Tribute to a Ghost Town

Portrait By Barry Goldwater

His home is on the high plateau-Hotevilla, Oraibi, Shongopovi, Hano, Walpi, Polacca in one of the Hopi villages on the high plateau half way to the stars. There his people have lived for centuries in their mud huts, and there he too will live. His wanderings will take him away to the outside world, but in the end he will return to his village and die there, where his people for generations have died.

Our little Hopi boy is happy and his gay laughter will ring out like merry tinkling bells as he and his playfellows frolic about their homes on the high plateau or in the valley below where his father's crops try so valiantly to grow.

When the American visitors come, he and the other little Hopi boys will stare at them as curiously as they are being stared at. When they try to take his picture, he will flee in sheer fright, but later he will pose, gazing almost defiantly into the camera's eye. Soon he will learn in the shrewd ways of the Hopi, that for taking his picture he can demand candy and sometimes money, and then like a true little merchant he will profit at camera's eye.

Not the White Man's God, but the pagan gods of his people will be his gods. Tradition and custom handed down from generation to generation will determine the role he plays in the annual ceremonies of the Hopi people in communicating with their gods in the simple primitive dances of suppliance for abundant crops and for the rains to come that will end the long droughts.

He will go to the White Man's school, but the ways of the White Man will not be his ways. His ways will be the ways of his people -and a few sheep and a few acres of land will serve him for his daily bread.

The strange, distant land of the Hopis will be his land and he will never leave. There the winds of winter howl against his mud hut on the high plateau and the snows will come deep and cold. In the summer with the hot sun will come the long months of drought and when the rains come they will come in torrents fierce torrents that will hurl themselves against the sandstone cliff upon which he will live as his father and his father's father lived before him. Our little Hopi boy will be the master of his own life-and his own destiny and only the sun and the winds of winter and the rains and the drought and the inexplicable demands of the Hopi gods will guide him. R. C.