If you are ever invited into a Hopi house you may rest assured you will not be there long before a piled-up basket of piki will be brought to you, for the Hopis are wonderfully hospitable and enjoy giving to all who become their guests.
Another object seldom absent is the "pole of the soft stuff." This is a pole suspended from the roof beams upon which all the blankets, skins, bedding, and wearing apparel are placed. Once upon a time these were very few and very crude. The skins of animals tanned with the hair on, blankets made of rabbit skins, and cotton garments made from home grown, spun, and woven cotton, comprised their "soft stuff." But when the Spaniards brought sheep into the province of Tusayan, and the Hopis saw the wonderful improvement a wool staple was over a cotton one, blankets and dresses of wool were slowly added to the household treasures, until now the "garments of the old," except antelope, deer, fox, and coyote skins, are seldom seen.
Mashongce, an Oraibi Maiden, drying Corn Meal.
The Trio of Metates, and Hopi Woman about to grind Corn.
It is a remarkable fact that the Hopis wore garments made from cotton which they grew themselves, prior to the time of the Spanish invasion. They also knew how to color the cotton from unfading mineral and vegetable dyes, and in the graves of ancient cliff and cave dwellings, well-woven cotton garments often have been taken.
Sometimes to-day one may see an old man or woman weaving a blanket from the tanned skins of rabbits. Such a garment is far warmer and more comfortable than one would imagine. The dressed pelts are twisted around a home-woven string made of shredded yucca fibre, wild flax, or cotton, and thus a long rope is formed many yards in length. This rope is then woven in parallel strings with cross strands of the same kind of fibre, and a robe made some five or six feet square.