The Hopi Indians

by Walter Hough

The practical side and the mutual helpfulness of the Hopi come out strongly here, when a few days later the loud-voiced crier announces the time for the spinning of the cotton for the bride’s blankets. This takes place in the kivas, where usually all the weaving is done by the man, and with jollity and many a story the task is soon finished. The spun cotton is handed over to the bridegroom as a contribution from the village, to be paid for, like everything else Hopi, by a sumptuous feast which has been prepared by the women for the spinners. Perhaps ten sage-brush-fed sheep and goats, tough beyond reason, are being softened in a stew, consisting mainly of corn; stacks of paper bread have been baked; various other dishes have been concocted, and all is ready when the crier calls in the hungry multitude. They fall to, like the genius of famine, without knives and forks, but with active, though not over-clean digits, at the start. When they are through, there is little left for the gaunt, half-starved dogs that scent the savors of the feast outside the door. If one desires to see the Hopi at his happiest he must find him squatted on the floor before an ample and well-spread feast.

With the spun cotton serious work begins for the bridegroom and his male relatives lasting several weeks. A large white blanket five by six feet and one four and a half by five feet must be woven, and a reed mat made in which the blankets are to be rolled. A white sash with long fringe, and a pair of moccasins, each having half a deerskin for leggings, like those worn by the women of the Rio Grande pueblos, complete the costume. The blankets must have elaborate tassels at the four corners. Shortly before sunrise the bride, arrayed in her finery, performs the last act in the drama, called “going home.” It must be explained that up to this time the bride has remained in the house of her husband’s people. Wearing the large white blanket picturesquely disposed over her head and carrying the small blanket wrapped in the reed mat in her hands, she walks to her mother’s house, where she is received with a few words of greeting, and the long ceremony is over.

In this land of women’s rights the husband must live with his wife’s relatives. The children, also, are hers, taking their descent from her and are nearer kin to her brothers and sisters than to the father. The house they live in is hers, and all the corn and other food brought into its grain room. In case of domestic troubles, she alone has the right of separation and can turn the man from her door. Though this dark side of the picture is sometimes presented, the rule is that husband and wife are faithful and live happily, as becomes the Peaceful People.

It may be interesting to follow the history of the wedding costume, which plays such a prominent part in the ceremony. The moccasins are soon put to use and worn out, and thereafter the woman goes barefoot like the rest of her sisters. The sash and blankets are rolled in a mat and hung from a roof-beam in a back room. Perhaps the larger blanket is embroidered, when it becomes a ceremonial blanket, or it may be pressed into use for carrying corn and watermelons from the fields. The smaller blanket is kept as one of the most sacred possessions; the young mother puts it on only at the name-giving ceremony of her first-born, and often it enshrouds her for the last rites among the rocks below the mesa where the dead are laid away. At the farewell ceremony of the Kachinas all the brides of the year dress in their white robes and appear among the spectators, look on for a time, and then return to their homes. This review of the brides adds much to the picturesqueness of this festive occasion.[3]

[3] The details of the marriage ceremony are taken from an article by H. R. Voth in the American Anthropologist, N. S., Vol. 2, No. 2, April-June, 1900.

There is no doubt that to the wise customs of the pueblo dwellers is due their survival in the deserts of the Southwest. One can only admire the workings of the unwritten laws which have lived from out of the experience of past centuries and continue yet to regulate the life of Tusayan.

There is no more interesting chapter of human beliefs than that which deals with the ideas entertained by primitive peoples of death and the hereafter. The Hopi, like other peoples, have thought out the deep questions of origin and destiny, peopled the mysterious spaces with spiritual beings, and penetrated the realm of the hereafter to describe the life after death. Thus they say that the breath body travels and has various experiences on its way to the underworld, and “as everyone came up from out of the sipapu, or earth navel, so through the sipapu to the underworld of spirits must he go after death. Far to the west in the track of the sun must he travel to the sipapu which leads down through a lake. Food must he have for the journey, and money of shell and green turquoise; hence bowls of food and treasures we place in his grave. Masauah, the ruler of the underworld, first receives the spirit. If it is the spirit of a good man, straightway he speeds it along the pathway of the sun to the happy abode, where the ancestors feast and dance and hold ceremonies like those of the Hopi on the earth. Truly, we received the ceremonies from them, long ago.”

If the spirit is not good, it must be tried, so Masauah sends it on to the keeper of the first furnace in which the spirit is placed. Should it come out clean, forthwith it is free; if not, on it goes to a second or a third master of the furnace, but if the third fire testing does not cleanse the spirit, the demon seizes it and destroys it, because it is pash kalolomi, “very not good!” Just how much of this has been influenced by later teachings is a vexed question and must be left open.

In the underworld the spirits of the ancestors are represented as living a life of perennial enjoyment. Often they visit the upperworld, and since the Hopi believe that their chief care is to guard the interests of the pueblos of Tusayan, they must be appeased by prayers and offerings in order to secure their good will.

The last offices of the dead are very simple. In sitting posture with head between the knees, with cotton mask, symbolic of the rain cloud, over the face, and sewed fast in a ceremonial blanket, the body is carried down among the rocks by two men, who have cleared out a place with their hoes. The relatives follow and without a word the body is placed in the rude grave. A bowl containing food is set near by under the rocks, and all return, the women washing their feet before entering the house.