Pikami is made as follows: A certain amount of corn-meal is mixed with a small amount of sugar, and coloring matter made from squash flowers. This mixture is then placed in an earthenware vessel, or olla, and a cover tightly sealed on the vessel with mud. It is now ready to go into the oven. The pikami oven is generally out of doors. Sometimes it is a mere hole in the ground, without a covering, but the better style is where the hole is located in the angle of two walls and partially covered. A broken olla is made to serve as a chimney. To prepare the oven, sticks of wood are placed inside it and set on fire. When these are reduced to flaming coals and the oven is red hot, the coals are withdrawn, and the olla containing the corn-meal mixture is lowered into the hole. This is then covered with a stone slab, sealed with mud, and allowed to remain closed for several hours. When the oven is unsealed and the olla withdrawn, the corn-meal is thoroughly cooked—now pikami—and the dish is both nutritious and delicious.
Pū-vū-lū is a corn-meal preparation that corresponds somewhat to the New England doughnut. On one occasion, just before the Snake Dance at Mashonganavi, I found Ma-sa-wi-ni-ma, Kuchyeampsi's mother, busy preparing the dish. When I induced her to come into the sunshine to be photographed, stirring the meal, just eight other kodak and camera fiends insisted upon "shooting" her at the same time. She was very complacent about it, especially when I collected ten cents a head for her, and handed her ninety cents for her five minutes' pose.
Her method was as follows: Into a cha-ka-ta (bowl) she placed corn-meal and a little coloring matter. Then adding sugar and water, she stirred it with a stick, as shown in the photograph. It was made to a thick dough. In the meantime a pan of water, into which mutton fat had been placed, was on the fire, and when it was hot enough small balls of the corn-meal dough were dropped into the water and fat and allowed to remain until cooked. The result is a not unpleasant food, of which the Hopis are very fond.
One of the common dishes, when a sheep has been killed, is the neű-euck´-que-vi, a stew composed of corn, mutton, and chili.
So far the Hopis have not been a success as traders. It is a slow and long journey from aboriginal life to civilization. One of the young men who had been to school, a bright youth of some twenty-three years,—Kuy-an-im´-ti-wa,—was fired with a desire to trade with his people on his own account. Permission was given him by the agent to start a store. A small building was speedily erected at the foot of the Mashonganavi mesa and a stock of goods purchased. For a while things went well. Then Kuyanimtiwa had to go away on business, and an elderly uncle (I think it was) took charge of the store in his absence. When the embryo trader returned he found his shelves nearly empty, and a lot of trash accumulated under his counter, which the old man had taken "in trade." The credits of many Hopis had been extended and enlarged without proper consulting of Bradstreet's or Dun's, and blank ruin stared poor Kuyanimtiwa in the face. I purchased about eighty dollars' worth of baskets and "truck" from him, for which, however, I was compelled to give him my check. For long weeks, indeed months, the check did not come in, until I feared the poor fellow had lost it. When I inquired I found it was in the hands of the agent, being held as security until some disposal was made of a suit between the old man and Kuyanimtiwa. It ultimately reached the bank, so I assume the trouble was ended, but it will be some time, if what he said has lasting force, before the young Hopi will open store again with an untrained assistant.
In an earlier chapter I have shown that the women build and own the houses. In return the men knit the stockings and weave the women's dresses and sashes. With looms very similar to those described in the chapter on "Navaho Blanketry," they make the dresses we have seen the women wearing. In the days before the Spaniards introduced sheep the Hopis grew cotton quite extensively, dyed it with the simple but beautiful and permanent dyes, and wove it into garments. The blue of the dresses was originally obtained—and is yet by some—from the seeds of the sunflower.
In several cases I have found blind men engaged in knitting stockings. With needles of wood, long and slender, their fingers busily moved as those of the old housewives used to do in my boyhood's days. One was an old man, Tu-ki-i´-ma. He was "si-bo´-si" (blind), and expressed his thankfulness for the occupation. Another poor old man, stone blind, was winding yarn into a ball. He was squatted upon the ground, with the yarn around his feet and knees. It was a pathetic sight to see the old and forlorn creature anxious to make himself useful, even though blind and aged.
There are a score of other interesting matters I should enjoy referring to did space permit, but these must be left for some future time.
That they are picturesque and interesting, and in some of their ceremonies fascinating, there is no question. They are religious (in their way), domestic, honest, faithful, industrious, and chaste. But there is no denying that many of them are dirty,—really, indescribably filthy. One of my old drivers, Franklin French, used to say with a turn up of his nose: "I'd rather associate with a good skunk who was up in the skunk business than get to leeward of a Moki town." Their sanitary accommodations are nil, and their habits accord with their accommodations. Were it not for the fierce rays of the sun and the strong winds that purify their elevated mesa-tops, the accumulated evils would soon render habitation impossible. Water being so scarce, they are not habitually cleanly in person, as are some of the other peoples. Hence the contempt with which many of the Navahoes regard them.