- In the view of the Hopi in the
Southwest, a single, powerful force pervaded the universe. Every mountain
had a soul, every tree, every rock, every living creature, and through
them all flowed the Great Spirit, holding nature and mankind in perfect
balance. In such a world, religious belief and daily life became one and
the same. Every action had a spiritual consequence: think the right thoughts,
perform the proper ceremonies, and the balance would prevail; neglect them,
and nature would be offended. In such a world, right thinking and proper
conduct encompassed many things.
- The myth of creation was enshrined in each village plaza
in an underground ceremonial chamber that had evolved from the traditional
pit house; the Hopi called it a kiva. A small village might have only one
kiva, larger settlements as many as 20 or more, with a principal grand
kiva that could reach up to 70 ft in diameter. Every feature of these subterranean
sanctuaries carried meaning. A small "sipapu hole," dug into
the earthen floor, represented the world navel from which life first sprang
and through which each human spirit would one day return. A fire altar
recalled the gift of fire, and stone fetishes representing important animals
and spirits lived on altars built into the walls. The kiva was entered
through an opening in the roof, which also served as a smoke hole. The
pine ladder that was used, a symbolic rainbow, connected the spirit world
of the kiva with human life in the village above. Except on special occasions,
only adult males could enter the kivas. Within each pueblo, various men's
religious societies took responsibility for communicating with the spirit
world, and the kivas served as their lodge houses. Here initiates met to
plan and perform the ceremonies that brought the summer rains, caused the
corn to sprout, and ensured success in battle and the hunt.
- Standing at the center of the pueblo's spiritual life
was an offical known in some areas as the the cacique, who served as both
high priest and political chief. Claiming spiritual descent from the sun
itself (the Hopi called him Sun Watcher) the cacique held council with
the town's leading men to resolve disputes, hand down justice, and decide
all matters important to village welfare. He was also charged with maintaining
harmony between his people and the spiritual forces that controlled the
universe.
Each morning he would greet the rising sun with a welcoming prayer. Also,
by close observation of celestial events, he drew up the village calendar,
marking out the times for planting and harvest festivals, for rain dances
and puberty rites, and for the many other sacred events that gave shape
to the Anasazi year. Periodically he would enter the main kiva to ritualy
recreate the time of emergence, thereby restoring his people to a state
of primordial grace.
- The Hopi celebrate the Night Dances in February, well
before the first plantings. Kachina dancers represent powerful rain spirits,
some hold rattles; others carry ears of corn, symbolic of the crop the
villagers hope to raise during the year ahead.
They perform the Snake Dance "for rain to fall to water the earth,
that planted things may ripen and grow large; that the male element of
the Above, the Yei, may impregnate the female earth virgin, Naasun."
The Hopi ceremonial calendar-still in use today-divides the year in half,
based on the visits of the kachinas. These ancestral spirits arrive with
the first new moon after the winter solstice, then leave in high summer
for their homes to the north, south,e ast, and west.
Kiva dances are held in January and March. The Powamuya (Bean Dance) is
held in February. Plaza Dances are held in April, May, and June. Also in
June is the summer solstice. The Niman (Home Dance) is in July with the
Snake or Flute Dance in August. The Women's Society Dance is held through
September and October. In November, the Wuwtsim, Tribal Initiation take
place and with the winter solstice in December, the Soyalangw is performed.
- During the period known as the Great Migration of the
Anasazi, the inhabitants of Kayenta drifted south, perhaps mingling with
other groups on Arizona's Black Mesa to become the people known in historic
times as the Hopi.
- Among all Pueblo people, religion continued to play a
vital role in daly life. At the heart of religious life, particularly among
western groups like the Hopi and Zuni, were the infinitely helpful kachinas-also
sometimes called katsinas. In a world infused by supernatural forces, each
visible object had a spiritual counterpart, a divine essence as real as
the thing itself. Michael Lomatuway'ma (Hopi) says:
"A katsina can be an ancestor spirit, or it can be
the spirit of an animal or a plant or anything that is beneficial to the
Hopi....We even have a dog katsina: dogs help the Hopi hunt. And then a
katsina can be just an abstract thing. You don't know the meaning behind
it-all you know is that it will perform for you, it brings rain, it carries
messages back to whoever is making rain."
Six months of every year, the kachinas resided in the
mountains to the west, where they could be seen as cloud banks gathering
above the peaks. Then shortly after the winter solstice, they would return
to the pueblo. Summoned in secret kiva ceremonies, the kachinas arrived
through the sipapu hole in the floor to act as intermediaries between the
spirit realm and the world of humans.
During their stay the kacinas became the center of the pueblo's ceremonial
life. On important occasions the men of the kachina society, gloriously
masked and costumed, would emerge from the kivas and pour into the village
square to dance and chant As each dancer performed, he would receive the
spirit of the kachina he represented and so acquire the power to send prayers
to the deities.
See the Kachina page for more information (to be coming
soon).
- During the February Bean Dance festival, boys eight or
nine years of age were assembled in the kiva, where the Kachina Chief recited
the creation story. Suddenly, with a terrifying cry, other kachinas entered,
carrying whips. Each boy received four memorable lashes, after which gifts
of sacred feathers and cornmeal were presented. Then, after further ceremony
and a sumptuous feast, the kachinas peeled off their masks-showing themselves
to be men of the village. Then began the serious business of instructing
the children in the moral and spiritual truths of Pueblo life.
- Life in the villages settled into the traditional rhythm
of planting and harvesting, hunting and worshiping. The scale was smaller
then in the Anasazi past. Never again would the Pueblo people erect huge
600-room edifices like the ones at Chaco Canyon. The far-flung network
of Anasazi trade routes contracted and disappeared, and individual villages
became increasingly self-sufficient.
Once established in their new homes, the Pueblo people prospered and multiplied.
By about the year 1500, they had grown to a population approaching 250,000,
living a settled, self-contained existence in 134 or more villages reaching
from the fertile Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico to the more isolated Hopi
mesas of Arizona.
- By 1630, the Franciscans (friars of the Spanish Catholic
Church) had erected several dozen large mission compounds and no less than
90 village churches and chapels. Funding for construction came from the
Spanish king, who donated supplies and equipment. Labor was free of charge,
provided by the Pueblo subjects themselves-sometimes willingly, occasionally
at swordpoint. Beams the size of tree trunks which supported the roof of
the church at Shungopovi, a Hopi village on Arizona's Black Mesa, came
from the San Francisco Peaks, more than 60 miles to the southwest-down
a mountainside, across the Little Colorado River, up and down canyon walls,
and finally up the mesa itself. Each log took more than 20 men to lift.
At this Hopi pueblo, insurgent villagers exacted a terrible revenge. After
years of harsh treatment by a resident friar who whipped converts and seduced
Pueblo women, after asking the friars refused to leave voluntarily, they
strung the priest up to burn and dismantled the church he had forced them
to build. No further attempts were made to convert or conquer the Hopi.
- In protest of Nazi Germany's aggression
in Europe, four Arizona tribes along with the Apache, Navajo, Papago and
Hopi, banned the swastika, an ancient native symbol, from their blanket
and basket designs. Apache Miguel Flores and Hopi Fred Kabotie signed the
document proclaiming the ban in February 1940.
- An aged Hopi priest flew into Manhattan from Arizona
in 1989 for the opening of the gala Fall Antiques Show. But he was on a
special mission. And he had the FBI with him. Stopping at a museum exhibit
that was part of the show, the old man peered intently at a mask on display:
a 39 inch yucca fiber disc covered by deerskin, painted with green, red,
black, and white pigments and topped with a crown of braided cornhusks
and feathers. He nodded to his FBI escort, confirming that this was what
they had come for. Then he reached into a leather pouch at his neck. Pulling
out a handful of coarsely ground corn, he sprinkled the white grains over
the mask, symbolically feeding its spirit. "You have your God,"
he murmured in Hopi to the puzzled crowd that had gathered. "This
is ours."
When he was done, the FBI agent confiscated the mask as evidence and served
a museum official with a subpoena to appear before a grandy jury in Phoenix.
It soon was revealed that the mask, which represented a kachina, or sacred
spirit, had been illegally removed from Old Oraibi village on the Hopi
Reservation in Arizona. How or when it had been taken was not know, but
a Santa Fe dealer later sold it to a collector for $75,000, then borrowed
it back for the museum exhibit.