Part 5
Nampeo set out first to show the process of coiling a vessel. The even "ropes" of clay were rolled out from her smooth palms in a marvelous way, and efforts to rival excited a smile from the family sitting around as interested spectators. The concave dish called _tabipi_, in which she began the coiled vessel and which turns easily on its curved bottom, seems to be the nearest approach of the Pueblos to the potter's wheel. The seeming traces of unobliterated coiling on the bases of some vessels may be the imprints from the coils of the _tabipi_. As the vessel was a small one, the coiling proceeded to the finish and the interims of drying as observed in the manufacture of large jars were not necessary. Then gourd smoothers, _tuhupbi_, were employed to close up the coiling grooves, and were always backed from the outside or inside by the fingers. Finally the smooth "green" vessel was set aside to dry.
Then a toy canteen was begun by taking a lump of clay which, by modeling, soon assumed the shape of a low vase. With a small stick, a hole was punched through each side, a roll of clay was doubled for the handles, the ends thrust through the holes and smoothed down inside the vase, through the opening. The neck of the canteen was inserted in a similar way. Now the problem was to close the opening in this soft vessel from the outside. Nampeo threw a coil around the edge of the opening, pressing the layers together, gradually drawing in, making the orifices smaller until it presented a funnel shape. Then the funnel was pressed toward the body of the canteen, the edges closed together, soldered, smoothed, and presto! it was done and all traces of handling hidden. Anyone knowing the difficulties will appreciate this surprisingly dextrous piece of manipulation. Afterward, Nampeo made a small vase-shaped vessel, by modeling alone, without the addition of coiling as in the shaping of the canteen.
The ware when it becomes sufficiently dry must receive a wash of the white clay called _hopi chuoka_ or _kutsatsuka_, which burns white. Thereupon it is carefully polished with a smooth pebble, shining from long use, and is ready for decoration. The use of the glaring white slip clay as a ground for decoration was probably brought from the Rio Grande by the Tewa; ancient Hopi ware is much more artistic, being polished on the body or paste, which usually blends in harmony with the decoration.
Nampeo exhibited samples of her paints, of which she knows only red and dark brown. The red paint is yellow ocher, called _sikyatho_, turning red on firing. It was mixed on a concave stone with water. The dark brown paint is made from _toho_, an iron stone brought from a distant mesa. It was ground on a slab with a medium made from the seed of the tansy mustard (_Sisymbrium canescens_). The brushes were two strips of yucca, _mohu_, one for each color. With these slender means, without measurement, Nampeo rapidly covered the vessels with designs, either geometrical or conventionalized, human or cult,--figures or symbols. The narrow brush, held like a painter's striper, is effective for fine lines. In broad lines or wide portions of the decoration, the outlines are sharply defined and the spaces are filled in. No mistakes are made, for emendations and corrections are impossible.
Quite opportunely the next day, an invitation to see the burning of pottery came from an aged potter who resides at the Sun Spring. When the great Hopi clock reached the appointed place in the heavens, the bowed yet active potter was found getting ready for the important work of firing the ware. In the heap of cinders, ashes, and bits of rock left from former firings, the little old woman scooped out a concave ring. Nearby was a heap of slabs of dry sheep's droppings, quarried from the floor of a fold perched on a ledge high up the mesa and brought down in the indispensable blanket. In the center of the concave kiln floor a heap of this fuel was ignited by the aid of some frayed cedar bark and a borrowed match from the opportune Pahana, "people of the far water," the name by which white men are known. When the fire was well established, it was gradually spread over the floor to near the margin and the decorated bowls brought from the house were set up around with the concave sides toward the fire, while the potter brought, in her blanket, a back load of friable sandstone from a neighboring hillock.
Under the first heat the ware turned from white to purple gray or lavender, gradually assuming a lead color. They were soon heated enough and were ready for the kiln. Guarding her hand by the interposition of a fold of the blanket, the potter set the vessels, now quite unattractive, aside, proceeded to rake the fire flat and laid thereon fragments of stone at intervals to serve as rests or stilts for the ware. Larger vessels were set over smaller and all were arranged as compactly as possible. Piece by piece, dextrously as a mason, the potter built around the vessels a wall of fuel, narrowing at the top, till a few slabs completed the dome of the structure, itself kiln and fuel.
Care was taken not to allow the fuel to touch the vessels, as a discoloration of the ware would result, which might subject the potter to the shafts of ridicule. Gradually the fire from below creeps up the walls till the interior is aglow and the ware becomes red hot. Little attention is now needed except closing burned out apertures with new pieces of fuel; the potter, who before, during the careful and exact dispositions, has been giving little ejaculations as though talking to a small child, visits the kiln intermittently from the nearby house. Here she seeks refuge from the penetrating, unaromatic smoke and the blazing sun.
The Hopi have an odd superstition that if any one speaks above a whisper during the burning of pottery the spirit inhabiting the vessel will cause it to break. No doubt the potter had this in mind while she was whispering and was using all her blandishments to induce the small spirits to be good.
She remarked that when the sun should hang over the brow of the mesa at the height indicated by her laborious fingers, the ware would be baked, the kiln a heap of ashes, the yellow decoration a lively red and the black a dark brown on a rich cream-color ground. Next day, with true foresight, she brought her quaint wares to the camp and made a good bargain for them, incidentally asking, "Matches all gone?"
One woman at least in Tusayan is a weaver of blankets. Anowita's wife enjoys that distinction because she is a Navaho, among whom weaving is woman's work. The Hopi housewives have enough to do keeping house, a thing not burdensome to the Navaho, and as has been explained, the Hopi men hold a monopoly of the spinning and weaving.
Time out of mind the Hopi have grown cotton in their little fields, and the first white men that made their acquaintance were presented with "towels" of their weaving as a peace offering. In the cliff-houses of the ancient people are found woven fabrics of cotton and rugs made of strips of rabbit fur like those now to be seen in the pueblos. The ancient people also had feather garments made by tying plumage to a network of cords. In the ruins of the pueblos one often finds cotton seeds which have been buried with the dead, and the braided mats of yucca or bark and bits of cloth fortunately preserved show that the people of former times were skilful weavers. There is no reason to doubt that the Hopi stuffs were prized for their excellence throughout the Southwest in the early times as they are now.
When the Spaniards brought sheep among the pueblos, the weavers and fabric makers seem to have appreciated the value of wool at once, and the ancient garments of feathers and skins quickly disappeared. Cotton remained in use only for ceremonial costumes or for cord employed in the religious ceremonies. The rabbit-fur robes which once were made throughout a vast region of the Rockies from Alaska to the Gulf of California were largely displaced by blankets, in later years, gorgeously dyed and cunningly woven. Long before the introduction of trade dyes the Hopi were satisfied with sober colors; the dark blue and brown given to the yarn by the women were from the plants. Even now the Hopi weavers stick to their colors and refuse to perpetrate the zigzags of the Navaho. For this reason the women of all the pueblos of the Southwest dress in dark blue and brown, as the Hopi are purveyors of stuffs for wear to all their fellow house-dwellers of Indian lineage. Good cloth it is, too, and worthy of its renown, for it wears exceedingly well. More than one generation often enjoys its service, and when the older folks get through with their blanket dresses, the little ones have garments fashioned from them for their own apparel.
If one will examine the Hopi blankets, he will be surprised at the skilful weaving they show. The blanket dress often has the body of plain weaving in black and the two ends bordered with damask or basket weave in blue. Sometimes a whole blanket is of damask, giving a surface that, on close inspection, has a pleasing effect. The women's ceremonial blanket of cotton with blue and red borders sometimes show three kinds of weaving and several varieties of cording. The belts also have a wonderful range of patterns. On the whole, one is led to believe that the Hopi are more adept at weaving than their rivals, the Navaho.
The carding and spinning are thoroughly done, the resulting yarn being strong, even, and tightly twisted with the simple spindle. Sometimes the spinner dresses and finishes the yarn by means of a corn cob smoothed by long use. The women, by virtue of their skill in culinary matters, are usually the dyers, and the dye they concoct from sunflower seeds or blue beans is a fast blue. In old times cotton was prepared for spinning by whipping it with slender switches on a bed of sand, and this process is yet required for the cotton used for the sacred sashes. Now nearly every family is provided with wire cards purchased from traders. These cards look quite out of place in the hands of priests in the _kiva_, where they are used in combing the cotton for the sacred cord used in tying the feathers to the _pahos_.
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.
The rocks all over the Southwest bear witness that the Hopi can draw. In thousands of instances he expressed his meaning in symbols or in compositions representing the chase of the deer or mountain goat. One of these groups on the smooth rocks near Holbrook, Arizona, shows a man driving a flock of turkeys, and is exceedingly graphic. On the cliff faces below Walpi are numerous well-executed pictographs, and occasionally one runs across recent work on the mesa top that excites admiration. With sculpture in the round the Hopi has done nothing remarkable because his tastes and materials have never led in this direction. A few rather large figures rudely carved from soft sandstone may be seen around the pueblos, and numerous fetiches, some of very hard stone, representing wolves, bears, and other animals, are still in the keeping of the societies. Some of these are very well done, but show little progress in sculpture. The visitor must beware of the little fetiches whittled from soft stone and offered for sale as genuine by the guileful Hopi in quest of _shiba_.
The industry which the Hopi woman has all in her own hands is basket-making, and the work is apportioned to such as have the skill and fancy for it, as if there were a division of labor. The women of the three towns on the East Mesa do not make baskets at all, those of the Middle Mesa sew only coiled baskets, while the women of Oraibi weave wicker baskets exclusively. Thus, there is no difficulty in saying just where a Hopi basket comes from, and there is also no excuse for not recognizing these specimens of Hopi woman's work at first glance, as they have a strong individuality that separates them from all other baskets of the Indians.
If one should visit the most skilful basket-maker of the Middle Mesa, Kuchyeampsi, that modest little woman, might be seen busily at work, and from her a great deal about the construction of coiled baskets could be learned. But it would take some time and patience to find that the grass whose stems she gathers for the body of the coil is named _takashu_, which botanists know as _Hilaria jamesii_, and that the strips which she sews over and joins the coil are from the leaves of the useful _mohu_ (_Yucca glauca_).
Then when Kuchyeampsi comes home laden with her basket materials one must take further lessons in stripping the yucca leaves, splitting them with the thumb-nail to uniform size, and dyeing some of them various colors, for which anilines are principally used in these degenerate days. One must have an eye for the colors of the natural leaves of the yucca and select the yellow or yellowish green of the old leaves, the vivid green of the young leaves, and the white of the heart leaves, for the basket weaver discriminates all of these and uses them in her work.
Of course Kuchyeampsi has all her material ready, the strips buried in moist sand, the grass moistened, and she may be starting a plaque. The slender coil at the center is too small to be formed with grass stems, so she builds it up of waste bits from the leaf-stripping, wrapping it with yucca strips, and taking only a few stitches with the encircling coil, since the bone awl is too clumsy for continuous stitching at the outset. After the third round the bone awl is plied, continuously piercing through under the coil and taking in the stitches beneath strips. As a hole is made the yucca strip is threaded through and drawn tight on the grass coil, and so the patient work goes on till the basket is complete. The patterns which appear on the baskets are stored up in the maker's brain and unfold as the coil progresses with the same accuracy as is evinced by the pottery decorator. The finish of the end of the coil gives an interesting commentary on Hopi beliefs. It is said that the woman who leaves the coil end unfinished does not complete it because that would close her life and no more children would bless her.
At Oraibi one may see the women making wicker tray-baskets. Three or four slender sumach twigs are wickered together side by side at the middle and another similar bundle laid across the first at right angles. Then dyed branches of a desert plant known as "rabbit brush" are woven in and out between the twigs, and as the basket progresses she adds other radial rods until the basket is large enough. She finishes the edge by bending over the sumach ribs, forming a core, around which she wraps strips of yucca.
One must admire the accuracy with which the designs are kept in mind and woven into the structure of the basket with splints of various colors or strips of tough yucca. The translation of a design into the radiating sewing of the coiled basket or the horizontal filling of the wicker basket shows the necessity of the different treatments, contrasting with the freedom which it is the potter's privilege to display on the smooth surface of her ware. So far as known the Hopi women never fail in applying their designs, however intricate. Frequently these designs represent mythical birds, butterflies, clouds, etc.
Among the Hopi certain of the villages are noted for their local manufactures. Thus Walpi and Hano are practically the only towns where pottery is made, the Middle Mesa towns are headquarters for coiled baskets, and Oraibi furnishes wicker baskets. Perhaps the meaning of this is that these arts belong to clans, who have preserved them and know the secrets, and with the dying out of the workers or migration of the clans the arts have disappeared or have been transformed. Another cause which will suggest itself is the local abundance and quality of the materials required to be found in the surrounding plains and mountains.
Basketry has at least as many uses as pottery among the Hopi, and a number of kinds besides the familiar plaques with symbolical decoration have been eagerly sought by collectors. The crops from the fields are borne to the houses on the mesas in carrying baskets, resembling a pannier, which are worked of wicker over a frame of two bent sticks crossed at right angles. In the house the coiled and wicker trays heaped high with corn meal, the basket for parched corn and the sifting basket near the corn grinding stones, will be found. In the bread-baking room is the coarse, though effective, _piki_ tray, and occasionally one may still see a neatly made floor mat. The thin checker mat of ancient days has long since gone out of use, but formerly, the dead were wrapped in such mats before they were placed in the earth.
Over the fireplace is a hood of basketry plastered to prevent burning. The wicker cradle to which the infant hopeful is bound must not be forgotten. Several small globular wicker baskets for various purposes may also be displayed among the household belongings. The mat of grass stems in which the wedding blanket is folded is also a kind of basketry, as are the twined mats for covering the hatchway of the kiva and the twined fence around the fields.
With all their own resources, the Hopi are great collectors of baskets from other tribes. One must not be surprised to see in use in the Hopi houses the water bottles coated with pitch and the well-made basket-bowls from the Havasupai of Cataract Canyon, the Pimas of southern Arizona, and other tribes touched by Hopi commerce.