Of the weird singing at their religious ceremonials I have spoken in the chapter devoted to that purpose.
To most civilized ears Hopi instrumental music, however, is as much a racket and din as is Chinese music. The lelentu, or flute, however, produces weird, soft, melancholy music. Their rattles are of three kinds, the gourd rattle (ai-i-ya), the rattle used by the Antelope priests, and the leg rattle of turtle shell and sheep's trotters (yȕng-ush-o-na). The drum and hand tombe are crude affairs, the former made by hollowing out a tree trunk and stretching over each end wet rawhide, the lashings also being of strips of wet rawhide (with the hair on), which, when dry, tightens so as to give the required resonance. The hand tombe is as near like a home-made tambourine as can be. It has no jingles, however. Another instrument is the strangest conception imaginable. It consists of a large gourd shell, from the top of which a square hole has been cut. Across this is placed a notched stick, one end of which is held in the performer's left hand. In the other hand is a sheep's thigh-bone, which is worked back and forth over the notched stick, and the resultant noise is the desired music. This instrument is the zhe-gun´-pi.
They do not seem to have many games, so many of their religious ceremonials affording them the diversion other peoples seek in athletic sports. Their racing is purely religious, as I have elsewhere shown, and they get much fun out of some of their semi-religious exercises.
A game that they are very fond of, and that requires considerable skill to play, is wē-la. The game consists in several players, each armed with a feathered dart, or ma-te´-va, rushing after a small hoop made of corn husks or broom-corn well bound together—the wē-la, and throwing their darts so that they stick into it The hoop is about a foot in diameter and two inches thick, the ma-te´-va nearly a foot long. Each player's dart has a different color of feathers, so that each can tell when he scores. To see a dozen swarthy and almost nude youths darting along in the dance plaza, or streets, or down in the valley on the sand, laughing, shouting, gesticulating, every now and then stopping for a moment, jabbering over the score, then eagerly following the motion of the thrower of the wē-la so as to be ready to strike the ma-te´-va into it, and then, suddenly letting them fly, is a picturesque and lively sight.
The Hopi is quite a traveller. Though fond of home, I have met members of the tribe in varied quarters of the Painted Desert Region. They get a birch bark from the Verdi Valley with which they make the dye for their moccasins. A yellowish brown color, called pavissa, is obtained from a point near the junction of the Little Colorado and Marble Canyon. Here they obtain salt, and at the bottom of the salt springs, where the waters bubble up in pools, this pavissa settles. Bahos, or prayer sticks, are always deposited at the time of obtaining this ochre, as it is to be used in the painting of the face of the bahos used in most sacred ceremonies. The so-called Moki trail is evidence of the long association between the Hopis and the Havasupais in Havasu (Cataract) Canyon, and I have often met them there trading blankets, horses, etc., for buckskin and the finely woven wicker bowl-baskets—kű-űs—of the Havasupais, which are much prized by the Hopis.
Occasionally he reaches as far northeast as Lee's Ferry and even crosses into southern Utah, and at Zuni to the southeast he is ever a welcome visitor. The Apaches in the White Mountains tell that on occasions the Hopis will visit them, and when visiting the Yumas in 1902 they informed me that long ago the Snake Dancing Mokis were their friends, and sometimes came to see them.
Dr. Walter Hough has written a most interesting paper on "Environmental Interrelations in Arizona," in which are many items about the Hopis. He says they brought from their priscan home corn, beans, melons, squash, cotton, and some garden plants, and that they have since acquired peaches, apricots, and wheat, and among other plants which they infrequently cultivate may be named onions, chili, sunflowers, sorghum, tomatoes, potatoes, grapes, pumpkins, garlic, coxcomb, coriander, saffron, tobacco, and nectarines. They are great beggars for seeds and will try any kind that may be given to them.
Owing to their dependence upon wild grasses for food when their corn crops used to fail,—that is, in the days before a paternal government helped them out at such times,—every Hopi child was a trained botanist from his earliest years; not trained from our standpoint, but from theirs. We should say much of his knowledge was unscientific, and it goes far beyond the use of grasses and plants as food. Dr. Hough in his paper gives a number of examples of the uses to which the various seeds, etc., are put. The botanist as well as the ethnologist will find this a most comprehensive and useful list. For food forty-seven seeds, berries, stems, leaves, or roots are eaten. The seeds of a species of sporobolus are ground with corn to make a kind of cake, which the Hopis greatly enjoy. The leaves of a number are cooked and eaten as greens.
A large amount of folk-lore connected with plants has been collected by Drs. Fewkes and Hough. From the latter's extensive list I quote. For headache the leaves of the Astragalus mollissimus are bruised and rubbed on the temples; tea is made from the root of the Gaura parviflora for snake bite; women boil the Townsendia arizonica into a tea and drink it to induce pregnancy; a plant called by the Hopi wűtakpala is rubbed on the breast or legs for pain; Verbesina enceloides is used on boils or for skin diseases; Croton texlusis is taken as an emetic; Allionia linearis is boiled to make an infusion for wounds; the mistletoe that grows on the juniper (Phoradendron juniperinum) makes a beverage which both Hopi and Navaho say is like coffee, and a species that grows on the cottonwood, called lo mapi, is used as medicine; the leaves of Gilia longiflora are boiled and drank for stomach ache; the leaves of the Gilia multiflora (which is collected forty miles south of Walpi at an elevation of six thousand feet), when bruised and rubbed on ant bites is said to be a specific; Oreocarya suffruticosa is pounded up and used for pains in the body; Carduus rothrockii is boiled and drank as tea for colds which give rise to a prickling sensation in the throat; the leaves of Coleosanthus wrightii are bruised and rubbed on the temples for headache, as also is the Artemisia canadensis; and so on throughout a list as long again as this.
In connection with this list Dr. Hough calls attention to the workings of the Hopi mind in a manner which justifies an extensive quotation:—