The Indians of the Painted Desert Region: Hopis, Navahoes, Wallapais, Havasupais

by George Wharton James

Walpi—the place of the gap—though not a large town, is better known to whites than any of the other Hopi towns. Here it was that the earliest visitors came and saw the thrilling Snake Dance. Its southeastern trail, with the wonderful detached rock leaning over on one side and the cliff on the other, between which the steep and rude stairway is constructed, has been so often pictured, as well as the so-called "Sacred Rock" of the Walpi dance plaza, that they are now as familiar as photographs of Trinity Church, New York, or St. Paul's, London. As one stands on the top of one of the houses he sees how closely Walpi has been built. It covers the whole of the south end of the mesa, up to the very edges of the precipice walls in three of its four directions, and, as already shown, the fourth is the narrow neck of rock connecting Walpi with Sichumavi and Hano. The dance plaza is to the east, a long, narrow place, at the south end of which is the "Sacred Rock." It is approached from south and north by the regular "street" or trail, and one may leave it to the west through an archway, over which is built one of the houses.

Several ruins on the east mesa are pointed out as "Old" Walpi, and the name of one of these—Nusaki—(also known as Kisakobi) is a clear indication that at one time the Spaniards had a mission church there. A Walpian, Pauwatiwa, shows, with pride, an old carved beam in his house which all Hopis say came from the mission when it was destroyed. On the terraces just below the mesa-top—perhaps a hundred or two hundred feet down—are a number of tiny corrals, to and from which, morning and evening, the boys, young men, and sometimes the women and girls may be seen driving their herds of sheep and goats, and in which the burros are kept when not in use. These picturesque corrals from below look almost like swallows' nests stuck on the face of the cliffs.

As we wander about in the narrow and quaint streets of Walpi we cannot fail to observe the ladder-poles which are thrust through hatchways, down which we peer into the darkness below with little satisfaction. These lead to the kivas, or sacred ceremonial chambers, where all the secret rites of the different clans are held. Here we shall be privileged to enter if no ceremony is going on. The kivas are generally hewn out of the solid rock, or partially so, and are from twelve to eighteen feet square. When not otherwise occupied it is no uncommon sight to see in a kiva a Hopi weaver squatted before his rude loom, making a dress for his wife or daughter, or weaving a ceremonial sash or kilt for his own use in one of the many dances.

In every Hopi town one cannot fail to be struck with the nudity of the children of all ages, from the merest babies up to eight and even ten years. With what Victor Hugo calls "the chaste indecency of childhood" these fat, bronze Cupids and embryo Venuses romp and play, as unconscious of their nakedness as Adam and Eve before their fall.

From Walpi we descend to the corn-fields, and, after a slow and tedious drag across the sandy plain to the west, find ourselves at Mashonganavi, or at least at the foot of the trail which leads to the heights above. Here, as at the other mesas, there are two or three trails, all steep, all nerve-wrenching, all picturesque. Arrived at the village, we find Mashonganavi an interesting place, for it is so compactly built that one often hunts in vain (for a while, at least) to find the hidden dance plaza, around which the whole town seems to be built. Some of the houses are three stories high, and there are quaint, narrow alley-ways, queer dark tunnels, and underground kivas as at Walpi. The Antelope and Snake kivas are situated on the southeastern side of the village, on the very edge of the mesa, and with the tawny stretch of the Painted Desert leading the eye to the deep purple of the Giant's Chair and others of the Mogollon buttes, which Ives conceived as great ships in the desert, suddenly and forever arrested and petrified.

About one hundred and fifty feet below the village is a terrace which almost surrounds the Mashonganavi mesa, as a rocky ruff around its neck. This terrace is so connected with the main plateau that one can drive upon it with a wagon and thus encamp close to the village. Here in 1901 the two wagon loads of sightseers and tourists which I had guided to the mysteries and delights of Tusayan, over the sandy and scorched horrors of a portion of the Painted Desert, encamped, during the last days of the Snake Dance ceremonies.

From here a trail—at its head an actual rock stairway—leads down to a spring in the valley, where the government school is situated, and from whence all our cooking and drinking water had to be brought. Each morning and evening droves of sheep and goats passed our camp, coming up from below and going down to the scant pasturage of the valley. Scarcely an hour passed when some Indian—oftener half a dozen—came to our camp, and failed to pass. Especially at meal times, when the biscuits were in the oven, the stew on the fire, the beans in the pot, and the dried fruit in the stew-kettle, did they seem to enjoy visiting us. And they liked to come close, too; far too close for our comfort, as their persons are not always of the most cleanly character, and their habits of the most decorous and refined. Hence rules had to be laid down which it was my province to see observed, one of which was that visiting Indians must keep to a distance, especially at meal times. Another was that if our blankets were allowed to remain unrolled (in order to get the direct benefit of the sun's rays) they were not so left for our Indian friends to lounge upon.

An Aged Hopi at Oraibi.