—these are the salient characters of the Hopi.
The same remarks apply to the other sex, who from childhood to old age run the course in milder degree. Many of the maidens are pretty and the matrons are comely and wholesome to behold. The old, wrinkled and bowed go their way with quiet mien and busy themselves with the light duties in which their experience counts for much.
In spite of the luxuriant hair that adorns the heads of this people, one may notice the difference of head shape which distinguishes them from the tribes of the plains. The cradle-board is partly responsible for this, since, from infancy, the children are bound to the cradle and obliged to lie on the back for longer or shorter intervals, and thus begins the flattening of the back of the skull. But the heads of the women are rarely flattened, probably because the girls are not so well cared for as the boys.
There are among the Hopi a greater number of albinos in proportion to the population than may be found almost anywhere else. They go about their avocations like the rest and are in no way regarded as different from their kin. The impulse is to address them in English, and one feels surprised when they do not comprehend. One albino maiden of Mishongnovi has a marvelous growth of golden hair which shows to great advantage in her ample hair whorls. Many students believe that albinism has its origin in the nervous system, and perhaps the timidity of the Hopi explains the number of these remarkable people in their midst; but this is a theory, based on a theory. It has been observed that some of the albinos are below the average in intelligence, and it has been ascertained that the larger proportion of them are second in order of birth in a family.
From the number of old people in the pueblos one would gain the impression that the Hopi are long-lived. All things considered, this is doubtless the truth, but there are no statistics to settle the matter; besides, the question of age is a doubtful one among the Hopi themselves. If “sans everything” is any criterion of a centenarian, there are such among the Peaceful People. One must conclude that, on passing childhood, the average Hopi is due for a second term of the helpless period.
“Welcome” is not written over every Hopi door, but the spirit of hospitality pervades the entire population. This is one of the pleasant features of the Pueblos and is the chief reason why the Hopi are held in friendly remembrance by visitors. An acquaintance with the Indians in the different pueblos of the Southwest will convince one that there is a considerable range of disposition among them. Perhaps the extremes are the untractable Santo Domingans and the impressionable Hopi. It seems to be a matter of the elements of which the tribes have been made up and of their past experiences and associations.
High up on the gray rocks the Hopi towns look as though they were part of the native cliff. The seven towns—though twenty miles and three distinct mesas separate the extremes—Hano and Oraibi—are built on the same stratum of sandstone. The rock shows tints of light red, yellow, and brown, and cleaves into great cubical pillars and blocks, leaving the face of the cliff always vertical. Trails at different points lead up over the low masses of talus and reach the flat top through crevices and breaks in this rock-wall, often over surfaces where pockets have been cut in the stone for hand and foot. A very little powder, properly applied, would render these mesas as difficult of ascent as the Enchanted Mesa near Acoma.
Once on top and breathing normally after the four hundred feet or so of precipitous climbing, one sees why the outer walls of the towns seem to be a continuation of the living rock. The houses are built of slabs of stone of various sizes, quarried from the mesa and laid up in mud. They are of terrace style, rarely more than of two stories, flat-roofed, and grouped in masses so as to form streets and plazas and conforming to the irregularities of the surface and outline of the mesas. For this reason not much order can be found in a Hopi pueblo. The uneven surface of the mesas gives a varying height to the houses and increases the picturesqueness of the skyline.
These Hopi towns are the most primitive of the inhabited pueblos. Before us is a picture of the ancient life as true as may be found in this day of inquisitive travelers and of rapid transportation to the ends of the earth. But this state of things is changing with increasing rapidity; the Hopi is becoming progressive and yearns for the things of the white man with increasing desire, therefore it is evident that, before many years, much that is charming in Tusayan by reason of the ancient touch about it will have vanished from the lives of its brown inhabitants.
This change is most marked at Walpi, because the East Mesa people have longest been in contact with the civilizing influences of schools, missions, and trading posts; besides, they were always apparently the most tractable of the Hopi. Many families have abandoned the villages on the cliffs, and their modern, red-roofed houses dotting the lower ground near the fields show the tendency to forsake the crowded hill-towns. But the old towns exist in all their primitiveness and furnish bits of surpassing interest to lovers of the picturesque. To these the bulk of the conservative Hopi still cling with all the force of their inherited instinct.
Two centuries ago visitors arrived at Walpi from the Rio Grande. These were a tribe of Tewa, invited to come to Tusayan to aid in fighting off the Apache and Ute, those wily nomad adversaries with whom the Peaceful People for so long had to contend. Here they have lived ever since in their village of Hano, at the head of the most readily accessible trail up the mesa, preserving their language and customs, and besides their own tongue, speaking well the language of their friends and neighbors. The Tewa brought with them their potter’s art and now have the honor to be practically the only makers of earthenware in Tusayan. Nampeo is the best potter at Hano and her work shows her to be a worthy descendant of the ancient artists, whose graceful vessels lie with the bones of the dead beneath the sands of the great Southwest.
Beyond Hano, and midway between it and Walpi, is Sichomovi, which signifies “flower mound.” Sichomovi, if we may judge from the good preservation of its houses and the regularity with which the town is laid out, seems to be comparatively new, and indeed, there is traditionary testimony to this effect. The dusky historians of Walpi relate the circumstances of its foundation, when the yellow flowers grew in the crevices of the rock at the place where several stranger clans were allowed to settle.
Passing out of Sichomovi and crossing a narrow neck of the mesa traversed by a well-worn trail, Walpi is reached. This village from different points of view presents the appearance of a confused jumble of dilapidated houses, and a walk through its alleys and passages confirms the impression. Walpi was a town of necessity and was erected in 1590, having been moved up from a lower point after troubles with the Spanish conquistadores.
Looking down from the town one may trace the site of Old Walpi and descry the pottery-strewn mounds of still older settlements, since around this mesa the first comers to Tusayan probably located. At the foot of the mesa are also springs and shrines, one of the latter being the true “center of the world” to the Hopi mind, a point which gave the ancients much trouble to determine. Along the ledges are corrals for the motley flocks of black and white sheep and goats, adepts in subsisting on all sorts of unpalatable brush. Farther down in the level are the fields, at the proper season green with the prospect of corn, melons, and beans.
Walpi streets are the living rock of the mesa worn smooth by human feet and swept by the officious wind-god, whose dry air, with the aid of the sun, form the board of health of the Hopiland. This rocky surface must have been a great trial to the kiva builders, as traditional custom requires that such meeting places of the secret societies or brotherhoods should be underground. The kivas along the streets thus represent a great amount of work in their construction, and it is clear that, when the builders found a cleft in the rock or a niche in the cliff-edge, they appropriated it as the site of a kiva, then built an outer wall overhanging the precipice and prepared the deep oblong room with toilsome labor, for they had only the rude tools of the stone age.