The Hopi people are bound up in clanships, rituals, and ceremonies. Herbert E. Gregory, in his remarkable volume of statistics, entitled The Navajo Country, has this to say of them:—

These people have maintained themselves and preserved their race from extinction in a singularly unfriendly environment. With incredible skill they have practised the art of conservation of water, and that the mind of the race is intent on this one problem is shown by the organization of the clans and the elaborate ceremonies devised to enlist the coöperation of unseen Powers which are believed to control the rainfall. Endless toil and endless prayer, both directed to increase and to preserve the precious water, constitute the life of the Hopi.

We find in their desert cairns of rock something different from an ordinary monument to mark land or to point a road, having in them special gifts of feathers or painted sticks. That certain clans may never be without the feathers of the eagle, these birds are captured young and reared in cages or at the ends of chains on the housetops. A curious sight to see: a captive eagle, baleful of eye, morose, sullen, posed at the edge of a roof, a brooding, vicious prisoner with beak and talons like razors, a [337]dangerous thing to approach carelessly. These birds must be reared unharmed, therefore the nests are robbed of the young. A wounded or crippled sacrifice will not be accepted; for, aside from being the source of feathers, it is said that eagles are smothered to death in certain ceremonies.

In distant places, the far-away headlands of the Butte country and the sky-drifting mountains, it is said the Hopi have altars. There is one, a young Hopi told me, atop “Sist-ter-vung-ter-we,” or “one that is farthest west,” in the long line of volcanic piles bordering their southern boundary. And once I received a handful of round, painted sticks, a miniature faggot, from the distant Apache Reservation, with an inquiry from that Agent as to their meaning.

“Yes,” said a Hopi, “they are from the Rain altar down there. The Hopi go to those places at times. I have no doubt you could find some in the San Francisco Mountains, if you knew where to look.”

Prayer-sticks, tied in little bundles, offered to the gods. And reflect for a moment. The Apache was an enemy, a most bitter and sinister enemy. The most southerly and westerly ruins of Hopi civilization are to be found along the Rio del Lino, or Flax River, as the Little Colorado was named by the Spanish. Their dawn settlements are far to the north, in hidden cañons close to the Utah line; and it is not likely that their eastern pueblos, those of the Hopi proper, were ever beyond the upper reaches of the Jedito Wash country. But these prayer-sticks are found far beyond those limits. They suggest religious pilgrimages into enemy provinces. Perhaps the early Hopi accepted even this dangerous means of placating his deities. Primitive knowledge would have located the sources of rain in [338]the western range, where the San Francisco peaks lift their snow-capped heads, and in the White Mountains of the Apache country. The Navajo fastened his legends to that highest desert elevation, Navajo Mountain, and it is not likely the Hopi ventured there. But his Rain gods, those powerful to relieve the aridity of his country and ensure against famine, dwelt in mountains somewhere, and therefore, trembling perhaps, muttering incantations, he went to them.

Anything that is strange, and possibly potent, has been absorbed into their embroidered religion. The clans like to procure colored glass. They make much of tortoise shells, and other things speaking of the sea. President Roosevelt was petitioned by them to forward a jar of sea-water. They have—or had—a Parrot clan, a fantastic touch reminiscent of some lonely friar who had a mission garden and in it kept his pets.

Close to their homes are many shrines that excite the curiosity of tourists and that sometimes get visitors into trouble. Once a couple of the overly curious were thrashed with whips by Hopi of the Chimopovi district—for which the guilty were severely punished by the Agent then in charge. But more than one Agent has ordered busybodies to replace bahoos and gifts taken from such places. While I had a hand in this, and finally stopped the plundering of old graves, and once prevented the sale and removal of an entire Hopi altar, still I must admit that I never caught a tourist or a “scratcher” pillaging a newly made grave.

Most of the clans must have been intermingled in so small a population. We have Youkeoma’s statement that there is a Ghost clan, subdivided into a Ghost-and-Bird clan. A more intelligent member of the tribe once endeavored [339]to recall for me the numerous fraternities of his people. He said: “The Sun, Salt, Crow, and Ant clans are dead. There are no more of those people. The Parrot clan now has but one member, a woman. The Bear clan is the largest, and next come the Sand and Snake clans. There are the Spider and Evergreen clans. Some of them go in groups, so we have the Bear, Spider, and Evergreen clans associated, as is the Rabbit clan with the Tobacco clan. We have the Eagle, the Horn, the Fire, and the Flute clan; the Antelope, the Lizard, and the Corn clan.” And when that group of progressive head-men petitioned Washington in 1886 for a school, they signed themselves as leaders of the Mountain-sheep clan, the Coyote and Badger clans, the Rain, the Reed, and the Katchina clans. But one of these men is living to-day—Honani, of Chimopovi, always one of the friendlies. The most interesting and impressive of them, Shupula, father of the chief Snake priest, died July 4, 1916, a benign old man whose features are preserved in a splendid piece of modeling by Mr. Emri Kopte, the sculptor who has lived for many years among the Hopi Indians.

Next to these phases of his religion are the red pages of his life-calendar. The Hopi is born to a heritage of toil in an unfriendly environment, and perhaps to misunderstanding and small sympathy; but the poetry of his life begins at once. The paternal grandmother acts as his nurse. After bathing the child she anoints it with wood ashes, that he may have a smooth body. The mother is supposed not to let the sun shine on her for the period of twenty days, at the end of which time the child is named. Only the women of the husband’s family are present at this ceremony. They bring a blanket of Hopi weave, and a bowl of sacred water to place before the mother. They [340]wash her hair with this water. Each of these godmothers brings an ear of corn as an offering. They dip the corn in the water and stroke the head of the infant four times, making at the same time a wish for its health and happiness. Each of them suggests a name. The child will belong to the mother’s clan, but will be named for something denoting the father’s clan. If the father happens to be a member of the Sand clan, his children will be named for things common to the desert sand.

On the twenty-first day after the birth these women have assembled and washed the mother’s hair. This is before sunrise: they are a dawn-loving people. Then the grandmother takes the infant in one arm and the mother by the hand. Imagine that little ceremony upon the craggy mesa-top in the gray chill of the desert morning, high in the thin air, overlooking all the dim sleeping valleys. They step to the mesa edge to view the rising sun. Sacred meal, mixed with corn-pollen, is strewn on the air. Then, as that mellow light flames the farthest east, radiating from the hearts of all the people, gilding Yucca Point and the Terrace of the Winds, plashing warmly the cold walls of the mesa fortress, the grandmother speaks the name she has selected from those suggested for the child.

If the child be a girl, she will receive another name on reaching maturity, when her hair will be washed and arranged in the symbolic whorls as a sign of womanhood. If a boy, he will receive another name at a certain ceremony entitling him to wear a mask and to dance. These names then last through life.

One can understand from this little baptismal scene how my friend of the Second Mesa, Ta-las-we-huma, got his name. It must have been a beautiful sunrise, and the little fellow must have been well-favored in the sight of his [341]sponsors; for his name may be translated, “Glow of the Rising Sun.”

The Hopi do not name their children with the frank vulgarity that so often is found among the Navajo and other tribes. Many of their titles are pure poetry. We have Lo-may-ump-tewa—something Going Straight and Good, as an arrow—and Se-you-ma—one who Carries a Flower. Then there are many names such as we commonly associate with Indians: Sah-mee or Green Corn, and Qua-ku-ku, or Eagle Claws.

The Hopi maiden is most frequently given a tender name, and she is often a pretty little thing deserving it. We find Tawa-mana, or Girl of the Sun, and Pole-mana and Pole-see, meaning Butterfly Girl and Butterfly Flowers (buttercups).

They are equally tasteful in naming places. I have already mentioned Huh-kwat-we, the Terrace of the Winds. Of their closer and more intimate places we find Ta-wah-pah Spring, the Spring of the Sun, at one time a most precious waterhole, however roiled and muddy. And Pah-lots-quabbie, the “place where we get red paint for the face,” a point of particular interest to the women who wish to preserve their complexions. Despite their copper-colored skins, the intense rays of the desert sunlight cause them to take measures for protection. Much of Indian face-painting is cosmetic, and not for the brilliant color-scheme that a tourist connects with war-parties and potential scalpings.

Many of their names are difficult to translate in a word or two, since they most often describe things fully. The desert Indian is not a word-maker, and for unfamiliar objects he does not create nouns. There is Dah-vuph-cho-mah: this spot white men call the Hill of the Water-Witch, [342]for it is where the Water Development chief has his home, shops, and office. He calls it a “camp.” Camp or not, it is a haven of welcome for rare souls, including itinerant artists, poets, and depressed Indian Agents. A disappointed candidate for the much-coveted mayoralty of Polacca, probably actuated by bitterness, once dubbed this prominence Pisgah. The Hopi named it, long before the mystery of well-rigs and peach-tree wands was known, Dah-vuph-cho-mah: “the place where we dry rabbit-skins for the quilts.” Quite simple, is it not?

The Hopi once made many robes of rabbit-skins. It was necessary to bury the pelts in the sand before removal to the mesa-top, a ceremonial matter; and Dah-vuph-cho-mah was the place to do it. The skins were then rolled into ropes, thick and soft, and sewed together. I last saw these coverings at Hotevilla, where so many traditions are preserved.

And this suggests the methods of rabbit-hunting. The Hopi does not seek bunny with .22 rifle, or bow and arrow, or snares. Actually he drops the swift creature with the Hopi rabbit-stick or boomerang, a curved piece of mountain-oak that these Indians throw skillfully. But the answer to the inquiring tourist is—“He runs the rabbit down.” The Hopi are fleet of foot, and of course our touring friend devours this explanation literally. Hopi rabbit-hunts are joyous community-affairs, and they do run the rabbit down. They encircle a very large area of desert valley, all runners, all bearing rabbit-sticks. Then they begin contracting the circle. As the rabbits flee before one advancing line of beaters, they are turned back by other lines. From every bush, it seems, Hopi are bobbing up, with menacing blows and wild cries. The game is thus run down and killed when tiring. Patient [343]burros bear home the spoils. I have seen these beasts covered with dead rabbits, while afar in the plain still arose the merry shouts of the running hunters.

The language of the Tewa is composed of shorter terms.

“What do you call these?” I asked, showing some local beans.

“We call them ‘tdo.’ ”

“What does that mean?”

“It means ‘beans.’ When a Tewa means beans, he says ‘beans.’ But when a Hopi speaks of these, he says: ‘Kotcha-cha-chi-morzree,’ ‘the beans that are soft when boiled a long time.’ ” So he described them first, when experimenting with their cooking, and he has never seen fit to shorten his nomenclature.

Compared with the stalwart Sioux or the equally tall and vigorous Navajo of the mountains, men of the horses, the Hopi are at first glance a little people. This has brought them some sympathy from those who seize on superficial appearances. The mature Hopi has a thick figure, not inclined to fatness, but with barrel-like lungs and a sturdy back. He would make a fine wrestler. As he has accepted things of civilization via the trader, and absorbed so much from his neighbor, the Navajo, his costume is not radically different to-day. The curious dresses of the olden-time, of buckskin, cloth of native weave, and feathers, such as may be seen in the Harvey collection at Albuquerque, have disappeared from the mesas and to the younger generation are unknown. A shirt of velveteen, loose trousers of some light cloth, often pure white, moccasins of red-stained buckskin and his own peculiar design, a handkerchief twisted about his head, these form his costume. Most of his ornaments are bought of the Navajo, save that an occasional Hopi silversmith [344]will hammer the metal into Hopi patterns, such as butterflies and snakes with turquoise eyes. When you see these forms, they are Hopi. The Navajo does not use them.

But in this dress of the men the resemblance to the nomad ceases. The true Hopi is marked by his short stature, his broader and radically different physiognomy, and especially by the dressing of his hair. The Navajo is usually a sloven with his hair. Do not get too close to him. The Navajo draws his hair tightly back from the brow, and catches it in a knot or a queue at the back of his head. And there is little difference between the men and their women. The Hopi wears the bang and the straight bobbed effect that came out of Egypt. When it is possible, he takes scrupulous care of his mane. Hair-washing is an important feature of all ceremonies. He was the first bobbed American.

To-day this effect will be found among the orthodox only. The younger men, home from schools, have adopted the comb and shears as they drift away from many fetishes. But hair-cutting has produced some serious wrangles with the Hopi. Long ago an Agent zealously interpreted a Washington order to mean that all Indians, not only those in schools, should be made to cut their hair in white man’s fashion—as if this would produce civilization overnight. To the elders of the tribe this was a terrible heresy, and they resisted very naturally. It is too bad that orders cannot be transmitted in the form of blue-prints.

The women of the tribe are the strongholds of conservatism. I recall holding a council of mixed sexes, the talk relating to some form of community improvement along modern lines. And when it was over, I asked my interpreter:— [345]

“Do you believe they understood?”

“The men, of course,” he replied, emphatically; “but do you think it possible to get that stuff through a Hopi woman’s head? Epten. The men will try to carry out your wishes; but they are in for a very unpleasant time of it with their women. A Hopi woman! She is like a piece of sandrock. The winds wear it away, but it will take many years.”

The younger women, who have had schooling, wear the gingham and calico dresses they have learned to make and launder, and the field matrons assist them in renewing these garments. But the old ones, and the students of middle-age, are most likely to be found wearing the ancient Hopi weaves. A dress may be of thick cloth caught at one shoulder, leaving the opposite arm bare, belted at the waist with a woven sash, the wearer’s legs and feet bare most of the time, unless for some special journey she dons the woman’s wrapping and shoe of buckskin. She grows thick and fat, her countenance rounding into a broad, complacent face that can smile pleasantly or become stolidly impervious as the mood strikes her. Once married, her hair is parted and hangs down her back in thick plaits. Her hands are thick and coarsened from hard labor, the making of pottery, and especially from the baking of piki bread.

This baking is done on a red-hot stone over the fire. The Hopi woman sits before it, at her side a pan of batter, sometimes colored red or blue. She dips her hand into the batter and smears it deftly over the hot stone. Before it has burned and curled, she wipes over it a second layer. This last cooks perfectly in a thin wafer, quite like tissue-paper, crinkled and brittle. This she peels off and places in a pile of such sheets. All day she does this, [346]often until her palm is perfectly cooked with the bread. The sheets are then rolled, again resembling a packet of tissue, quite like those we used to buy at Christmas time for decorations. A dozen of these rolls, and the Hopi man will take the trail, fully provided with provender.

Some rather reject the thought of eating piki bread, but I have sampled Indian foods more than once, and with different results. An old Navajo shemah can broil mutton ribs and prepare a pot of coffee over a hogan fire in such a way that one who has had a hard trip,—and more of it to come,—thinks them delicious. And piki bread is not half bad, although rather flat in taste, and gritty, for the sand will intrude; and I suppose if one accepted it as a steady diet his teeth would be worn down in time, like those of the older Hopi. As for the cooked hand, one should gratefully accept and eat piki without being too curious as to its making. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

---

Next in the Hopi life-calendar appears the urgent necessity for marriage. The happy man has very little to do with this affair. The bride-elect—self-elected—and her mother, a wily dowager who has contrived a large part of the proceedings, decide most of these things for themselves. I cannot say how early negotiations have been opened by the aunts and uncles of both signatories, but of course they have been consulted. At any rate, on a day the girl and her mother pay a visit to the eligible young man’s home, and tender his parents a present of piki bread and cornmeal on a woven-reed plaque. Most Southwest tribes use a wedding-basket symbol; the Navajo import from another tribe a wedding basket of definite design, and will use no other. If the boy’s parents accept [347]these presents and replace them with a portion of mutton on the same plaque, they have signified their consent to the union. If there has been dissension between the Montagues and Capulets and a plague on both houses, so to speak, the disdaining parents give this piki and meal to others, signifying their lack of interest in mere foreigners, and these receiving diplomats break the sad news that a perfectly good offer has been declined.

But if the present is accepted, the uncles of the bride-elect gather at her home to advise her concerning the duties of a good wife, and at an appointed time the girl, accompanied by her parents and close relatives, headed by the one who named her, proceed to the home of the groom’s parents for a feast. This gathering is held at night, and when they depart the bride remains. She spends four nights in her husband’s people’s home, doing the housework for the whole family. Very early in the morning she begins the corn-grinding, to pay for her husband. During these four days there is a ceremony of hair-washing, and her hair is given a peculiar cut to mark her as a married woman. Ever after she wears it so. And during these four days the boy’s uncles bring in cotton for her wedding-robe. They are paid for it in meal, and they depart to the kiva to weave it. While at this weaving, they are fed by the girl’s family. At the end of the four days the robe is finished. The uncles heap a wealth of advice on the groom before he departs from the home of his birth. Then the bride dons the white robe and goes with her husband to the home of her own parents; that is to say, she is accompanied by her husband. If he has had any ideas of a home of his own, away from the precincts of mother-in-law, he has not announced them, and apparently discretion is the better part of valor. [348]

In this manner a young lady has gone to the home of a desirable young man, proposed for him, married him, partially paid for him, decked herself with apparel manufactured by his people, and then led him to her home in triumph.

There is nothing new under the sun. Vamping was reduced to a precise science by the Hopi many centuries before the pueblo de Los Angeles was dreamed of.

---

“And—hark! As I live, again the villagers!”

All this has not been enough to establish cordial relationship between the families. There must be something in the nature of a riotous shivaree. These folk who have captured our darling boy must not be permitted to crow too loud. So the mother of the groom, his influential aunts and other female relatives, especially those whose temperaments will lend verve to the affair, proceed to the rival house. They go upon an errand of mock-seriousness that may assume proportions. They will say unpleasant things in loud voices, especially for the benefit of the neighbors, to the effect that this bride has numerous and glaring defects, and that, if the truth be told, perhaps their paragon has not acquired the most beautiful and gracious of the village maidens.

The women of the bride’s household reply in kind, their language not always the most decorous. Personal references are made, involving the cleanliness and habits of both parties, and a friendly fight is on. These ladies proceed to sling mud,—at first verbally, and then actually,—real mud, over the house and each other. The bride and her mother will have to have a vigorous house-cleaning after this, and fresh plastering on the interior walls. Perhaps that is the idea of it—to make them furbish the domicile. [349]

The masculine element is conspicuous by its utter absence. The men know better than to appear. Like white men on house-cleaning day, they seek the highest roof or the lowest cellar, along with their disconsolate dogs. Woe betide any absent-minded one who strays within the field. Both parties are likely to turn on him with more than words and mud. It is not likely that the men will dare come home until after sunset, when, no doubt, their attention will be distracted by recitals of the affair, and the condition of the home will cause them much grief.

A friendly, if undignified, roughhouse, to show the world that these two families, now having common interests, can endure the most unpleasant conditions and survive.

And would you imagine that the groom is ever to have a home of his very own, with a fireside, and slippers, and everything? Not unless he has his Agent behind him and bravely kicks over the sacred traditions, risking ostracism possibly and at least a great deal of home-town misery. Just how long Jacob will serve that family for Rachel, I am not aware; and unlike Jacob, he serves after having been snared. He draws and transports the water, if he has a wagon; he cuts the wood and attends the field; he wrangles horses, herds cattle, and helps manicure the sheep. He is owned by this old mother who directed her daughter’s attention toward him.

To be fair, sometimes the girl has fancied him for herself, without too much urging of family; and I recall asking more than one diffident groom, when about to publish banns:—

“Do you really, of yourself, wish to marry this woman?”

“Well, sir—she wants me to marry her.”

In delicate matters of this kind, the Hopi young man is pleasantly agreeable and strives to please. [350]

And I succeeded in getting very few of them to take another point of view. There were several determined Romeos who had selected girls for themselves, who paid court despite all family disapproval, and who finally won out in their suits. But they were shrewdly wise to fortify themselves in Governmental positions: interpreters, policemen, laborers, or assistants, otherwise they would likely have been ostracized and come close to starvation. Having joined the Moungwi’s official family, however, and being endowed with monthly salary “fresh and fresh,” they could assert a bit of independence, could demand immunity from the bitterest of traditions; and I suppose they made much of their closeness to the Big Chief. Most Indians do. “I will tell my white uncle” has throttled many a threatened unpleasantness.

Then too, they were regarded by those less fortunate as rich men, having, besides a monthly surety, certain perquisites and a supposed subtle influence in foreign affairs.

“This Moungwi speaks to Washington by papers and the singing wires; and do you not know, stupid one, that I often talk with him?”

Their family visitors and retainers increased and were many. Not an enviable position, a place at court, despite its reflected importance and privilege. And the fall thereof when, Fate decreeing, the Moungwi with loud words dismissed one of these believed favorites! A return to the kiva influences was not a happy experience. Sanctuary had not been copied or absorbed from those early Spaniards and their holy friars. Indian ridicule and Indian persecution can be very cruel.

Few of the young men have the wherewithal to build a home or to buy one, either at the mesa or in the valley, [351]so they are tied for years to this feudal family-system, waiting to inherit from their elders.

Even when one is so fortunate, so energetic, or so rash as to throw aside the traditions, he simply accepts bondage without mother-in-law, since no part of the house nor anything he brings to it, other than his personal belongings, may be claimed by him. The woman owns and rules the home, and this includes the children and the harvest. The children are of the mother’s clan. The man may disport himself, gaily dressed and agile as a panther, in the ceremonies; he may be a leader in the hunt; he may declaim in the kiva; but his authority ceases at the threshold of the Hopi home.

For has not this woman, during the first year of her married life, ground from one to two thousand pounds of corn meal in payment for her man and her wedding dress? She has, indeed. And since she has purchased him, she has the right to divorce him. He may slave in the hot fields and the sand-blows, running to and from the patches, hoe on shoulder, to charm a crop of corn. He has planted with ceremony—so many grains for the hot wind, so many for the field rat, so many for the katchina, and so many for himself; but once he has harvested it, and packed the Hopi share to the home cellar, his ponies may starve for the lack of a hatful of grain if his wife is not generous. One thing with another, I think the Hopi male has a rather tough time of it. Sometimes he grows a bit fretful and proceeds to push his wife about, rarely going so far as to box her jaws, which she very often thoroughly deserves and earns. Then, if she still likes him, she appeals amid tears to the Agent, with view to having him reprimanded and, unless it be crop-time, jailed. But if she does not care for him overmuch, [352]having, as related of an Ethiopian matron, “entirely lost her taste for that man,” she abruptly divorces him.

This action calls for no assemblage of the family circle or of chieftains, no personal complaint, no service of notice, as one might imagine. Friend husband returns at evening from the sheep-camp or cornfield, probably crooning an old kiva hymn, at peace with all the Desert and its demons, to find his saddlegear, his cow-rope, and his other shirt on the doorstep. The decree is thus handed down, recorded, and confirmed. There is no appeal. He is out. He hoists his few belongings on his back and departs away from there.

If a young man, he will likely return to the parental roof; if not, he becomes a solitary and a wanderer for a season, roosting about where nightfall catches him, to be found later in company with some divorced woman or widow, cheerfully toiling to harvest corn for children not his own. When this thing has been repeated a number of times, and throughout a whole tribe, the Agent’s job of keeping vital statistics of clarity begins to loom into proportions. A Hopi genealogical record resembles a war-map. The keeping of it becomes abstract science, having both biological and anthropological phases.

I have known Hopi men of middle age who long maintained a fatherly interest in their children after such a social cataclysm; but they were not many, most of them growing careless of any and all responsibility; and I have found women as the heads of households to which—to adjust the records—I had to assign four husbands, all living and none present.

But to return to the Hopi wedding. After the four days spent in the home of her husband’s people, and her triumphant return with the captive to the house of her [353]mother, the bride is supposed to deny herself the pleasure of all Hopi revelry and ceremony until the next Neman Katchina Dance. This occurs about a fortnight prior to the Snake Dance of August, and is an appeal for rain and harvest fruition. Then she arrays herself once more in the pure white robe, and appears for a few moments at the ceremony. This is to be her last bid for public attention and the bride’s centre of the stage, before settling down to a life of toil certainly, the rearing of many children probably, and perhaps a number of alliances. But it matters not how troubled her life, how peaceful, pure, how hectic; this first marriage is the only one to be distinguished by a ceremony and a symbol. This is the last time she wears the robe—save one. When next we see her in its white folds, she, having fulfilled the monotonous duties of a true Hopi or having, like Emma Bovary, tested all of life’s experiences, is waiting, peacefully uncaring, to be carried to her last bed in the shadow of the great, immutable mesa.

My introduction to the importance of the wedding robe came about through an effort to eliminate the evil power of the tribe’s old women. The weddings were arranged entirely too early, and operated to defy both Arizona State Law and Service regulation. It was a foxy method and held to with savage determination. An appeal to the Bureau would have brought only the hopeless decision that a tribal marriage had been declared a legal marriage by great Eastern Solons bent on pushing Orientals into Occidental grooves. Often too, young people were forced into these marriages. And the results were highly pleasing to the Hopi elders, and four-fold: Rachel’s mother procured labor in the form of Jacob. Jacob’s family received the ton of corn meal that Rachel would grind. Certainly [354]Rachel, and often both contracting parties, were prevented from attending the schools, as the old Hopi earnestly desired; and Hopi traditions as to fruition were completely satisfied.

There was an even more serious result. This grinding of corn meal early and late, crouched over the stone metate, ended in the young mother’s losing her first-born. At one time there was no Hopi woman at the First Mesa whose first-born child was living.

So, as Moungwi, I gave them fair warning that these things must stop. They did not stop. An Indian, of whatever tribe, will always chance a test. They are a great people for stolid experiments. My first idea of punishment was, the child-wife to the boarding-school, the groom and his father to the Agency jail.

“But,” these male unfortunates finally convinced me, “you are punishing the wrong persons. We men have had nothing to do with the matter. Get the old women.”

And when this was done there were lamentations and floods of tears. One old virago nearly washed me from her home. It was a wet season at the mesa. And the virus worked about as successfully as a local philosopher of the Hopi described another’s conversion to Christianity via baptism.

“First time they get him, just like vaccinate him—no take. He backsliding now—dance all time—old Hopi again. But next time they get him baptized, mebbeso it take all right—mebbeso.”

Not all of my efforts produced success.

You may ask, Why not secure the girl in school before this untoward happening? The younger children of the Hopi all attend day schools, located close to their homes, and often a girl will reach maturity before the matrons [355]have knowledge of a marriage scheme. With the child-wife in the boarding-school, caught during those first four days, there was no procession to mamma’s house, no corn-grinding, no attendance of the Katchina dance, and no robe. The joy had been taken out of life. There was mourning in both camps; for, as Jacob was in jail, there was no water-hauling, no woodcutting, no unpaid laboring in the field. It was a very sad state of affairs, tribally, and apparently this strange Moungwi had little sympathy for the human race,—at least the Hopi division of it, and its urge to perpetuate itself.

One day, about two years after the imposition of such a sentence, I met an old man at a distant mesa who asked for a talk.

“His daughter is home now,” said the interpreter, “and he wants your permission to have her robe woven.”

“Robe—you mean a wedding robe?”

“Yes. You recall she had no tribal ceremony; and it is like this: When the white people marry, they have a ring. The white robe is our ring. If she dies, there will be no robe to bury her in.”

Such is the stupidity of the alien when he seeks to rule the so-called heathen. My method was justified to protect the weak and the young, but I had cast out sentiment.

Quite so many Lispeths. I promptly gave permission for the weaving of a robe, and I hope she has had no use for it, nor will have, these many years.

The mid-West moralist may interpolate a question here. Without their own service, did you permit them to go unmarried? This had little in it of the material compared [356]with that robe episode. But as Moungwi, a commissioned Head of the people, vested also with the authority of the State of Arizona, I would solemnize a legal ceremony if events had proved one necessary and the parties had attained a legal age. I never married a woman to a scoundrel. But I have married four couples in one morning, issuing first the State license as a deputized clerk of the court, solemnizing the ceremony as a magistrate, blessing the bride, and immediately thereafter summoning into open court the groom and all other guilty persons for trial on a charge of child-prostitution. This method was drastic, and very wearing on one who had other things to engage his attention. And it was not a very cheering family-event. But it finally produced obedience. There came a time when the Hopi would consult the Agency records as to their children’s ages, and would inquire about school terms, and what Moungwi thought about it, before framing-up family alliances.

The happiest of the Hopi marriages were those following my permission to schoolboys and girls to arrange their own courting, sometimes at the school, thus breaking down old mesa-lines. Boys of the First Mesa married Hotevilla girls: a thing that would never have been tolerated by the parents on either side. Close as are the mesas, housing the one people, they might as well be separate provinces. Seldom will a First Mesa marry an Oraibi, for instance, and vice versa. A local form of derision among the Hopi is to mock the differences in pronunciation and intonation of their common language. Oraibi is less than thirty miles from Walpi, and yet an Oraibi is a being recognizing a different civilization.

When last I visited Phœnix, I entered a shop to make a purchase. A fine-looking Hopi came forward and greeted [357]me. We talked about the folks at home, of his summer visit to the mesas, who had died and who had married.

“Now let me see,” I parleyed, for it is hard to remember all individuals of a tribe. “You are married—what is your wife’s name?”

“Why, you know her; she was Youkeoma’s granddaughter.”

“Sure enough—Viola—the one who hid in the wagon and ran away to school at Phœnix, for fear I would send her back to Hotevilla.”

---

Birth and baptism; marriage and divorce; many dances; a lifetime of endless toil and endless prayer; many harvests, rich and meagre. Then comes the time when he has planted his last crop, or she has finished the last of household labors. Something happens to end things, and to serve summons to the Judgment Seat, that lonely prominence overlooking the Oraibi-Dinnebito Washes in the west. The tireless feet will no longer cover the steep trails to the pueblo on the heights; the mesa and the valley will know them no more. Death, as to us all, comes as a surprise. There is a sad wailing that is soon hushed.

A woman of the family prepares the body for burial and washes the hair. Then someone is nominated to sit with the dead, to express the common grief. When first I heard of this, he was described as “the one who has to be angry with the dead.” But the explanation was somewhat distorted. The person who has this duty does talk to the dead, saying:—

“Oh! why did you leave us? Were you angry with us, that you have gone away never to return? We are left here, lonely. What was it we did to make you angry with us—that you have left us.…” [358]

If death occurs in the night, the burial is early the next morning. No food is eaten. The body is arranged for burial in a sitting position. A corn-planting stick is placed so as to project above its head. Then the father or nearest male relative carries the body to the sand-mounds below the mesa where adults are interred and buries it. Young children have shallow graves in another place, for it is believed that their spirits are weak, too weak to struggle through deeper soil.

Then the father returns to the home, procures food that he carries to the grave in a ceremonial bowl, and leaves it there. One finds these bowls, broken, in the sand; and of course it is expected that they will not be disturbed. Above the graves of children one may find weathered toys and the remnants of a doll.

Returning to the house a second time, he gathers all the mourning ones around a common bowl of food, and they break their fast.

A simple life, simply ended.

These people succumb quickly to disease. Their mode of living invites infection and spreads contagion. They suffer epidemics periodically, and these are like the plagues of Egypt. Measles is a scourge; they have known smallpox many times; the Spanish influenza decimated them. But while these are swift and virulent enemies, they may be fought vigorously and checked at last. There is one disease as fateful as themselves, stealthy, insidious, that cannot be mastered. The white man ensnared by it finds in the Desert a place of refuge, of hope; but the Hopi refuge has not been found.

There is among my photographs one of a Hopi girl wearing the tribal dress, her hair in whorls, a wistful expression on her face. I will not tell you that this is an [359]Indian princess, for there are no Indian “princesses” outside vaudeville. She is simply Stella, of the First Mesa. When she was not more than six years old, I found her on the mesa-top, very dirty and ill-nourished, an orphan, a waif, being passed around from one family to another. I packed her off to the Cañon boarding-school, and almost immediately thereafter, upon advice of the physician, to a sanatorium. When I next saw her there, she was a contented little girl, very pretty, with a red bow of ribbon in her dark hair and a taste for chocolates in her mouth. And then more years rolled away, and again I visited the place. This time she had grown swiftly into young womanhood. She had suffered a relapse and was in bed.

The physician in charge accompanied me through the wards, for a number of my Hopi were there, and finally we stopped for a little chat with Stella. She still had a taste for candy, and so informed me. This being “uncle” to several thousands has its responsibilities.

“She has been here a long time,” I said when we came away.

“Yes—an uneven case, erratic chart; and that sort seldom make a complete recovery. By the way, did you notice anything peculiar in her expression?”

“Well,” I replied, “she was a very pretty little child, and she has n’t quite lost all that. There is something wistfully patient about her—a half-smiling sadness—”

“The very thing,” said the doctor. “I wondered if you would notice it. The Mona Lisa look: Fishberg mentions it. Stella is a perfect example.”

But when I last visited the mesa Stella had a home in which to welcome me. She had tired of the long years at the sanatorium, and they were many; she had returned, [360]as they all endeavor, to her people on the mesa-top; and she still liked candy, and she still had that placid, melancholy expression.1 I have sought to rescue many Hopi from that dread disease, with varying success, but she is the only Gioconda I have found among the Indians. [361]