Part 4
When the corn is fit for roasting ears the Hopi get fat and there is feasting from morn till night. Tall columns of smoke arise from the roasting pits in the fields. These large pits are dug in the sand, heated with burning brush, filled with roasting ears, and closed up tightly for a day. The opening of a pit is usually the occasion of frolicking and feasting, where laughter and song prevail. Some of the corn is consumed at once in making puddings and other dishes of which the Hopi prepare many, and what remains is dried on the cob and hung in bunches in the houses for the winter.
The ears of the Indian corn are close to the ground and are hidden by the blades, which touch the sand. The blades are usually tattered and blown away by the wind, so that by the time the corn is ripe, the fodder is not of much value. The ripe corn is gathered and laboriously carried by back-loads up the steep mesa to the houses, where it is stored away in the corn chamber. Here the ears are piled up in symmetrical walls, separate from the last year's crop, which may now be used, as the Hopi, taught by famine, keep one year's harvest in reserve. Once in a while, the women bring out the old corn, spread it on the roof to sun, and carefully brush off each ear before returning it to the granary, for in this dry country, though corn never molds, insect pests are numerous.
Among the superstitions connected with corn the Hopi believe that the cobs of the seed corn must not be burned until rain has fallen on the crop for fear of keeping away or "drying up" the rains.
No cereal in the world is so beautiful as Hopi corn. The grains, though small, are full and highly polished; the ears are white, yellow, red of several shades, a lovely rose madder, blue, a very dark blue or purple which the Hopi call black, and mottled. A tray of shelled corn of various colors looks like a mosaic.
In the division of labor, the planting, care of the corn in the fields and the harvesting belong to the men. When the brilliant ears are garnered, then the women's work begins. No other feature of the Hopi household is so interesting as the row of three or more slabs placed slantwise in stone-lined troughs sunk in the floor; these are their mills. They are of graded fineness, and this is also true of the oblong hand stones, or _manos_, which are rubbed upon them with an up and down motion as in using a washboard. Sometimes three women work at the mills; the first woman grinds the corn into coarse meal on the coarse stone and passes her product over to the second, who grinds it still finer, and the third finishes it on the last stone; sometimes one woman alone carries the meal through the successive stages, but it is a poor household that cannot furnish two grinders. The skill with which the woman spreads the meal over the grinding slab by a flirt of the hand as the _mano_ is brought up for the return stroke is truly remarkable, and the rhythmic precision of all the motions suggests a machine. The weird song sung by the grinders and the rumble of the mill are characteristic sounds of the Hopi pueblos, and as the women grinders powder their perspiring faces with meal while they work, they look well the part of millers. Little girls are early taught to grind, and they often may be prevailed upon to display their accomplishment before visitors.
The finely ground meal is piled and patted into conical heaps on the flat basket trays, making quite an exhibition of which the Hopi women are very proud, much meal indicating diligence as well as a bountiful supply of the staff of life. Grinding is back-breaking work, and one humanely wishes that the Hopi women, and especially the immature girls, could be relieved of this too heavy task.
While corn-meal enters into all Hopi cooking as the chief ingredient, most of it is made into "paper bread," called _piki_, resembling more than anything else the material of a hornet's nest. This bread is made from batter, colored gray with wood ashes, dexterously spread very thinly with the hand over a heated slab of stone. _Piki_ bakes quickly, coming free from the slab and is directly folded up into convenient compass and so crisp is it that it crackles like paper. Sometimes it is tinted with attractive colors for festal occasions, such as the Kachina ceremonies.
Before a dance the women busily prepare food and the girls go about speechless, with mouths full of meal, "chewing yeast" for the corn pudding. This and other ins and outs of the kitchen make the knowing traveler rather shy of the otherwise attractive-looking Hopi food.
Surely corn is the "mother" of the Hopi. All the powers of nature are invoked to grant a good crop by giving rain and fertility, and the desire for corn is the central motive of the numerous ceremonies of the villagers of Tusayan. If the prayers of the Hopi could be formulated like the "_Om mane padme hum_" of the Hindus, it would be in the smaller compass of these words, "Grant us corn!" Nor are these simple villagers ungrateful for such blessings. Kopeli used to stand looking over his thriving cornfield and say with fervor, "_Kwa kwi, Kwa kwi_," "thanks, thanks," and it was evident that the utterance was made with true thankfulness and a spirit of devotion.
It is difficult to imagine the ancient people without corn; but very long ago, as the legends tell, they did not know this cereal. Certain it is they were not then pueblo dwellers and had not spread far in the Southwest. They lived in the places where there was game, and for the same reason that the important food animals lived in such places,--the presence of vegetation that would sustain life.
Their life was along the foot hills of well-watered and timbered mountains rising from plains, where with the flesh of game and seeds and roots of plants they could supply their semi-savage wants. Long perhaps they roved thus as hunters until they drifted to the land of promise--the semi-desert where agriculture of grain plants was born and there they received "mother corn." Henceforward all the former sources of food wrested from a niggard Nature became as nothing to this food of foods, but even to this day the Hopi have not forgotten their old-time intimate knowledge of the resources in fields not sown by human hands. With corn, which possesses a high food value and is easily raised, stored, and preserved, the Hopi and their Pueblo brethren spread without fear throughout the semi-arid lands.
It has been pointed out that a constant diet of corn produces disagreeable physiological effects, and this is suggested for the use of chile and other condiments, the mixture of corn food with meat and vegetable substances, and, in fact, for the multifarious ways of preparing and cooking corn. This necessity for variety also gives an explanation of the resourcefulness of the Hopi housewife and has acted as a spur to her invention of palatable dishes.
The vocabulary of corn in the Hopi language is extensive and contains words descriptive even of the parts of the plant that are lacking to most civilized people. The importance of corn is also reflected in the numerous words describing the kinds of meal, the dishes made from corn or in which corn enters, and of the various ways in which it is prepared by fire for the consumption of the ever-hungry Hopi. To give an incomplete census of corn foods, there are fifteen kinds of _piki_ or paper bread, three kinds of mush; five of short-cake; eleven of boiled corn; four kinds baked or roasted in the coals; two cooked by frying; four stewed and eight of cooked shelled corn, making fifty-two varieties.
After the paper bread, perhaps the most popular food is _pigame_, or sweet corn mush, wrapped in corn-husk and baked in an underground oven. Another standby is shelled corn soaked and boiled till each grain swells to several times the normal size. The Hopi like their food well-cooked and know the art of making each starch grain expand to the limit. A book of Hopi cookery would be bulky, but how interesting to the housewife who would know how to make plain food appetizing without milk or eggs, and who would learn new and strange combinations! There are cakes made from dried fruits, chopped meat, and straw, put on the roof to dry; dumplings formed around old hammerstones, corn dodgers, pats of corn-meal mush wrapped in corn husk and boiled or baked, and many other styles of food that would seem strange to other than a Hopi epicure.
When it is time to dine, a large bowl of stew is placed on the floor as the _piece de resistance_ and beside it a tray of _piki_. Each member of the family breaks off a piece of _piki_, and, holding it between thumb and finger, it is dragged through the stew much like a seine to catch as many particles of meat as possible, then deposited far back in the mouth so that the stew adhering to the fingers may be cleared off with a resounding smack of the lips. A traveler to Hopi in 1869 describes a more formal meal which consisted of mutton, dried peaches, blue _piki_, coffee, and a drink made by steeping the roasted heart of agave in water. This writer says:
You take a small piece, lay a fragment of mutton and some peaches upon it or a little of the sweet liquid and bolt the mass, spoon and all. This dinner, though prepared and cooked by Indians, tasted better than many a meal eaten by us in border settlements cooked by whites.
Hopi women assiduously gather the seeds of grasses and other plants, which they grind up and add to corn-meal to improve the flavor of the bread, or, perhaps, a prized bread is made entirely of the ground seed of some desert plant. Oily seeds, such as those of the piñon, pumpkin, and melons are ground to form shortening in various cakes and to add richness to stews. Often food is colored with harmless vegetable dyes, no doubt with the deep-laid scheme on the part of the mother of the household to cause the familiar fare to be attacked with renewed zest. Our tradition of "spring lamb with mint sauce" is duplicated by stewed rabbit with _nanakopshi_ greens, which, with various other herbs, are put to appropriate uses by the master of the Hopi culinary art.
IV
THE WORKERS
The Hopi believe in the gospel of work, which is evenly divided between the men and the women.
When it is said that people work, there is, unconsciously perhaps, a desire to know the reason, which is rarely a subject of curiosity when people amuse themselves. Come to think of it, the answer is an old one, and a Hopi, if asked why he works, might put forward the first great cause, _nusha_, "food."
Not only must the Hopi work to supply his wife and little ones, but he must do his share for his clan, which is the large family of blood-relations, bound together by the strongest ties and customs of mutual helpfulness. This family is an object of the greatest pride, a little world of its own, in which every member from the least to the greatest has duties and responsibilities. So all labor--men, women, and the little ones, who add their tiny share. The general division of work gives the woman the affairs of the household, and the man the cultivation of the fields. Men plant corn and the older women often help hoe it, and the women and children frequently go down to the fields and watch the crops to keep off birds.
When the harvest is gathered, taken up the mesa, and put into the granary, man's interest in it ceases, except in the matter of eating a large share. Never was a Hopi who was not hungry. Much of the woman's time is taken up in grinding corn and baking bread. The water-carrying falls to her, and this duty might give rise to a suspicion that she has the larger share of the burdens, if the Hopi were not compelled to be frugal in the use of water. Besides the duties mentioned, she may also add that of potter, basket maker, house builder, and sometimes carver of dolls and maker of moccasins. Then the children must be cared for, but everyone takes a hand at that, including the children themselves. If it were not for the numerous ceremonies, woman's work in Hopiland would be much easier. Grinding, baking, water-carrying, and the bother and hurry of preparation for various events continue with painful iteration. The Hopi housewife can give full condolence to her white sister who has borne the burdens of a church festival, and the plaint that "woman's work is never done" would sound familiar to her ears. Still, rarely is she heard to bewail her lot, and it may be depended on that no maidens bloom in idleness about her house.
But the men also follow crafts, and of these, carding, spinning, dyeing, and weaving are exclusively man's work in contrast with the Navaho, among whom such matters are woman's work. His also is the task of wood-gathering, which takes him far afield, since there is hardly a growing thing in the neighborhood worth collecting for fuel. Coal there is in the ground in plenty, but the Hopi make less use of it than did their ancestors, and the householder sets out from time to time with a burro or two for the distant mesas, where the stunted cedars grow, to lay in wood for cooking. Each year the cedars get farther away, so that at some future time the Hopi may have to make use of the neglected coal.
A Hopi is in a fair way to become a great man among his kin when he owns horses and a wagon. In consequence of such wealth, he usually shows his pride by the airs he assumes over his less fortunate tribesmen, and justly, too, because hauling supplies for the schools and traders brings in the silver dollars that replenish the larder with white man's food. Ponies are cheap, and twenty can exist as well as one on the semi-starvation of the desert, so a Hopi teamster often takes along his whole herd when on a freighting trip, to make sure of arriving at his journey's end, and a look at his horses will prove him a wise man.
Seemingly the men work harder making paraphernalia and costumes for the ceremonies than at anything else, but it should be remembered that in ancient days everything depended, in Hopi belief, on propitiating the deities. Still if we would pick the threads of religion from the warp and woof of Hopi life there apparently would not be much left. It must be recorded, in the interests of truth, that Hopi men will work at day's labor and give satisfaction except when a ceremony is about to take place at the pueblo, and duty to their religion interferes with steady employment much as fiestas do in the easy-going countries to the southward.
Really, the Hopi deserve great credit for their industry, frugality, and provident habits, and one must commend them because they do not shun work and because in fairness both men and women share in the labor for the common good.
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.
Nampeo is a remarkable woman. No feeling of her racial inferiority arises even on the first meeting with this Indian woman, barefoot, bonnetless, and clad in her quaint costume. For Nampeo is an artist-potter, the sole survivor in Hano of the generations of women artists who have deposited the product of their handicraft in the care of the dead.
In the household her aged father and mother are final authority on the interpretation of ancient symbolic or cult representations in art. Nampeo likewise carefully copies on paper the decorations of all available ancient pottery for future use. Her archeological methods are further shown by her quest for the clays used by those excellent potters of old Sikyatki and by her emulation of their technique.
One noon under the burning August sun, Doctor Fewkes and the writer climbed the East Mesa, the former to attend the Flute Ceremony at Walpi and the latter with an appointment to pry into the secrets of Nampeo, the potter. In the house, pleasantly cool and shaded, sat the old couple and Lesu. The baby was being secured to its board for its afternoon nap, while Lesu spun. It was a pleasure to examine the quaint surroundings and the curious belongings hung on the wall or thrust above the great ceiling beams,--strings of dried _wiwa_, that early spring plant which has before now tided the Peaceful People over famine, gaily painted dolls, blankets, arrows, feathers, and other objects enough to stock a museum. Lesu did the honors and said among other things that some of the ceiling beams of the room came from ancient Awatobi, destroyed in 1700.
A small niche in the rear wall of the living room, at the back of which stood a short notched log-ladder, caused some speculation. Quite unexpectedly and in a somewhat startling way its purpose was explained, for, when someone called the absent Nampeo, a pair of feet were seen coming down the steps of the ladder, followed finally by Nampeo, who, after a profound bodily contortion, smilingly emerged from the narrow passage into the room.
Nampeo was prepared to instruct. Samples of the various clays were at hand and the novice was initiated into the qualities of the _hisat chuoka_, or ancient clay, white, unctuous and fragrant, to which the ancient Sikyatki potters owed the perfection of their ware; the reddish clay, _siwu chuoka_, also from Sikyatki; the hard, iron-stained clay, _choku chuoka_, a white clay with which vessels are coated for finishing and decoration, coming from about twelve miles southeast of Walpi. In contrast with Nampeo's four clays the Hopi women use only two, a gray body clay, _chakabutska_, and a white slip clay, _kutsatsuka_.
Continuing her instructions Nampeo transferred a handful of well-soaked ancient clay from a bowl on the floor by her side to a smooth, flat stone, like those found in the ruined pueblos. The clay was thrust forward by the base of the right hand and brought back by the hooked fingers, the stones, sticks, and hairs being carefully removed. After sufficient working, the clay was daubed on a board, which was carried out, slanted against the house, and submitted to the all-drying Tusayan sun and air. In a short time the clay was transferred from the board to a slab of stone and applied in the same way, the reason being a minor one known to Nampeo,--perhaps because the clay after drying to a certain degree may adhere better to stone than to wood. Sooner than anyone merely acquainted with the desiccating properties of the moisture-laden air of the East might imagine, the clay was ready to work and the plastic mass was ductile under the fingers of the potter.