[9] Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, Journal of American Ethnology and Archaeology, Vol. II, Boston, 1892, p. 157.
One may chance to see, even yet, a patient being treated for headache or some minor ailment. The method is very like massage, the eyebrows, forehead, temples and root of the nose being rubbed with straight strokes or passes, with occasional pressure at certain points, while a preternatural gravity is maintained by the operator.
The Hopi ideas and customs as to animals connected with their religious observances form an interesting and picturesque feature of their life. An account of some of the more striking customs in this regard follows:
A few years ago a story went the rounds about a Hopi and his eagle which a Navaho had taken. It was related that the Hopi hurried to the agent with his grievance and secured a written order commanding the Navaho to restore the bird. With considerable temerity the Hopi presented the “talk paper” to the lordly Navaho, and as might have been expected got no satisfaction. This story produced a great deal of amusement at the time, but no one realized that there was embodied history, folk-lore, religious custom, tribal organization, archeology, and a number of other matters recently made clear by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes.[10]
[10] Property-Right in Eagles among the Hopi; Am. Anthropologist, N. S., Vol. II, Oct.-Dec., 1900.
It transpired that the Navaho had not bodily and by force seized an eagle which the Hopi had captured by his craft, though one not knowing the relations between those desert neighbors might have so thought. On the contrary, the Navaho had taken the eagle from an eyrie on a mountain many miles away from the Hopi villages, not dreaming of poaching on anyone’s preserves.
He would probably care as little to know that the Snake clan claims the eagle nests near their old village of Tokonabi to the north of Walpi; the Horn clan those to the northeast; the Firewood clan those at the upper end of Keam’s Canyon; the Bear clan those at the mouth of the same canyon; the Tobacco clan those on the crags of Awatobi; the Rain Cloud clan the nests in the Moki Buttes; the Reed clan those in the region of their old town forty miles north of Navajo Springs on the Santa Fé railroad; the Lizard clan the nests on Bitahuchi or Red Rocks, about forty miles south of Walpi; or that the eagle nests west of the pueblos along the Little Colorado and Great Colorado belong to the Oraibi and Middle Mesa villagers. He would disdain the fact that one cannot meddle with eagles within forty or fifty miles of the Hopi towns without trespassing on property rights.
The curious fact comes out that these eagle preserves are near the place of ancient occupancy of the clans, and show in a most interesting way the lines of migration by which the several clans traveled to the villages where they now live. These rights are jealously guarded by the Hopi and are one of the sore spots in their relations with the Navaho; they frequently ask to have the Government define their eagle reservations by survey to establish the boundaries free from molestation.
It may be well to say here that the eagle is a Hopi sacred bird and one of the most important. Its feathers, like those of the turkey, parrot, and other birds, are of especial use in the religious ceremonies. The downy plumes moving at the faintest breath are thought to be efficacious in carrying to the nature gods the prayers of their humble worshippers.
Among the sacred hunts that of the eagle was one of the most ancient as well as important. Small circular stone towers about four feet in height were built and across the top were laid beams to which were tied dead rabbits as a bait. Perhaps the mysterious towers of the Mancos and of the north in Colorado may be explained in this light. Within the tower the hunter hid after a ceremonial head washing symbolic of purification, and the deposit of a prayer-offering at a shrine. The eagle, attracted by the rabbits, circled around and at last launched himself upon his prey. When he had fastened his talons in a rabbit the concealed hunter reached through the beams and grasped the king of the air by the legs and made him captive, taking him to the village where a cage was provided for his reception. At each hunt one eagle was liberated after a prayer-stick had been tied to his thigh in the belief that the bird would carry the prayer to the mighty beings with whom he was supposed to be on familiar terms.