These nine little towns are set oddly in groups of three, and so are the Hopi divided, quite as into three distinct provinces. Three are balanced on the narrow backbone of the First Mesa, a knife-like projection that rises hundreds of feet above the valley, and is at one place not more than twenty feet in width. These are old Walpi, beloved of etchers, and Tewa of the warriors, and Sitchumnovi. Three are built on the broad mounds of the Second Mesa, known as Machongnovi, Chepaulovi, and Chimopovi. And perhaps the oldest and certainly the youngest of the villages are at Third Mesa—Oraibi, the aged; and tiny Bacabi; and redolent, sullen Hotevilla.
Their first contact with white men was made in the dark of an autumn night in 1540, but it was in the next dawn that they realized invasion by a new and strange enemy. Most of Hopi history has the dawn atmosphere. Their [[197]]footprints lead back to the caves of the Dawn Men. Their homes face the rising sun from the highest point of the landscape; their ceremonies and hunts begin at sunrise. They are a dawn-loving people.
Contact with the Spaniards was broken by the revolt of 1680, and completely ceased with 1700; but the gifts of the enemy remained in fruits, and wool, and beasts of burden, and perhaps some loot of swords and Church vessels hidden to this day. The obstinate Hopi were not worth the effort at reconquest, and later the Mexican Government did not bother them. For more than one hundred and fifty years the Hopi knew only the Navajo and Apache and Ute as his enemies. With the close of the Mexican War and the treaty of 1848, this nearly forgotten tribe came under the nominal guardianship of the United States. I say nominal, for their first Agent was located in far-distant Santa Fe, and unlike the Spanish, he had no missioners to risk martyrdom for the spreading of his doctrine. In 1849 he accompanied an expedition against the Navajo, and reached Cañon de Chelly, about sixty miles from the First Mesa. One year later a delegation of Hopi visited this chief to petition for protection against the Navajo. I fancy them plodding afoot, behind their burros, timidly crossing the Navajo country to pass through the provinces of their kinsmen, the Pueblos, and on to the City of the Holy Faith. In that same year, 1850, their Agent was prevented from visiting them, as he wished, because he lacked an escort of troops.
Many estimates of the Hopi population were made in the early years. The Spaniard was an expert at overestimating for the benefit of distant kings. His thousands were always given as tens of thousands, and when he wanted money and help toward new colonies he stressed [[198]]the saving of souls and could easily imagine millions of baptisms. But it is recorded in 1780 that smallpox had reduced the Hopi to less than 800. In 1899 their first resident Agent stopped guessing and made a count. He found and listed 1832 Hopi. In one hundred and nineteen years the population had little more than doubled. In 1912 there were 2068 on the Reserve, and in the next seven years they gained 217, or 31 per year—15 per thousand annually. They lost nearly sixty per cent of this seven-years’ gain in 1918, the year of Spanish influenza. In 1919 there were 2158 Hopi on the Reserve, and adding the absent, who had increased and multiplied in the west, at Moencopi, there were less than 2500 of these Indians alive. But this handful has interested more distinguished men and women than have many greater nations.
While there is much of Hebraic resemblance in the Navajo Indians,—their pastoral life and their religious customs,—a matter that strikes every thinking visitor and student, there is more of this in Hopi history. Their retreat southward from the cavern villages, from Betatakin Cave, from the Swallows’ Nest and Scaffold House—stopping to build a hamlet here and to reap a harvest there, leaving always testimony in potsherds and corn refuse—to their present cliffs, was much the same as the migrations of the Jews. Perhaps, having lost one citadel, they moved on to the next best position for defense; or perhaps a remnant of a once-powerful tribe fled; for we do not clearly know whether these cliff-dwellers migrated from choice, or to escape pestilence, or to avoid captivity. Across the relatively narrow territory of their hegira the Navajo and Apache—the once-combined “Apaches du Navaju”—and perhaps the Ute fought and harried, the Hopi quite as helpless as Judæa between Egypt and [[199]]Babylonia. When they retired finally to such a place as old Walpi, to barricade the narrow causeway at the mesa-end and to defend the Walpi stairway, just wide enough for one enemy at a time, surely this was a desperate people making a last desperate stand. I have no doubt that the Hopi, peaceful as they have been and are named, fought some worthy fights before the white man was known on this continent. The determination that wore down the Spaniard must have had its martial quality when facing enemies armed no better than themselves. It required a brave war-party to attempt to storm those mesa strongholds. And their foes must have stood somewhat in awe too of Hopi incantations, made so impressive by their Snake legends and solemn mummery. The Snake gods protected them more than once, according to their priests, and are remembered in the ceremonies.
And the resemblance is not only in fanciful surmises. The daily life of the people duplicates in many ways the customs of the Judæans. A people of legends and portents. In the quiet nights they have watched those burning signals of the heavens that mark wars and the birth of kings. Perhaps their shepherds too have been summoned by such signs, inspiring them to missions and pilgrimages, bearing gifts, relating to that mythical Bohanna who will one day come to redeem and revivify the people. From the great chart of the heavens they take their calendar. And certainly, in the sunsets of that quiet and ever-tinted land their pueblos reflect the Old East, with its donkeys and goat-bells, and simple gardens by the springs, and the blurring dust of sheep in the half-tones of desert twilights.
Government reports of to-day give the unqualified fact (?) that the Hopi have a reservation of 3863 square miles, [[200]]large enough, in all sense, for twenty-five hundred people! But the Hopi exist on and use less than one fifth of this semi-arid land, the remainder being held and dominated by their old plague, the Navajo. The Hopi Indian Agent has absolute jurisdiction—on paper—over all those Navajo living within the boundaries of the Hopi Reserve; but this does not mean that he is or ever has been able to control that undisciplined element of Navajo who pillage the peaceful Hopi whenever in the mood. Many bitter and scathing reports have been sent to Washington concerning this. Agents have not minced words, and have not always spared themselves in an effort to get justice—well, let us say, “consideration” for the Hopi. When reports failed to procure attention, one or two started crusades against the Navajo, not always successful, that ended in blows and bruises, to say nothing of the chance of sterner wounds. A difficult task to find the offender; if found, he was invariably supported by a gang—his gang. I recall one investigator who stated blandly that it was similar to conditions often found in cities: that of a corner gang. Quite so. But the investigator did not ask to see the corner, nor did he evidence any anxiety to encounter the gang.
The nomadic Navajo have a vast country to make themselves scarce in, quite 30,000 square miles of wilderness, much of it untracked; there is no quick communication between the six Agencies established to govern these people. It has been possible to coördinate business methods, so as to have uniform stock-regulations, for instance; but nothing has been arranged to guarantee the peace. There have been numerous murders in Navajo country. Representatives of the Board of Indian Commissioners, particularly Major-General Hugh L. Scott, and inspectors [[201]]of the Indian Department have fired verbal volleys in support of Hopi Agents. Navajo have been dragged to the Agency guardhouse, and other Navajo have been haled before the Federal Courts when the Agent could arrange locally all the details of the haling. A one-time United States Marshal, charged with the duty of assisting, remained conspicuous by his absence from the scene. The matter finally attracted the attention of a sub-Committee of Congress, and brought about a field investigation of Hopi conditions, pictured in a printed report. I know that the report was complete, for I wrote it; in fact, I had prepared that report in 1918, and placed it before Congress two years prior to the appearance of the sub-Committee. The gentlemen graciously inserted it as a tailpiece to their otherwise innocuous comments.
But the wall of political indifference to anything that does not furnish a vote has not been dented. It is a mere matter between obscure tribes, a squabble in the hills, which occasionally embarrasses an Indian Agent and constantly annoys a helpless people who have no other court of appeal. Neither tribe nor Agent can threaten a politician. Both tribe and Agent are kept mute by an uncaring Bureau.
Announce, however, that these same Hopi Indians are wont to dance with live rattlesnakes! Ah! that is a different story, and received with different emotions. The politician rushes in to view the spectacle. The Bureau sheds crocodile tears about it. Reams of reports are called for and written. During the past twelve years the Hopi Snake Dance has troubled the Solons of the Interior Department far more than any signal of Hopi distress. The Christian ire of three administrations has been aroused by this primitive pagan ceremony. Result: the Hopi Snake Dance is as well advertised as the Grand Cañon of the Colorado! [[202]]