The Hopi Indians. Walter Hough
through the same process. He never thins the corn, but leaves the numerous stalks close together for shade and protection from the winds. His care of the field consists merely in hoeing the weeds and keeping a watch on the crows, which he frightens away by demoniac shouts. His scarecrows are also wonders of ingenuity, and many a time one takes them for watchful Indians.
When the corn is fit for roasting ears the Hopi get fat and there is feasting from morn till night. Tall columns of smoke arise from the roasting pits in the fields. These large pits are dug in the sand, heated with burning brush, filled with roasting ears, and closed up tightly for a day. The opening of a pit is usually the occasion of frolicking and feasting, where laughter and song prevail. Some of the corn is consumed at once in making puddings and other dishes of which the Hopi prepare many, and what remains is dried on the cob and hung in bunches in the houses for the winter.
The ears of the Indian corn are close to the ground and are hidden by the blades, which touch the sand. The blades are usually tattered and blown away by the wind, so that by the time the corn is ripe, the fodder is not of much value. The ripe corn is gathered and laboriously carried by back-loads up the steep mesa to the houses, where it is stored away in the corn chamber. Here the ears are piled up in symmetrical walls, separate from the last year’s crop, which may now be used, as the Hopi, taught by famine, keep one year’s harvest in reserve. Once in a while, the women bring out the old corn, spread it on the roof to sun, and carefully brush off each ear before returning it to the granary, for in this dry country, though corn never molds, insect pests are numerous.
Among the superstitions connected with corn the Hopi believe that the cobs of the seed corn must not be burned until rain has fallen on the crop for fear of keeping away or “drying up” the rains.
No cereal in the world is so beautiful as Hopi corn. The grains, though small, are full and highly polished; the ears are white, yellow, red of several shades, a lovely rose madder, blue, a very dark blue or purple which the Hopi call black, and mottled. A tray of shelled corn of various colors looks like a mosaic.
In the division of labor, the planting, care of the corn in the fields and the harvesting belong to the men. When the brilliant ears are garnered, then the women’s work begins. No other feature of the Hopi household is so interesting as the row of three or more slabs placed slantwise in stone-lined troughs sunk in the floor; these are their mills. They are of graded fineness, and this is also true of the oblong hand stones, or manos, which are rubbed upon them with an up and down motion as in using a washboard. Sometimes three women work at the mills; the first woman grinds the corn into coarse meal on the coarse stone and passes her product over to the second, who grinds it still finer, and the third finishes it on the last stone; sometimes one woman alone carries the meal through the successive stages, but it is a poor household that cannot furnish two grinders. The skill with which the woman spreads the meal over the grinding slab by a flirt of the hand as the mano is brought up for the return stroke is truly remarkable, and the rhythmic precision of all the motions suggests a machine. The weird song sung by the grinders and the rumble of the mill are characteristic sounds of the Hopi pueblos, and as the women grinders powder their perspiring faces with meal while they work, they look well the part of millers. Little girls are early taught to grind, and they often may be prevailed upon to display their accomplishment before visitors.
The finely ground meal is piled and patted into conical heaps on the flat basket trays, making quite an exhibition of which the Hopi women are very proud, much meal indicating diligence as well as a bountiful supply of the staff of life. Grinding is back-breaking work, and one humanely wishes that the Hopi women, and especially the immature girls, could be relieved of this too heavy task.
While corn-meal enters into all Hopi cooking as the chief ingredient, most of it is made into “paper bread,” called piki, resembling more than anything else the material of a hornet’s nest. This bread is made from batter, colored gray with wood ashes, dexterously spread very thinly with the hand over a heated slab of stone. Piki bakes quickly, coming free from the slab and is directly folded up into convenient compass and so crisp is it that it crackles like paper. Sometimes it is tinted with attractive colors for festal occasions, such as the Kachina ceremonies.
Before a dance the women busily prepare food and the girls go about speechless, with mouths full of meal, “chewing yeast” for the corn pudding. This and other ins and outs of the kitchen make the knowing traveler rather shy of the otherwise attractive-looking Hopi food.
Surely corn is the “mother” of the Hopi. All the powers of nature are invoked to grant a good crop by giving rain and fertility, and the desire for corn is the central motive of the numerous ceremonies of the villagers of Tusayan. If the prayers of the Hopi could be formulated like the “Om mane padme hum” of the Hindus, it would be in the smaller compass of these words, “Grant us corn!” Nor are these simple villagers ungrateful for such blessings. Kopeli used to stand looking over his thriving cornfield and say with fervor, “Kwa kwi, Kwa kwi,” “thanks, thanks,” and it was evident that the utterance was made with true thankfulness and a spirit of devotion.
It is difficult to imagine the ancient people without corn; but very long ago, as the legends tell, they did not know this cereal. Certain it is they were not then pueblo dwellers and had not spread far in the Southwest. They lived in the places where there was game, and for the same reason that the important food animals lived in such places—the presence of vegetation that would sustain life.
Their life was along the foot hills of well-watered and timbered mountains rising from plains, where with the flesh of game and seeds and roots of plants they could supply their semi-savage wants. Long perhaps they roved thus as hunters until they drifted to the land of promise—the semi-desert where agriculture of grain plants was born and there they received “mother corn.” Henceforward all the former sources of food wrested from a niggard Nature became as nothing to this food of foods, but even to this day the Hopi have not forgotten their old-time intimate knowledge of the resources in fields not sown by human hands. With corn, which possesses a high food value and is easily raised, stored, and preserved, the Hopi and their Pueblo brethren spread without fear throughout the semi-arid lands.
It has been pointed out that a constant diet of corn produces disagreeable physiological effects, and this is suggested for the use of chile and other condiments, the mixture of corn food with meat and vegetable substances, and, in fact, for the multifarious ways of preparing and cooking corn. This necessity for variety also gives an explanation of the resourcefulness of the Hopi housewife and has acted as a spur to her invention of palatable dishes.
The vocabulary of corn in the Hopi language is extensive and contains words descriptive even of the parts of the plant that are lacking to most civilized people. The importance of corn is also reflected in the numerous words describing the kinds of meal, the dishes made from corn or in which corn enters, and of the various ways in which it is prepared by fire for the consumption of the ever-hungry Hopi. To give an incomplete census of corn foods, there are fifteen kinds of piki or paper bread, three kinds of mush; five of short-cake; eleven of boiled corn; four kinds baked or roasted in the coals; two cooked by frying; four stewed and eight of cooked shelled corn, making fifty-two varieties.
After the paper bread, perhaps the most popular food is pigame, or sweet corn mush, wrapped in corn-husk and baked in an underground oven. Another standby is shelled corn soaked and boiled till each grain swells to several times the normal size. The Hopi like their food well-cooked and know the art of making each starch grain expand to the limit. A book of Hopi cookery would be bulky, but how interesting to the housewife who would know how to make plain food appetizing without milk or eggs, and who would learn new and strange combinations! There are cakes made from dried fruits, chopped meat, and straw, put on the roof to dry; dumplings formed around old hammerstones, corn dodgers, pats of corn-meal mush wrapped in corn husk and boiled or baked, and many other styles of food that would seem strange to other than a Hopi epicure.
When it is time to dine, a large bowl of stew is placed on the floor as the piece de resistance and beside it a tray of piki. Each member of the family breaks off a piece of piki, and, holding it between thumb and finger, it is dragged through the stew much like a seine to catch as many particles of meat