The Hopi Indians

by Walter Hough

When the kiva is not in use for a ceremony it is common to find there a weaver busy at his rude loom and growing web. To the great beams of the roof is fastened the upper yarn beam of the loom, and secured to pegs in holes in the stone slabs of the floor is the lower yarn beam. Between these is tightly stretched the warp. The weaver squats on the floor before the loom, having ready by him the few simple implements of his craft, consisting of a wooden knife or batten highly polished from use, for beating down the yarn, a wooden comb also for pressing home the woof, and the bobbins which are merely sticks with the yarn wrapped back and forward spirally upon them. He picks out a certain number of warp threads with the batten, passes through the bobbin, beats the yarn home with great patience, and so continues, making slow headway.

There are several reasons why the kiva is used by the weavers. These subterranean rooms, usually the property of the men, are cool and quiet, and the light streams down from overhead across the surface of the web, allowing the stitches to be seen to good advantage. The best reason is that the kiva ceiling is high enough to allow the stretching of the warp to the full length of a blanket, which cannot be done in the low living rooms of the dwellings.

Belts, garters, and hair tapes are made on a small loom provided with reed or heddle frame, and usually this is woman’s work. Strangely enough the belt loom is a kind of harness, for the warp is stretched out between the woman’s feet and a yoke that extends across her back. The yarn used for belts is bought from the trader. The old belts are marvels of design and are among the most pleasing specimens of the art work of the Hopi.

With the introduction of dyed trader’s yarns and coal-tar colors has come a deterioration in the work of the Navaho weavers. Among the Hopi this is not noticeable, but, no doubt, for this reason the embroidery on the hems of the ceremonial blankets, sashes, and kilts is gayer than in former times when subdued mineral colors and vegetable dyes only were available.

Every visitor to the Hopi pueblos is attracted by the carved wooden figures painted in bright colors and decorated with feathers, etc., that hang from the rafters of the houses. “Dolls,” they are usually called, but the Hopi know that they are representations of the spiritual beings who live in the unseen world, and a great variety there is of them. Thousands of these figures are made by the Hopi, many to be sold to visitors, a thing no Zuñi would do, because in that pueblo these images have a religious character and are hidden away, while the Hopi decorate the houses with them.

The carvers of these strange figurines must be granted the possession of much skill and ability in their art, which is carried on with a few simple tools. The country far and near is ransacked for cottonwood, this being the wood prescribed for masks, dolls, prayer-sticks, etc. The soft cottonwood, especially the root, is easily worked with the dull knives that the Hopi possess. On every hand is soft, coarse sandstone for rubbing the wood into shape, and much of the work is not only finished, but formed by this means. For this reason the rocks around a Hopi village are covered with grooves and pits left by the workers in wood.

If any parts, such as ears, hair, whorls, etc., are to be added to the figures, they are pegged on quite insecurely. Some of the terraces which surmount the kachina masks are remarkable structures built up of wood pegged together. A little string, a few twigs and pieces of cottonwood suffice the Hopi for the construction of flowers and complicated parts of the decoration of dolls and masks or other ceremonial belongings. Corn husks, dyed horsehair, woolen yarn, deerskin, cotton cloth, twigs, basketry, and feathers are worked in and the result, though crude, is effective.

But in the realm of mechanical apparatus the Hopi is even ahead of the toy makers of the Schwartzwald. For the Palulukong ceremony he arranges startling effects, causing the Great Plumed Snake to emerge through screens, out of jars, or from the ceiling of the kiva, to the number of nine appearances, each requiring artful devices. The head of the Snake is a gourd furnished with eyes, having the mouth cut into sharp teeth, a long tongue, a plume, and the whole surface painted. The body is made up of wooden hoops over which cords run and is covered with cloth. Often two of these grotesque monsters are caused, by the pulling of cords, to advance and withdraw through flaps in the screen and to struggle against each other with striking realism. Nothing in Hopiland is more remarkable than this drama, as one may gather from Dr. Fewkes’ account of it given at another place.

Little of the Hopi’s skill as a carver and decorator goes to the furnishing or building of the house; almost all is taken up with ceremonial matters. Previous to a few years ago chairs were unknown, as was any other domestic joinery, except the Hopi head masks, prayer-sticks and the thousand objects used in his pagan worship, in the manufacture of which he was master of all expedients. As a worker in stone and shell he still knows the arts of the ancient times, but lacks the skill of his forebears. The turquoise mosaics of old days so regularly and finely set on the backs of sea shells, have given place to the uneven scraps of turquoise set in confusion on bits of wood, as on the woman’s earrings. Many devices have gone out entirely, and it is probable that no Hopi could make an axe of hard stone like the old ones or chip a finely proportioned arrowhead. The hand-stones for grinding corn are still made, and a woman pecking away at one with a stone hammer is not infrequently seen and heard.

The Hopi were never metal-workers, because free metals are scarce in the Southwest. Their name for silver, with which they became familiar in the shape of coins, is shiba, “a little white cake.” Gold they regard with suspicion, since it resembles copper or brass, with which they have been deceived at times by unscrupulous persons. A few workers in silver have produced some crude ornaments, but the Hopi gets his buttons, belt ornaments, etc., from the adept Navaho, silversmiths by trade, through whom also strings of beads come from the pueblos of the Rio Grande.