There are certain common components of all cults which are as widely spread as the races of man and exist independently of surroundings, while there are others which are profoundly affected by environment. Our subject especially deals with the latter, and as the ritual is capable of more exact scientific analysis, I have in mind to discuss the modifications in it which can be traced to purely climatic causes.
To simplify the elements of the problem we must choose not only a primitive form of ritual, but also as far as possible one which has been but slightly modified by the introduction of foreign influences, and hence other environments. We must avoid as much as possible complexity due to composition. It is a very difficult task to determine the aboriginal cults of any primitive people, for modifications resulting from contact with other races are present almost everywhere we turn.
Every cluster or grouping of men known to me is composite in its character. Yet the task is not wholly hopeless or beyond our powers. The work before the American student is facilitated by the fact that we have still living in our country surviving members of the American race who, on account of isolation, have been slightly modified by foreign influences. I wish this afternoon to call your attention to one of these, and to discuss the influences which environment has exerted on their ritual.
The people concerning whom I shall speak are commonly called the Mokis, although they prefer to be known as the Hopi. They live in a region of Arizona, which from its discovery in the middle of the sixteenth century, has been designated Tusayan. The Hopi or Tusayan Indians belong to the so-called village or pueblo people—the peculiar culture of prehistoric Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. While what I shall say especially concerns one group, it may in a general way be applied to the culture of a wide territory called the pueblo area of the southwestern part of the United States. In a natural sequence a discussion of the effect of environment would follow a statement of the distinctive characters of the physical features which characterize surroundings; and in order that you may have an idea of the climatic conditions of Tusayan, let us take a few moments to consider these peculiarities of the environment. In physical features this province is a part of the great arid zone of the Rocky Mountains, to which in former times was given the name of Great American Desert. It lies in the northeastern part of Arizona, about 90 miles from the nearest village of white men on the south and about the same distance east of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. On all sides it is isolated by dry deserts, a dreary extent of mountains, mesas, and arid plains about 6,000 feet above the level of the sea. No permanent streams of water refresh these parched canyons or fields, and the surroundings of this isolated tribe, organic and inorganic, belong to those characteristic of desert environment. The rains are limited in quantity—liable to fail at planting times, although later in the summer pouring down in copious torrents, that fill the depression by which the water is rapidly carried away from the thirsty fields. Springs of permanent water are small and weak, and when abundant, poor and hardly potable. In this unpromising land a few less than 2,000 Indians strive to maintain themselves by agriculture from a barren sandy soil which a white farmer would despise.
Nor is the unremunerative soil the only hostile environment with which this industrious race of aboriginal farmers has had to contend. Incoming marauders, in the form of nomadic enemies, have from prehistoric times harassed them, preyed on their farms, and forced them to adopt inaccessible mesa tops, high above their fields, for protection. Perched on these rocky eminences they have erected seven stone villages in so clever a way that they seem to be a part of the cliffs. Animals in desert surroundings as a protective device have taken on the color of the soil, but these men have built their towns in the cliffs so deftly that they seem to be parts of the mesas themselves. They have succeeded well in this protective device, due to environment, for at a distance the pueblos are indistinguishable from the cliffs on which they stand.
I need not dwell on the forbidding aspect of the mesa tops on which these villages are built. Not a sprig of verdure, drop of water, or fragment of fuel is to be found upon them. If there is one physical feature which may be said to characterize Tusayan, it is the paucity of water, or rather its unequal distribution in different seasons of the year.
The character of animal life is also significant, for it is of such a nature as to exert a profound influence. A race dependent on animal food alone would have starved for game. The great ruminants, as the bison, which more than any other animal influenced the culture of the Indians of the great plains of the Mississippi, never visited this region. No domesticated animals made pastoral culture possible. There were small rodents, many rabbits and hares, and a scanty supply of antelope in distant mountains. Unpromising as was the soil for agriculture, the resources of the hunter were much less, and in this region man was forced to become an agriculturist.
It is, therefore, clear that the sedentary agricultural life of the Tusayan Indian is the direct result of organic and inorganic surroundings. Forced from some reason unknown to me to live in a land where animals were so few that he could not subsist from the products of the chase, he found a possible food supply in plant life, and he accepted the inevitable. He adopted the life which environment dictated,[[2]] and accepting things as they were, worked out his culture on the only possible lines of development. He raised crops of maize, melons, and beans, cultivated and harvested various grains, but at times when other things failed found food in cacti and the meal of piñon nuts. Accepting the inevitable, man’s ritual became a mirror of that part of his environment which most intimately affected his necessities. The irregularity of the rains, and the possibility that the corn may not grow, developed the ritual in the direction indicated. As long as the processes of nature go on without change, no special rain or growth ceremonials would develop. In a bountiful soil which never fails the farmer, where the seed dropped in the ground is sure to germinate, and the rains are constant, no ritual would originate to bring about what was sure to come. But let natural processes be capricious, awake in a primitive mind the fear that these processes may not recur, let him become conscious that the rains may not come, and he evolves a ritual to prevent its failure. He is absolutely driven to devise ceremonials by which to affect those supernatural beings whom he believes cause the rain and the growth of his crops. The cults of a primitive people are products of their necessities, and they become complicated as the probability of their needs not being met are uncertain. The two needs which sorely pressed the Hopi farmer were rain to water his crops and the growth and maturity of his corn. My problem, therefore, is to show by illustrations that the two components, rain making and growth ceremonials, characterize the Tusayan ritual, as aridity is the epitome of the distinctive climatic features of the region in which it has been developed.
[2]. For a discussion of the relations between highest stages of culture in aboriginal America and arid climate, see my article on Summer Ceremonials at Zuñi and Moqui Pueblos, Bulletin Essex Institute, Vol. XXII, Nos. 7, 8, 9. Salem, Mass.
There are, as before stated, certain elemental components of all cults which are as widespread as man, and apparently exist independently of climatic conditions. These elements are psychical, subjective, and occur wherever man lives in deserts, islands, forests, plains, under every degree of latitude and temperature. A more profound philosophical analysis than I can make may resolve even these into effects of environment, but their universality would seem to show that they are not due to the special climatic condition of aridity characteristic of Tusayan. I do not regard it pertinent to my discussion to attempt to explain their origin, but we can better appreciate the Tusayan ritual.