Figure 3.—Typical Hopi Home.—Courtesy Arizona State Museum.
The roofs are finished flat and lived upon as in Mediterranean countries, particularly in the case of one-story structures built against two-story buildings, the roof of the low building making the porch or roof-garden for the second-story room lying immediately adjacent. Here, on the roof many household occupations go on, including often summer sleeping and cooking.
When the new house is completely finished and dedicated, the owner gives a feast for all members of her clan who have helped in the house-raising, and the guests come bearing small gifts for the home.
Formerly, the house was practically bare of furniture save for the fireplace and an occasional stool, but the majority of the Hopi have taken kindly to small iron cook stoves, simple tables and chairs, and some of them have iron bedsteads. Even now, however, there are many homes, perhaps they are still in the majority, where the family sits in the middle of the floor and eats from a common bowl and pile of piki (their native wafer corn bread), and sleeps on a pile of comfortable sheep skins with the addition of a few pieces of store bedding, all of which is rolled up against the wall to be out of the way when not in use.
In the granary, which is usually a low back room, the ears of corn are often sorted by color and laid up in neat piles, red, yellow, white, blue, black, and mottled, a Hopi study in corn color. Strings of native peppers add to the colorful ensemble.
VI. MYTH AND FOLKTALE; GENERAL DISCUSSION
Because none of this material could be written down but was passed by word of mouth from generation to generation, changes naturally occurred. Often a tale traveled from one tribe to another and was incorporated, in whole or in part, into the tribal lore of the neighbor—thus adding something. And, we may suppose, some were more or less forgotten and thus lost; but, as Wissler[12] tells us, "tales that are directly associated with ceremonies and, especially, if they must be recited as a part of the procedure, are assured a long life."