The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi | Page 3

of

many other writers on the subject, we would refer the reader to the
discussion of myth under the head of Social Anthropology in the
Encyclopedia Britannica, Fourteenth Edition, page 869.

II. THE HOPI
* * * * *
=Their Country--The People=
The Hopi Indians live in northern Arizona about one hundred miles
northeast of Flagstaff, seventy miles north of Winslow, and
seventy-five miles north of Holbrook.
For at least eight hundred years the Hopi pueblos have occupied the
southern points of three fingers of Black Mesa, the outstanding
physical feature of the country, commonly referred to as First, Second,
and Third Mesas.
It is evident that in late prehistoric times several large villages were
located at the foot of First and Second Mesas, but at present, except for
two small settlements around trading posts, the villages are all on top of
the mesas. On the First Mesa we find Walpi, Sichomovi, and Hano, the
latter not Hopi but a Tewa village built about 1700 by immigrants from
the Rio Grande Valley, and at the foot of this mesa the modern village
of Polacca with its government school and trading post. On Second
Mesa are Mashongnovi, Shipaulovi, and Shungopovi, with Toreva Day
School at its foot. On Third Mesa Oraibi, Hotavilla, and Bacabi are
found, with a government school and a trading post at Lower Oraibi
and another school at Bacabi. Moencopi, an offshoot from Old Oraibi,
is near Tuba City.
This area was once known as the old Spanish Province of Tusayan, and
the Hopi villages are called pueblos, Spanish for towns. In 1882,
2,472,320 acres of land were set aside from the public domain as the
Hopi Indian Reservation. At present the Hopi area is included within
the greater Navajo Reservation and administered by a branch of the
latter Indian agency.
The name Hopi or Hopitah means "peaceful people," and the name
Moqui, sometimes applied to them by unfriendly Navajo neighbors, is
really a Zuni word meaning "dead," a term of derision. Naturally the
Hopi do not like being called Moqui, though no open resentment is
ever shown. Early fiction and even some early scientific reports used

the term Moqui instead of Hopi.
Admirers have called these peaceful pueblo dwellers "The Quaker
People," but that is a misnomer for these sturdy brown heathen who
have never asked or needed either government aid or government
protection, have a creditable record of defensive warfare during early
historic times and running back into their traditional history, and have
also some accounts of civil strife.
The nomadic Utes, Piutes, Apaches, and Navajos for years raided the
fields and flocks of this industrious, prosperous, sedentary people; in
fact, the famous Navajo blanket weavers got the art of weaving and
their first stock of sheep through stealing Hopi women and Hopi sheep.
But there came a time when the peaceful Hopi decided to kill the
Navajos who stole their crops and their girls, and then conditions
improved. Too, soon after, came the United States government and Kit
Carson to discipline the raiding Navajos.
The only semblance of trouble our government has had with the Hopi
grew out of the objection, in fact, refusal, of some of the more
conservative of the village inhabitants to send their children to school.
The children were taken by force, but no blood was shed, and now
government schooling is universally accepted and generally
appreciated.
A forbidding expanse of desert waste lands surrounds the Hopi mesas,
furnishing forage for Hopi sheep and goats during the wet season and
browse enough to sustain them during the balance of the year. These
animals are of a hardy type adapted to their desert environment. Our
pure blood stock would fare badly under such conditions. However, the
type of wool obtained from these native sheep lends itself far more
happily to the weaving of the fine soft blankets so long made by the
Hopi than does the wool of our high grade Merino sheep or a mixture
of the two breeds. This is so because our Merino wool requires the
commercial scouring given it by modern machine methods, whereas the
Hopi wool can be reduced to perfect working condition by the
primitive hand washing of the Hopi women.
As one approaches the dun-colored mesas from a distance he follows
their picturesque outlines against the sky line, rising so abruptly from
the plain below, but not until one is within a couple of miles can he
discern the villages that crown their heights. And no wonder these

dun-colored villages seem so perfectly a part of the mesas themselves,
for they are literally so--their rock walls and dirt roofs having been
merely picked up from the floor and sides of the mesa itself and made
into human habitations.
The Hopi number about 2,500 and are a Shoshonean