The Hopi Indians. Walter Hough
no rulers. One might live among the Hopi for some time and not wittingly come in contact with a chief or a policeman or any evidence of laws, but the rulers and laws are there nevertheless.
The voice of the town crier awakens one to the fact that here is the striking apparatus of some sort of a social clock. It will be found that there is an organization of which the crier is the ultimate utterance. Chiefs are there in abundance, the house chief, the kiva chief, the war chief, the speaker chief who is the crier; chiefs of clans, who are chiefs of the fraternities: all these are members of the council that rules the pueblo. The council meets on occasion and acts for the common weal, and the village chief publishes their mandates by crier.
In this most democratic organization the agents of the Government who wish to treat with the Hopi, not finding a responsible head, felt forced to appoint one. Thus each Hopi pueblo received a supreme ruler, who neither deceived himself nor the people as to the power he acquired from Washington, which was nil. The true rulers are the heads of the clans, and by their wise advice and their knowledge of the traditional unwritten laws everything is regulated for the tractable Hopi. Each pueblo acts for itself and knows nothing and cares less for the doings of the other pueblos, so there has never been a league of Hopi tribes. In a few instances there was a temporary unity of action, as when the people of other pueblos destroyed Awatobi, an event related circumstantially in the tradition. (See p. 210.) Traces of this independence of action abound in the Southwest. The ancient ruins show that the clans built each its house cluster apart from the others and moved when it liked. The present villages are made up of clans and fragments of clans, each living in the ward where it settled when it joined the others in the old time.
These clans are larger families of blood relations, who trace their descent from the mother and who have a general family name or totem, as Eagle, Tobacco Plant, Cloud, etc. Although no blood relationship may be traceable between them, no youth and maid of the same clan may marry, and this seems to be the first law of the clan. The working of the strange law of mother-right makes the children of no clan relation to the father. Since the woman owns the house and the children, the father is only a sojourner in the clan of his wife.
Another law of the greater family was that of mutual help, providing for the weak, infirm, and unprotected members. From this grows the hospitality of the Indian, and nowhere does this graceful custom prevail more than among the Hopi.
As if in recognition of the interests of the whole people in the farming lands the messengers sent out to bear plume-prayers to the nature gods while the ceremonies are in progress encircle all the fields of the pueblo, so that all may receive the blessings of rain. While the lands are spoken of as belonging to the village, they are known to have been immemorially divided among the clans, hence at Walpi the oldest and otherwise ranking clans have the best land. The division of the land in severalty by the United States government some years ago had no effect on the ancient boundaries and no one but the surveyor knows where his lines ran.
Every once in a while the Hopi have a “raising,” but instead of the kind and willing neighbors of the “bee” in the States, here the workers are clan relations. Coöperation or communal effort goes a long way toward explaining why the days of the Pueblo dweller are long in the land and the Mormon settlers in the Southwest also followed this primitive law which goes into effect wherever men are gathered for the common weal.
Laws are but expressions of common sense formulated by the wisest and most experienced. The Hopi must have good laws, for though their laws are stronger by far than those written and refined by civilization, the people observe them unconsciously and never feel the burden. There are so few infractions of the law that it is difficult to say what the various punishments are. The taking of life by force or law is unknown; the respect of mine and thine is the rule among the Hopi, and so on through the temptations of life that beset mortals. There is no desire to place the Hopi on a pedestal and declare them perfect, for they are not; but in many ways they set their civilized brothers an example. As to punishment, it is probable that a loss of standing in a fraternity, ostracism from the clan or pueblo, and ridicule are the suasive penalties.
With the increased influence of education and contact with white people the business side of the Hopi is being brought out, and because from time immemorial they have been chief among the traffickers in the primitive commerce of the Southwest, they have rapidly assimilated the devices of modern trade. They have their own native merchants and are gradually becoming independent of the trader. The latter say they would rather deal with six Navaho than one Hopi, because the Navaho does not haggle, while the Hopi, with the thrift that is bringing him to the front, is determined to get the benefit of a bargain.
The Pueblo folk retire early and leave the safety of the village to the patrol. Some one is always on guard about the pueblo, whether it be the children amusing themselves on the rocks—and these little folks have eyes as sharp as any—or the grown people looking off into the country for “signs,” a custom which has become habitual with them. The night patrol is a survival of the times when the whole village was a committee of safety, for the outside foes were fierce and treacherous.
If running about the town keeping the dogs barking and good folks awake is the principal office of the patrol, then it is eminently successful and the pueblos furnish nocturnal noises on the scale of the cities of civilization. The tradition of the coming of the Flute clan speaks of the watchman of Walpi, who was Alosaka, a horned being alert as a mountain sheep. The Flute migrants also sent out “Mountain Sheep” to ascertain whether human beings lived in the locality. During some of the ceremonies there are vigilant patrols, and on a few ceremonial days no living being is allowed to come into the pueblo from the outside, formerly under pain of death at the hands of the fraternity guards. It is thought that the trouble arising between the Spaniards and the Hopi on that first visit to Tusayan in 1540 was due to a violation of the ceremonial bar, and not to the belligerent habit of the Indians.
The village shepherds have an easy, though very monotonous occupation. They have the advantage of other Arizona shepherds because their charges are brought at nightfall into secure corrals among the rocks below the town and do not require care till morning. Frequently one sees a woman and a child driving the herd around, in what seems a vain search for green things that a sheep with a not too fastidious appetite might eat. Formerly, at least, the office of herder was bestowed by the village chief, much as was once the case with the village swineherd or gooseherd of Europe in olden time.
Perhaps a visitor straying about a Hopi village at a time when there are no ceremonies in progress may find a quaint street market, conducted by a few women squatted on the ground, with their wares spread in front of them. Such markets are only a faint reflection of those which have been held in Mexico from time immemorial; but it is interesting to know that the Hopi have such an institution, because it shows a step in political economy that has been rarely noticed among the Indians in the United States. The little barter by exchange that goes on here, accompanied with the jollity of the Hopi women, has in it the germ of commerce with its world-embracing activities. Here it is found also that woman has her place as the beginner and promoter of buying and selling as she has in the inception of many other lines of human progress.
Honi, the speaker-chief, is the living newspaper of Walpi, or rather he is a vocal bulletin-board. Like the reader for the United States Senate, his voice is of the robust kind, and for this qualification, perhaps, he was selected to make the numerous announcements from the housetops. His news is principally of a religious character, such as the beginning and progress of the many ceremonies at the pueblo, but there is a fair sprinkling of secular notices of interest to the community. Honi, however, is only a voice crying in the wilderness at the bidding of the secret council or of the heads of the brotherhoods who are the true rulers of the pueblos, because they have the destiny of the flock in their hands. He holds, however, the office of speaker-chief, the pay of which is not highly remunerative, but the duties do not interfere with the pursuit of other occupations, since his announcements are made usually when the people have gathered in the town after their day’s labor in the fields. No doubt, Honi regards himself and is regarded by others as an important functionary who, with the house chief, has the privilege of frequenting the Mong-kiva or council chamber of the pueblo. The town crier’s announcements attracted the notice of the Spanish conquerors in the early days as they have that of modern