when the crops are harvested and indian summer is gone and the cold winds buffet the mesas, the hopi find comfort in their substantial houses around their hearth-stones. the change of the season enforces a pleasant reunion and the people who were occupied with the care as well as the delights of outdoor summer life, begin to get acquainted again.
the men have plenty of idle time on their hands,—the masks need repairing and refurbishing with new colors; there are always moccasins to be made; the carvers of dolls construct these odd painted figures from cottonwood procured during the summer, and the weaver works at his loom. now the basket maker draws on her stock of split yucca leaves, twigs and grass, but the potter’s craft is in abeyance till the warm months.
one would think that the winter work falls pretty severely on the women, but their duties are largely the same in all seasons. there is corn to be ground, food to be prepared, and water to be carried up the steep trails. the winter store must be guarded against [29] mice and vermin and occasionally sunned on the roof. there are, no doubt, many cares and much labor, but the women take their time and everyone, from the little child to the experienced old grandmother, lends a helping hand. a hopi woman would perhaps not understand our kind commiseration for the lot that her sex has experienced and thriven under from time immemorial.
winter in tusayan is more enjoyable than otherwise, as the sun is bright and the sky a clear blue. the snows of winter are nearly as rare as the rain-storms of summer, much to the regret of the hopi. often the cold at night is intense, but the day may have the crisp though mild air of a rare day in spring at the east.
not much change comes over the landscape of tusayan by the advent of winter. there are few trees to lose their leaves after a gorgeous pageant of farewell. the desert plants scarcely ever alter the appearance of the earth by their leaf tints of spring, summer, or autumn; with their diminutive leaves and sober color they sink into the vast surface and are lost among the vivid aerial tints and the bright hues of the rocks and plains. there are no rivers to be covered by a sheen of ice, and rarely does a mantle of snow reach across the deserts from the snow-clad mountains. the winds rave and whirlwinds swirl the sand along the plain in giant columns, while the sun hangs lower and lower in the southwest until the hopi fear [30] that he will finally depart and leave them in the grasp of winter. but the priests have potent charms to draw him back, and after the soyaluna ceremony at the winter solstice anyone can see that the sun no longer wanders.
those hopi who have not laid in a supply of fuel must go wood-gathering right speedily when cold weather approaches, for the trees are distant and the day is hardly long enough to get a burro load piled on the house wall. every morning also the flocks of sheep and goats must be driven out from the corrals on the ledges under the mesas, to browse on the leafless brush.
october is called the harvest moon. the women who garner the grain hold a ceremony at this time and great is the feasting and rejoicing in the pueblo. the winter tightens in november, called the “neophyte moon,” since the youths of proper age are initiated into the societies in this month. these beginners bear the sportive name of “pigeon hawks.” in even years comes the great ceremony of the new fire, full of strange rites of fire worship handed down from the olden time. in odd years occurs the na-a-ish-nya ceremony, which like the other is performed by the new fire society. by december, tusayan is hard in the grip of winter, and as the spirits are held fast beneath the frozen ground, they cannot do ill to anyone who speaks about them, so that many legends and stories and much sacred lore are freely divulged [31] around the glowing fires of fat pi?on wood in the hopi houses. everyone is also on the qui vive for the soyaluna, in many respects the most important ceremony in the hopi calendar, when the first kachinas appear. december is called the “hoe moon” because in this month it is prescribed that the fields shall be cleared for the spring planting. the wind has perhaps done its share toward clearing movable things from the fields, but much remains to be done in leveling the surface for the spring sowing.
no month of winter is too cold for a ceremony. january, called the “prayer-stick moon,” brings the alosaka, a ceremony of the horn society with their grotesque masks. during the vicissitudes of this hard month, more of the beloved kachinas return to their people from the high peaks of the san francisco mountains, poetically known as the “snow houses,” and to these ancestral beings many petitions are made.
february, the hardest month of all the winter, is called the “getting-ready moon.” it was in this month that the hero of the kachina people found melons and green corn near the san francisco mountains. the powamu ceremony is held during this moon.
if the hopi should have nearly reached the starvation point, march is likely to inspire a hope of reaching the end of the disastrous season, for in sheltered places a few shoots of green appear, and if the moisture from melting snow is sufficient, perhaps the little [32] wiwa plant springs up, furnishing palatable and nourishing greens. for some reason march is called the “prickly-pear moon,” and it is the only month named from a natural object. perhaps the designation points to a time when some of the hopi lived in a clime where the prickly-pear bloomed in march. this might have been in southern arizona, whence a number of clans, for instance, such as the “agave people,” have derived their names. march ushers in the most disagreeable part of the year, the season of fierce winds charged with dust and sand which drift like snow against the sides of the mesas.
this chronicle of the winter of the hopi, incomplete as it is, shows that the “peaceful people” get a great deal of enjoyment out of life at this season. many important ceremonies belong to the wintertime and there are conventions of the different societies. in the underground meeting-places those entitled to the privileges drop in for gossip, as at a club, being sure of warmth, agreeable company, and perhaps a smoke to while away the time. around the fireside, also, there is a good company, and plenty of stories, well worth the hearing, are told. the men may go hunting or make a winter journey to the settlements or the mountains.
as for the cold, the hopi seem to regard it lightly. there is little or no change in the costume, though the blanket or the rabbit-fur robe comes in handy for a wrap. if a man has an errand out of doors he trusts [33] to running to keep up the circulation. after the ceremonies, the men usually ascend, scantily clothed, from the superheated kivas into the bitter air, with utter disregard for the rules of health. the purity of the air is a saving factor; nevertheless, pulmonary diseases are common, due to the close, badly ventilated houses more than to any other causes.
most visitors to tusayan see the hopiland at the best season, when the cornfields are green and the cottonwoods are in full leaf, when the desert smiles to its greatest capability and the people are well fed and happy. the rebirth of nature begins in april, when the thrifty farmers cut brush and set up long wind-breaks to protect prospective crops. the month is named for this circumstance, and like everything else at the pueblos the time for beginning work is prescribed, according to custom, by those in authority over the clans.
frosts and lashing winds often destroy every green shoot in the spring, save the native plants, which are inured to the weather, and the people frequently have to mourn the loss of their peaches, their only desirable fruit, for which they owe a debt to the spanish friars of long ago.
in the “waiting moon,” as may is called, all is activity in the fields, for the planting of the sweet corn goes merrily on and the hopi become, for most of the time, an outdoor people. the winds perhaps have abated their power or have ceased entirely, and life is [34] more pleasant under the warm sun. still, with all the work incident to the care of the fields there is time for ceremony and during the period between the arrival of the kachinas in december and their departure in july, there are many minor celebrations by masked dancers in addition to the great monthly ceremonies. especially interesting in the season of awakening life and growing crops are these kachina dances with their pleasing songs and pageantry, their unlimited variety and surprises. the “peaceful people” enjoy this season in the highest degree. june and july see every hopi happy, unless there is something constitutionally wrong with him or he is afflicted with sickness. it is difficult to realize how thoroughly all hopi life is linked with growing things, showing out in their every word and action and entering into their ideas of the unseen world.
when the sun pauses in his march along the eastern horizon at the summer solstice, the hopi spend the day in making feather prayer-plumes as petitions for blessings. these children of the sun know the course of dawa, the sun, and read his positions as we the hands of a clock.
with the departure of the kachinas a new class of ceremonies begins. the dancers who previously appeared in strange masks and headgear now perform unmasked, and the cumbrous paraphernalia is laid away for another year. the great event of the summer, the snake dance, is now at hand, and everyone [35] sets about preparing for a good time. in the latter part of august, after this ceremony, the pueblo resumes its normal state and the people settle down to the feast of good things from their fields, which they attack with primitive zest and enjoyment. it is greatly to the credit of the hopi that they work well and rest well like the unconscious philosophers they are.
the moon of september watches over a scene of peace and plenty in tusayan. the cool, clear nights betoken that frosts and the time of harvest are approaching. the heat of summer is gone and the season is ideal.
since the hopi are good people one would infer that they need 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 [36] 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 [37] 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. co?peration 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.
[38] 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.
[39] 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 [40] 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 [41] 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 travelers. in the quaint language of casta?eda, speaking of zu?i: “they have priests who preach to them whom they call papas. these are the elders. they go up on the highest roof of the village and preach to the village from there, like public criers in [42] the morning while the sun is rising, the whole village being silent and sitting in the galleries, to listen. they tell them how to live, and i believe that they give certain commandments for them to keep.”
it must be admitted that honi’s is an ancient and honorable office, found useful by civilized communities before the time of newspapers and surviving yet, as the sereno of spain.
it is surprising, by the way, how fast news flies in hopiland. the arrival of a white man is known the whole length and breadth of tusayan in an incredibly short time. a fondness for small talk, together with the dearth of news, make it incumbent upon every hopi, when anything happens, to pass the word along.
to a visitor encamped below the walpi mesa the novelty of hearing the speaker-chief for the first time is a thing long to be remembered. out of the darkness and indescribable silence of the desert comes a voice, and such a voice! from the heights above it seems to come out of space and to be audible for an infinite distance. it takes the form of a chant, long drawn and full of sonorous quality. everyone listens breathlessly to the important message, and when the crier finishes after the third repetition, an indian informs us that the substance of the announcement was that the wire which “washington” had promised to send had come and that in two days the villages would go out to build fences.
[43] that honi’s messages are worth hearing is witnessed by the following announcement of the new fire ceremony. honi, standing on the housetop at sun-up, intones:
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.
this is a good example of the poetry of the hopi which, in the kachina songs, is of no low degree of artistic expression.
the hopi use the world for a dial and the sun for the clock-hand. the sun-priest from his observatory on a point of the mesa watches the luminary as carefully as any astronomer. he determines the time for the beginning of each ceremony or important event in the life of the pueblo, such as corn planting, by the rising or setting of the sun behind a certain peak or notch in the marvelous mountain profile on the eastern and western horizons. these profiles are known to him as we know the figures on a watch face. along [44] them he notes the march of the seasons, and at the proper time the town-crier chants his announcement from the housetops.
the clear air of tusayan renders the task of the sun-priest easy; this primitive astronomer has the best of skies for observation. by day the san francisco peaks, a hundred miles away, stand clearly silhouetted on the horizon; by night the stars are so brilliant that one can distinguish objects by their light.
the hopi also know much of astronomy, and not only do they have names for the planets and particular stars, but are familiar with many constellations, the pleiades especially being venerated, as among many primitive peoples. the rising and position of the pleiades determine the time of some important ceremonies when the “sweet influences” reign. any fixed star may be used to mark off a period of time by position and progress in the heavens as the sun is used by day. the moon determines the months, but there is no word for “year” or for the longer periods of time. days are marked by “sleeps,” thus today is pui or “now”; the days of the week are two sleeps, three sleeps, etc.; tabuco is “yesterday.”
while the larger periods of time are kept with accuracy, so that the time of beginning the ceremonies varies but little from year to year, the hopi have poor memories for dates. no one knows his age, and many of these villages seem to live within the shifting horizons of yesterday and tomorrow. the priests, [45] however, keep a record of the ceremonies by adding to their tiponi, or palladium of their society, a feather for each celebration. at zu?i a record of the death of priests of the war society is kept by making scratches on the face of a large rock near a shrine, and by this method a hopi woman keeps count of the days from the child’s birth to the natal ceremony. ask a hopi when some event happened, and he will say, “pai he sat o,” meaning “some time ago, when my father was a boy”; stress on the word means a longer time, and if the event was long beyond the memory of man, the indian will almost shake his head off with emphasis.
the only notched time-stick is that jealously guarded by the sun priest, and no one knows just how he makes his calculations from it.
as for dinner time, the great sun and “the clock inside” attend to that; dawa yamu, dawa nashab, and dawa poki stand for “sunrise,” “noonday,” and “sunset.” if the hopi makes an appointment for a special hour, he points to where the sun will be at that time. the seasons are known to him in a general way as the time of the cold or snow, the coming back of the sun (winter solstice), the time of bean or corn planting, the time of green corn, the time of harvest, etc., but there is a calendar marked by the ceremonies held during each month.
perhaps these children of the sun are happier in not being slaves of the second as we have become. our [46] watches, which they call dawa, “the sun,” have not bound them to the wheel by whose turning we seem to advance. they are satisfied with the grander procession of the heavenly bodies, and their days fade into happy forgetfulness.
an experience of several years ago may here be related in order to show how the clan name of a hopi is a veritable part of himself and also links him to his clan and the most intimate religious and secular life of the pueblo.
there was a jolly crowd of hopi under the dense shade of a cottonwood on the little colorado river one hot day in july. the mound of earth, strewn with chips of flint and potsherds like a buried city on the euphrates, had yielded its secrets, and the house walls of the ancient town of homolobi resembled a huge honeycomb on the bluff.
the hopi, who had worked like trojans in laying bare the habitations of their presumptive ancestors, were now assembled to receive their wages in silver dollars, which they expressively call “little white cakes.” around were scattered the various belongings of an indian camp, among which tin cans were prominent; a wind-break had been constructed of cottonwood boughs; from the tree hung the shells of turtles caught in the river; a quantity of wild tobacco was spread out to dry in the sun, and several crop-eared burros hobbling about on three legs were enjoying an unusually luxuriant pasture of sage-brush.
[47] “paying off” is surrounded with attractions for all sorts and conditions of men. the hopi seemed like a lot of children anticipating a holiday, as they sat in a circle around dr. fewkes, who was paymaster. this was their first experience, perhaps, with government “red tape,” of whose intricacies they must have had but the faintest idea. there are times when blissful ignorance is to be envied.
the “sub-vouchers” were filled out with the time of service and the amount to be paid, and as the doctor’s clerk called out the names, the boys came forward to sign. an indian sign his name! curiously enough, every hopi from the least to the greatest can sign his name, and he does not have to resort to the “x-mark” of our boasted civilization.
perhaps it would be better to say “draws his name,” for when the first indian grasped the pen in the most unfamiliar way imaginable, he drew the picture of a rabbit, the next drew a tobacco plant, the third a lizard, and so on, until the strangest collection of signatures that ever graced a government voucher-book was completed.
it must be explained that each hopi has an everyday name which his fond relatives devised for him during infancy, and a clan name, which shows his blood relationship or family. nowhere, even in these days of ancestor hunting, is more importance given to family than in hopiland. if you ask, “who is this man?” the answer may be, for instance, “kopeli,” [48] his individual name. “but what is he in walpi?” “he is a chua,” that is, he belongs to the important snake clan and his totem signature is a crawling reptile.
it affords great amusement to the hopi when a person, not acquainted with their customs, asks a man his name; it is also very embarrassing to the man asked, unless there is a third party at hand to volunteer the service, because no hopi can be prevailed on to speak his own name for fear of the bad consequences following “giving himself away.”
