Mashonganavi from the Terrace Below.
Inside the houses the walls also are whitewashed or colored, and generally there is some attempt made to decorate them by painting rude though symbolic designs half-way between the floor and ceiling. The floor is of earth, well packed down with water generally mixed with plaster, and the ceiling is of the sustaining poles and cross-beams, over which willows and earth have been placed. Invariably one can find feathered bahos, or prayer plumes, in the beams above, and no house could expect to be prospered where these offerings to "Those Above" were neglected.
The chief family room serves as kitchen, dining-room, corn-grinding-room, bedroom, parlor, and reception-room. In one corner a quaint, hooded fireplace is built, and here the housewife cooks her piki and other corn foods, boils or bakes her squash, roasts, broils, or boils the little meat she is able to secure, and sits during the winter nights while "the elders" tell stories of the wondrous past, when all the animals talked like human beings and the mysterious people—the gods—from the upper world came down to earth and associated with mankind.
The corn-grinding trough is never absent. Sometimes it is on a little raised platform, and is large or small as the size of the family demands. The trough is composed either of wooden or stone slabs, cemented into the floor and securely fastened at the corners with rawhide thongs. This trough is then divided into two, three, four, or more compartments (according to its size), and in each compartment a sloping slab of basic rock is placed. Kneeling behind this, the woman who is the grinder of the meal (the true lady, laf-dig, even though a Hopi) seizes in both hands a narrower flat piece of the same kind of rock, and this, with the motion of a woman over a washboard, she moves up and down, throwing a handful of corn every few strokes on the upper side of her grinder. This is arduous work, and yet I have known the women and maidens to keep steadily at it during the entire day.
When the meal is ground, a small fire is made of corn cobs, over which an earthern olla is placed. When this is sufficiently heated the meal is stirred about in it by means of a round wicker basket, to keep it from burning. This process partially cooks the meal, so that it is more easily prepared into food when needed.
In one corner of the house several large ollas will be found full of water. Living as they do on these mesa heights, where there are no springs, water is scarce and precious. Every drop, except the little that is caught in rain-time or melted from the snows, has to be carried up on the backs of the women from the valley below. In the heat of summer, this is no light task. With the fierce Arizona sun beating down upon them, the feet slipping in the hot sand or wearily pressing up on the burning rocks, the olla, filled with water, wrapped in a blanket and suspended from the forehead on the back, becomes heavier and heavier at each step. Those of us who have, perforce, carried cameras and heavy plates to the mesa tops know what strength and endurance this work requires.
For dippers home-made pottery and gourd shells are commonly used. Now and again one will find the horn of a mountain sheep, which has been heated, opened out into a large spoon-like dipper; or a gnarled or knotty piece of wood, hacked out with flint knife into a pretty good resemblance to a dipper.
Near the water ollas one can generally see a shelf upon which the household utensils are placed. Here, too, when corn is being ground, a half-dozen plaques of meal will stand. This shelf serves as pantry and meat safe (when there is meat), and the hungry visitor will seldom look there in vain for a basket-platter or two piled high with piki, the fine wafer bread for which the Hopis are noted. Piki is colored in a variety of ways. Dr. Hough says the ashes of Atriplex canescens James are used to give the gray color, and that Amaranthus sp. is cultivated in terrace gardens around the springs for use in dyeing it red; a special red dye from another species is used for coloring the piki used in the Katchina dances; and the ashes of Parryella filifolia are used for coloring. Saffron (Carthamus tinctorius) is used to give the yellow color.
It is fascinating in the extreme to see a woman make piki. Dry corn-meal is mixed with coloring matter and water, and thus converted into a soft batter. A large, flat stone is so placed on stones that a fire can be kept continually burning underneath it. As soon as the slab is as hot as an iron must be to iron starched clothes it is greased with mutton tallow. Then with fingers dipped in the batter the woman dexterously and rapidly sweeps them over the surface of the hot stone. Almost as quickly as the batter touches, it is cooked; so to cover the whole stone and yet make even and smooth piki requires skill. It looks so easy that I have known many a white woman (and man) tempted into trying to make it. Once while attending the Snake Dance ceremonials at Mashonganavi, a young lady member of my party was sure she could perform the operation successfully. My Hopi friend, Kuchyeampsi, gladly gave place to the white lady, and laughingly looked at me as the latter dipped her fingers into the batter, swept them over the stone, gave a suppressed exclamation of pain, tried again, and then hastily rose with three fingers well blistered. My cook, who was a white man, was sure he could accomplish the operation, so he was allowed to try. Once was enough. He was a religious man, and bravely kept silence, which was a good thing for us.
When the piki is sufficiently cooked, it is folded up into neat little shapes something like the shredded wheat biscuits. One thing I have often noticed is that a quick and skilful piki maker will keep a sheet flat, without folding, so that she may place it over the next sheet when it is about cooked. This seems to make it easier to remove the newly cooked sheet from the cooking slab.