The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi | Page 4

stock. They speak
a language allied to that of the Utes and more remotely to the language
of the Aztecs in Mexico.[4]
[Footnote 4: Colton, H.S., Days in the Painted Desert: Museum Press,
Flagstaff, 1932, p. 17.]
According to their traditions the various Hopi clans arrived in Hopiland
at different times and from different directions, but they were all a
kindred people having the same tongue and the same fundamental
traditions.
They did not at first build on the tops of the mesas, but at their feet,
where their corn fields now are, and it was not from fear of the war-like
and aggressive tribes of neighboring Apaches and Navajos that they
later took to the mesas, as we once supposed. A closer acquaintance
with these people brings out the fact that it was not till the Spaniards
had come to them and established Catholic Missions in the late
Seventeenth Century that the Hopi decided to move to the more easily
defended mesa tops for fear of a punitive expedition from the Spaniards
whose priests they had destroyed.
We are told that these desert-dwellers, whose very lives have always
depended upon their little corn fields along the sandy washes that
caught and held summer rains, always challenged new-coming clans to
prove their value as additions to the community, especially as to their
magic for rain-making, for life here was a hardy struggle for existence,
with water as a scarce and precious essential. Among the first
inhabitants was the Snake Clan with its wonderful ceremonies for rain
bringing, as well as other sacred rites. Willingly they accepted the
rituals and various religious ceremonials of new-comers when they
showed their ability to help out with the eternal problem of propitiating
the gods that they conceived to have control over rain, seed
germination, and the fertility and well-being of the race.
In exactly the same spirit they welcomed the friars. Perhaps these
priests had "good medicine" that would help out. Maybe this new kind
of altar, image, and ceremony would bring rain and corn and health;

they were quite willing to try them. But imagine their consternation
when these Catholic priests after a while, unlike any people who had
ever before been taken into their community, began to insist that the
new religion be the only one, and that all other ceremonies be stopped.
How could the Hopi, who had depended upon their old ceremonies for
centuries, dare to stop them? Their revered traditions told them of clans
that had suffered famine and sickness and war as punishment for
having dropped or even neglected their religious dances and
ceremonies, and of their ultimate salvation when they returned to their
faithful performance.
The Hopi objected to the slavish labor of bringing timbers by hand
from the distant mountains for the building of missions and, according
to Hopi tradition, to the priests taking some of their daughters as
concubines, but the breaking point was the demand of the friars that all
their old religious ceremonies be stopped; this they dared not do.
So the "long gowns" were thrown over the cliff, and that was that.
Certain dissentions and troubles had come upon them, and some crop
failures, so they attributed their misfortunes to the anger of the old gods
and decided to stamp out this new and dangerous religion. It had taken
a strong hold on one of their villages, Awatobi, even to the extent of
replacing some of the old ceremonies with the new singing and
chanting and praying. And so Awatobi was destroyed by
representatives from all the other villages. Entering the sleeping village
just before dawn, they pulled up the ladders from the underground
kivas where all the men of the village were known to be sleeping
because of a ceremony in progress, then throwing down burning
bundles and red peppers they suffocated their captives, shooting with
bows and arrows those who tried to climb out. Women and children
who resisted were killed, the rest were divided among the other villages
as prisoners, but virtually adopted. Thus tenaciously have the Hopi
clung to their old religion--noncombatants so long as new cults among
them do not attempt to stop the old.
There are Christian missionaries among them today, notably Baptists,
but they are quite safe, and the Hopi treat them well. Meantime the old
ceremonies are going strong, the rain falls after the Snake Dance, and
the crops grow. The Hopi realize that missionary influence will
eventually take some away from the old beliefs and practices and that

government school education is bound to break down the old traditional
unity of ideas. Naturally their old men are worried about it. Yet their
faith is strong and their disposition is kindly and tolerant, much like
that of the good old Methodist fathers who are disturbed over