The Hopi Way

An Odyssey

Robert Boissiere

• Publisher: Sunstone Press
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781611394504
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Ethnische & Stammesreligion

From first-hand experience, the author tells of daily life among the Hopi Indians in Northern Arizona--their beliefs, rituals and Catcina (Kachina) ceremonies. The interaction and conflict between the Anglo and Indian cultures are presented from the viewpoint of the Hopi family.

THE HOPI WAY

An Odyssey

The bright orange half globe of the rising sun was just appearing on the thin line of the horizon when Sarah Pamosi opened her eyes from a long restless night on the couch. Long accustomed to rising as the Sun Father was sending warm rays toward his children, Sarah awakened the moment the first sunbeam hit the wall beside her.

Stewart, her husband of twenty years, had come home late Saturday night, which was the night before, ever since he had found work at the Winslow depot. Drunk again, he came in loud and stumbling. He and his white friends always celebrated the end of the work week in town, drinking. Sarah worried when he came home like that; she thought about how he might have fallen asleep at the wheel.

It had not always been this way. But it had been worse since sending the children to school. The extra expense was too heavy for the family; Stewart needed the job in town. Farming his ancestral fields would not provide the cash to clothe and feed the children, get a truck instead of the old wagon or burro, simply stay alive in a more complicated world.

She slept poorly on the couch, without her husband beside her. But the pervasive smell of liquor on his breath was worse — she could not stand it!

As Sarah drew her dress over her slip, she looked through the window. The sun, projecting its oblique light on the intensity of the Hopi desert, was sending good thoughts into her heart. Since she was a little girl, this sight, every morning, filled her with joy.

Hopi houses, hers in particular, stand at the edge of a precipitous rocky ledge on which the village is built. Crowning the vertical wall of perhaps a thousand feet, the view through the window of desert expanse is unbelievable for anyone not raised on an eagle's nest — for this is what Hopi villages really are — perched on top of high rocky mesas over the desert floor of northern Arizona.

Dressing herself, looking through the window, Sarah's mind was far, far away... what changes there were in her life. So hard to raise a family, so many fancy goods needed at the store down below. Stewart brought his check to her almost intact. There was, of course, the expense of all that liquor...

She remembered as a little girl, her mother sending her to the only store, the Shipaulovi Trading Post, a very tiny little store built on the Mishongnovi ledge by the only road connecting the village to the out-side world.

It was seldom that she was sent for coffee, flour or sugar, but she loved running down the rocky trail by the kivas. The store goods were fascinating; candies wrapped in colored papers, cookies in cellophane wrappings. Her mother always gave her just the amount necessary for a purchase so she had to content herself in only looking. Every once in a while the storekeeper, old man Secakuku, would give her a candy that she would consume on the way up so her brothers would not take it away from her.

In those days little girls wore black mantas (homespun pueblo dresses) almost exclusively, one for everyday use, and one for the feast days. With bare feet and her waist tightened in the green, red and black ceremonial sash of her people, Sarah knew happy times where wants were limited to what the fathers and grandfathers brought home from the fields. The store was another world.

For treats they had sweet melons her father grew in his fields several miles away from the mesa. There he walked, or perched on top of his faithful donkey, rode every day to attend his crops. Sweet corn, especially the early ones, satisfied her sweet tooth. Baked in a big hole in the ground by the field, husks on, and dried later at the village in the sun, the sweet corn indeed lived up to its name.

There were less worries then — or so it seemed. No one went to town very often; there were no roads to speak of, just sand trails. Now the blacktop road to Winslow was an hour's trip. Back then it took a whole day.

All of this was going round and round in her head as she finished dressing; her eyes moved dreamily along the distant rises of the Hopi buttes far away, at the very edge of the desert.

The boys were sleeping on the roof these last days of July. Too stuffy in the house they said. Besides, up there, next to the eagle, they felt free, just as if they were eagles themselves, ready to take off a thousand feet above the pink, yellow and blue desert below.

Pauline and Alice were awakening. Sarah could hear their voices from the little storeroom behind the blanket serving as a door to their makeshift bedroom.

It was Sunday and perhaps the Catcinas would dance again in Mishongnovi, as they often did when they felt the people wanted them to, even after they had danced all of Saturday. There was good reason, it being the last dance of the year. Niman is the Catcinas' annual goodbye after which they go back to the San Francisco peaks, their ancestral home, until next year.

"Come on, girls, time to get up. I need help preparing breakfast."

Silence answered their mother's call to duty but a few minutes later, from under the old blanket, the puffy faces of two girls made their appearance.

"What do you want us to do, Mom?"

"Bring some dry sweet corn from the back room. I'd like to steam it for breakfast; we have some stew left from yesterday."

Soon the coffee pot spread its aroma through the house, giving everyone the zest to start the new day. Outside the back door, in the little courtyard, Tsokavo and Suma folded the mattresses they had used that night on the roof.

"Suma, do not forget to feed our brother eagle, Kwahu. He should be fed first so he can bring us a good life," Sarah reminded them.

While the noises of breakfast went on, Stewart was deep asleep, quite undisturbed by anything.

"Isn't Daddy going to eat with us?" Alice asked.

Sarah did not answer as it would not have been proper to say something nasty in front of the children.

Everyone sat silent at the table (as was custom), faces close to the bowl in front of them, each child absorbed in thought. The first meal of the day was a silent meditation, a prayer, a greeting to the new day but also to the memory of the departed ones who have become "cloud people."

Imperceptibly (only eyes accustomed to Hopi ways could have noticed) Sarah Pamosi, mother of the family and, under matriarchal law by which Hopi social life is ruled, master of the house, gathered a few pieces of food in her hand and swiftly threw them under the table. This sacramental gesture, as old as the Hopis themselves, signified the living family feeding the departed one, the ancestors to whom the living feel deeply united.

"Mama?"

"Yes, Kotsamana."

"Mausi and I are going to watch the dance at Mishongnovi after breakfast."

"Be sure that your bed is made. And pass the broom here, we might have visitors later. It is Sunday, you know."

The girls obediently ran to their room. What their mother told them was law.

Doing the dishes again, Sarah's mind went far away, lost itself in the immensity of the desert. In better times, Nonantiwa — her husband's Hopi name which she liked better than the Anglo Stewart — would have been at the table with them instead of sleeping off the morning in a heavy stupor. She missed him, she missed what he had been, what she had fallen in love with; his strength, his ability to grow beautiful corn, delicious melons.

Now, he would spend half the day sleeping, and tomorrow before sunrise he would go to work again. In the meantime, they might exchange not a single word.

She could not help it, she knew she was blaming Pahana life (white people's culture) for the damage done to their ancestral way of life. They were so much happier before.

"Okay, Mom, we are ready to go now."

Pauline and Alice were dressed neatly and very attractively in their colorful cotton print dresses, beautifully washed and pressed. Pauline had her long jet hair caught in a single fat braid on the side, her bangs almost to her eyes. She looked both pretty and mysterious. Alice kept her hair loose, neatly trimmed; although only fourteen, she looked as big as her sister.

"I know you are going to see Makto," Sarah said to her eldest daughter. "And I know you are promised to each other, but remember that you have to keep his respect. Talk to him only when people are around, do not look in each other's eyes — it is too soon."

"Oh Mom... things are different now. It is not anymore like when you and Daddy got engaged. You know, it's like they do on TV."

"Yes," Sarah said bitterly, "just like they do on TV."

The two girls went away laughing, their moccasined feet ready to run down the trail by the kivas, the short cut to Mishongnovi.

In the distance, the muffled beat of the drum the rhythmic tonality of the Catcinas' rattles, kept the beat of the Catcina song. It could be heard in both Shipaulovi and Mishongnovi. Even if they had not been at the dance, they were held in unison with the messengers of the gods. By the sound of the song alone, as it echoed from boulder to boulder across the abyss which divided the two villages, they were united and at peace.

Grunting noises, like a bear coming out of his den, signified to Sarah that her husband was coming to life. In another moment he was on his way to the coffee pot.

"I am getting ready to see the Catcinas," Sarah said to him. No answer.

After a couple of cups of coffee, Stewart said to her, "I am going to check my fields see if my corn is all right."

My poor husband, Sarah thought, he is bewitched by liquor and he cant help it... only in his fields does he become himself again.

It was so different twenty years ago. He was courting me then and I had to invent all kinds of excuses for not spending the whole evening at home, doing my chores or making baskets. I was living with Grandma and she was trying to train me to become a good Hopi wife. My thoughts were seldom on my work. All I thought about was getting out of the house to see Stewart under the cover of that old lover's accomplice, night, just as my daughters do today when they sneak off.

My heart was beating hard under the black manta and the shawl I casually put on my shoulders. I didn't want Grandma to think I was anxious.

— I am going to visit with Aunt Martha in Mishongnovi, I would tell her.

Grandma knew her sister had gone to bed hours ago but would say nothing, perhaps because she, too, remembered the excuses she gave to her mother.

Stewart waited patiently by the Peach House, one of many small stone houses used for storing fruit in summer, which was at the edge of the mesa overlooking the desert. He was looking out over the edge at the sparkling lights of the trading posts down below when I came up to him. Safe and secure, at last. How deeply in love I was, how much in harmony we were with each other.

I remember later, after we were happily married, Stewart's mother took ill, very ill. It was the illness the white doctors at the agency hospital call cancer. She got so weak the Keams Canyon Hospital transferred her to Gallup General Hosptial for treatment.

Stewart was very close to his mother. She had raised him by herself after his father had been killed when a horse kicked him in the head.

In those days, the trip to Gallup was a big distance. Hopi and Navajo roads were few and far between, and Gallup was a hundred miles away. We had no truck then, just a horse and light wagon, so we walked from our mesa top down to the ma...