An account of the arts which are carried on in the Hopi towns may prove interesting to the reader who would like to know something of the methods of the moccasin maker, potter, weaver, carver, basket maker, and house builder, examples of whose handiwork are scattered widely among collectors of artistic and remarkable things.
As though to keep up the dignity of the Peaceful People the wife of “Harry,” the new Snake chief of Walpi, frequently wears the cumbrous foot-gear common along the Rio Grande. In spite of the scarcity of deerskins, every Hopi bride must have as part of her trousseau a pair of these remarkable foot-coverings, which require a large deerskin for their manufacture. When the burdensome ceremony of marriage is over the moccasins are laid away or worn out and never again may the woman expect to have her measure taken for another pair.
But as moccasins are a part of the men’s costume without which they cannot run well over the yielding sand, and as there is no village shoemaker, every man must make his own or go barefoot. Frequently in the villages one meets a moccasin maker, chewing at the rawhide and busily plying his awl and sinew while he goes gadding about. Just before the Snake Dance, when every Snake priest must provide a pair of new moccasins for himself, this art is very much in evidence.
The moccasin maker takes pride in hiding his stitches, and it must be said that his sewing is exceptionally good in spite of the crude tools of his craft. With the same skill he displays in other crafts, the Hopi prepares the leather for the indispensable moccasins. The simplest way of giving color to the leather is to rub red ocher or other clay into the soft-tanned skin, as is seen in the red moccasins of the Snake dancers. A warm brown is given to the leather with an infusion of the bark of the water birch, and a black dye is made by burning piñon resin with crude native alum. Sometimes the esthetic tastes of a young man are gratified by moccasins dyed with aniline red or blue according to his fancy.
If the visitor will give an order for a pair of totchi, he may see the whole process at his leisure. A piece of well-curried cowhide, preferably from the back of the animal, is produced, the outline of the foot is marked out on it and a margin is left by the cutter for the turning up of the sole. This is all the moccasin maker seems to require, and his formula for the height of the instep has not been divulged, but it must be effective, because moccasins are made to fit with greater art than is displayed by many civilized shoemakers.
The soles are buried in damp sand to make them pliable, and the front section of the top is sewn around the edge reaching to about the ankle bones. The moccasin is then turned inside out and the ankle section sewn on. Tying strings are added, or if especial style is desired, silver buttons made by Navaho from dimes or quarters take their place.
The Hopi live a very long way from the range of the deer, a fact which accounts largely for their use of woven fabrics. But deerskins must always have been in demand, and these were got in exchange with the Navaho, Havasupai, and other neighbors. In this way in old times buffalo skins and pelts of animals came to Tusayan, and Hopi bread and blankets went to remote mountains and plains.
It would be interesting to know whether the Hopi formerly were sandal people or moccasin people, and this knowledge would reveal a great deal that is now mere guesswork as to their history. The sandal people would mean those of the south who were of Mexico, where no moccasins seem ever to have been worn. The moccasin people would be those of the north, the tribes of our mountains and plains, among whom this foot-wear is typical. Perhaps the Hopi belong to both classes. The cliff-dwellers wore sandals, and for winter had boots of network to which turkey feathers were skilfully fastened as covering. The sandals found in the cliff-houses are variously woven from rushes or agave strips, or maybe a plain sole of leather with the toe cord, but those worked of cotton showing ingenious designs are worthy of the highest admiration.
Those clans of the cliff-people and the clans from the south that congregated in Tusayan centuries ago were sandal wearers, while the resident clans and those coming from the north, perhaps bands of the Ute,—were moccasin wearers and impressed their language and moccasins on the Hopi. This was much to the advantage of the Hopi, granting that they had never thought of better protection than sandals from the biting winter.
Everyone who visits Tusayan will bring away as a souvenir some of the work of Nampeo, the potter who lives with her husband Lesu in the house of her parents at Hano, the little Tewa village on the great Walpi mesa near the gap. The house belongs to Nampeo’s mother according to Pueblo property right, wherein she and her husband, both aged and ruddy Tewa, with their children and grandchildren live amicably as is usual among the Peaceful People. The house below the mesa, topped with a glowing red iron “Government” roof, is Nampeo’s, who thus has two houses, but she spends most of her time in the parental dwelling at Hano.