This brings to mind the story of how Sikyabotoma lost his hair. Sikyabotoma, who bears the school name of John, is the finest specimen of physical manhood at the East Mesa. John is not unaware of this gift of nature, as he poses on all occasions out of sheer pride.
One cannot observe that John got anything out of his American schooling; he seemingly does not speak a word of English, and he is beyond all reason taciturn for a Hopi. It may be that John is a backslider, having forgotten or thrown over his early education and relapsed to his present state under the influence of Hopi paganism.
As runner for the Walpi Flute Society, his duty is to carry the offerings to the various shrines and springs, skirting on the first day the entire circuit of the cultivated fields of the pueblo, and coming nearer and nearer each day till he tolls the gods to the very doors of Walpi. It is no small task to include all the fields in the blessings asked by the Flute priests, since the circuit must exceed twenty miles. Each day Sikyabotoma, wearing an embroidered kilt around his loins, his long, glossy hair hanging free, stands before the Flute priests, a brave sight to behold. They fasten a small pouch of sacred meal at his side and anoint him with honey on the tip of the tongue, the forehead, breast, arms, and legs, perhaps to make him swift as the bee. Then he receives the prayer-sticks, and away he goes down the mesa as though he had leaped down the five hundred feet, his long, black hair streaming. He stops at a spring, then at a shrine, and in a very short time can scarcely be distinguished running far out by the arroyo bounding the fields. John in this role is a sight not soon to be forgotten.
This brings us to the story of John’s Waterloo. At sunrise on the last day of the Wawash ceremony there are foot races in honor of the gods, and a curious condition of these races is that the loser forfeits his hair. Now the Hopi are like the Chinese in having an aversion to losing this adornment. A bald Hopi is a great rarity, and the generality of the men have long, beautiful locks, black as a raven’s wing, washed with soaproot and made wavy by being tied tightly in a knot at the back of the head. Sikyabotoma entered the Wawash race with confidence, but when the runners came back on the tortuous trail up the rocks Sikyabotoma was second. A pair of sheep shears in the hands of his adversary soon made havoc with his locks. At the time this sketch was written John’s hair had grown again to a respectable length.
In making his toilet as Flute Messenger, to which the writer was a witness, John found it necessary to have his bang trimmed. This service was performed by an old fellow who picked up from the floor a dubious looking brush made of stiff grass stems, moistened it with his tongue occasionally as he brushed John’s hair, and finally with a pair of rickety scissors cut the bang to regulation shape.
Sikyabotoma, in spite of the drawbacks pointed out, is one of the lions of Walpi by birth; he also belongs to the first families. Divested of civilized garb, and as a winged Mercury flying with messages to the good beings, he is an object to be gazed on with admiration, disposing one to be lenient with his besetting vanity.
VI
BIRTH, MARRIAGE, AND DEATH
A blanket hangs over the usually opened door and a feeble wail issuing from within the dusky house betokens that a baby has come into the world, and awaits only a name before he becomes a member of the Hopi commonwealth. The ceremony by which the baby is to be dedicated to the sun and given a name that will bind him indissolubly to the religious system of his people is interesting from the light it casts on the customs of the Hopi and the parallels it offers to the natal rites of other peoples.
On the mud-plastered wall of the house, the mother has made, day by day, certain scratches which mark the infant’s age, or perhaps reckons the time on her fingers till nineteen days have passed. The morning of the twentieth day brings the ceremony.