Of course there are exceptions, where both houses and individuals are as neat and clean as can be. Among Hopis as well as among whites, it is not possible to generalize too widely.
CHAPTER VI
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE HOPI
The Hopi is essentially religious. As a ritualist he has no superior on the face of the earth. From the ceremonial standpoint the Hopi people are the most religious nation known. From four to sixteen days of every month are employed by one society or another in the performance of secret religious rites, or in public ceremonies, which, for want of a better name, the whites call dances. So complex, indeed, is the Hopi's religious life that we have no complete calendar as yet of all the ceremonies that he feels called upon to observe. Every act of his life from the cradle to the grave has a religious side. Fear and the need for propitiation are the motive powers of his religious life, and these, combined with his stanch conservatism, render him a wonderfully fertile subject for study as to the workings of the child mind of the human race.
With such a complex and vast religious system this chapter can attempt no more than merely to outline or suggest the thoughts upon which his religion is based, and then, in brief, describe two or three of the most important of his religious ceremonials.
I can do better than attempt a difficult matter, and one that requires years of study, viz., to account for the religious concepts of the Indian. I can urge the reader to obtain Major J. W. Powell's "Lessons of Folk-lore," which appeared in the American Anthropologist for January-March, 1900. In it he has written a most fascinating account of the thought movements of the Amerind; and Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, in his "Interpretation of Katchina Worship," has given a clearer idea of Hopi religious belief than has ever before been penned.
Group of Hopi Maidens at Shungopavi.
The Hopis themselves are not aware of the why and wherefore of all they do. For centuries they have followed "the ways of the old," until they are ultra conservatives, especially in matters pertaining to religion.