The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi | Page 5

unlike the nomadic tribes around them. They are a sedentary, peaceful people living in permanent villages and presenting today a significant transitional phase in the advance of a people from savagery toward civilization and affording a valuable study in the science of man.
Naturally they are changing, for easy transportation has brought the outside world to their once isolated home. It is therefore highly important that they be studied first-hand now for they will not long stay as they are.

III. HOPI SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
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=Government=
In government, the village is the unit, and a genuinely democratic government it is. There is a house chief, a Kiva chief, a war chief, the speaker chief or town crier, and the chiefs of the clans who are likewise chiefs of the fraternities; all these making up a council which rules the pueblo, the crier publishing its decisions. Laws are traditional and unwritten. Hough[5] says infractions are so few that it would be hard to say what the penalties are, probably ridicule and ostracism. Theft is almost unheard of, and the taking of life by force or law is unknown.
[Footnote 5: Hough, Walter, The Hopi: Torch Press, Cedar Rapids, 1915.]
To a visitor encamped at bedtime below the mesa, the experience of hearing the speaker chief or town crier for the first time is something long to be remembered. Out of the stillness of the desert night comes a voice from the house tops, and such a voice! From the heights above, it resounds in a sonorous long-drawn chant. Everyone listens breathlessly to the important message and it goes on and on.
The writer recalls that when first she heard it, twenty years ago, she sat up in bed and rousing the camp, with stage whispers (afraid to speak aloud), demanded: "Do you hear that? What on earth can it mean? Surely something awful has happened!" On and on it went endlessly. (She has since been told that it is all repeated three times.) And not until morning was it learned that the long speech had been merely the announcement of a rabbit hunt for the next day. The oldest traditions of the Hopi tell of this speaker chief and his important utterances. He is a vocal bulletin board and the local newspaper, but his news is principally of a religious nature, such as the announcement of ceremonials. This usually occurs in the evening when all have gotten in from the fields or home from the day's journey, but occasionally announcements are made at other hours.
The following is a poetic formal announcement of the New Fire Ceremony, as given at sunrise from the housetop of the Crier at Walpi:
"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."[6]
[Footnote 6: Hough, Walter, Op. cit., p. 43.]
As to the character of their government, Hewett says:[7] "We can truthfully say that these surviving pueblo communities constitute the oldest existing republics. It must be remembered, however, that they were only vest-pocket editions. No two villages nor group of villages ever came under a common authority or formed a state. There is not the faintest tradition of a 'ruler' over the whole body of the Pueblos, nor an organization of the people of this vast territory under a common government."
[Footnote 7: Hewett, E.L., Ancient Life in the American Southwest: Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis, 1929, p. 71.]
=The Clan and Marriage=
Making up the village are various clans. A clan comprises all the descendants of a traditional maternal ancestor. Children belong to the clan of the mother. (See Figure 1.) These clans bear the name of something in nature, often suggested by either a simple or a significant incident in the legendary history of the people during migration when off-shoots from older clans were formed into new clans. Thus a migration legend collected by Voth[8] accounts for the name of the Bear Clan, the Bluebird Clan, the Spider Clan, and others.
[Footnote 8: Voth, H.R., Traditions of the Hopi: Field Columbian Museum Pub. 96, Anthropological series, vol. 8, pp. 36-38, 1905.]
Sons and daughters are expected to marry outside the clan, and the son must live with his wife's people, so does nothing to perpetuate his own clan. The Hopi is monogamous. A daughter on marrying brings her husband to her home, later building the new home adjacent to that of her mother. Therefore many daughters born to a clan mean increase in