Sojourn in Hopiland

A young lady artist came from the East to visit in Hopiland She remained there for years and has been in Arizona ever since.

THE SUN shone brightly, causing heat waves to rise from the multicolored floor of the Painted Desert In the great open places the wind carved myriad forms in the red sand stone and carried biting bits along in its hurry as it passed over the great plateau. In the distance the mesa stood ageless bathed in the bluepurple haze. The Santa Fe Scout came to a halt at Canyon Diablo and from it stepped a young woman artist en route to her home in New York. She was to join a "colony" for a trek to Hopiland. So began the unique and thrilling experience of a seven year sojourn by a white woman in the high mesa villages of the Hopi Indians.

It was back in the year 1905 that Miss Kate T. Cory, now a well known personage of Arizona and an artist of renown, stepped from the train at Canyon Diablo and looked out toward the great mesa land that was to become her enchanted home and to change the entire course of her life and give a breadth of interest and understanding to many others through her interpretations and paintings. Hers has been one of the most unusual, romantic and intriguing experiences that mind can conjure. It was unprecedented and is unmatched. From it has come a character that is different and a philosophy that is unique.

Miss Cory herself best tells how it happened and the circumstances of her journey to Hopiland. "It was back in New York on an afternoon at a social gathering of the Pen and Brush Club of which I was a member. I was chatting with my good friend, the writer Maude Banks, the daughter of General Banks of Civil War fame. Suddenly Maude looked to one side and exclaimed, 'Why Louis Aiken, where have you been all this time? She introduced me and we sat down on a nearby couch as Aiken answering the query said, 'I've had a wonderful winter out in Arizona in the Hopi reservation.' He then told us of the mild winter in Arizona, of the little rock and adobe houses and ancient villages of those gentle people with their strange ceremonies and customs. Then he added, 'I want to go back there and have a colony of writers, artists and musicians. Why can't you two be of that colony? It sounded attractive and since my parents had both passed away there was no reason why I could not go. It blossomed to reality for me when a cousin from Seattle, where uncles of mine had pioneered years before, who was then in New York invited me to return with her and meet those relatives out in Washington whom I had never seen or known. "Well, it was a round trip ticket that I purchased that spring day in 1905 to Seattle and the West Coast to return via Canyon Diablo, the nearest point of entry to Oraibi on the Hopi Reservation and back to New York. My visit completed on the Coast, I entrained for Arizona and the Hopi Reservation. I had written ahead to the trader at Canyon Diablo at the suggestion of Louis Aiken, and had sent to him a box of necessities. It materialized that Louis' plan did not bring the party to the reservation and thus I became the 'colony.' "The trip inland to Oraibi was made with the trader, William Volz and his wife in a covered wagon, in two very blue-sky days and one starry night arriving at our destination just as evening mess was finished. All reassembled to visit with the trader, he being known to them all because of his former residence at Oraibi as trader there. Many were the questions asked and answered as the events of the passing months were brought into review.

All of the ancient and sacred ceremonies of the Hopi people became part of the treasure Miss Cory gathered during her stay among the Hopis. The view here is that of a ceremonial dance staged in Oraibi, many, many years ago. She became close friends with these plain people.

“As we were preparing for the trip from Canyon Diablo, I was first introduced to Hopi ways. That morning a young Hopi, stripped of all but a G-string, and with a bundle on his back, started out to the north over the rough ground in his bare feet. 'Who's that?' I exclaimed to the trader's wife. 'O, that's a Hopi going home, he came down to trade.' 'Why, how can he, its 65 miles up there?' 'O, that's nothing for a Hopi,' she replied, 'he'll be there by noon.' I gasped. It was to take us two days and a night by wagon and team. I later learned that their corn fields are often located ten miles from their homes and they run back and forth as it is necessary to care for their crops.

“Well,” continues Miss Cory, “I was to learn on my first night at Oraibi that 'Early to bed and early to rise' was more than a proverb of Franklin. It was a necessity on the reservation and so the discussion between our party and the government people terminated early and at nine o'clock I was given blankets, loaned by one of the teachers, and ushered to a school room, rather smelly from saliva-washed slates and other odors of school room attributes, where I made my bed on the floor. But I was tired and sleepy and was still sleeping soundly when the morning bell brought me out running and dragging the blankets ready for the first day's experience at Oraibi. One of the teachers invited me to share her bed room and soon my face was washed, my hair combed, and I was ready for 'ham and eggs.

The first necessity was a place of abode and so Miss Cory with the assistance of the school matron, a Miss Keith, started out to find a house. There was one, owned by an Indian woman on the mesa, in the government vil-lage that might be rented. They went up to the mesa village to interview the owner. Miss Cory tells of the ordeal. “This was my first real contact with these Indians. Mu-se-nim-ka, the old woman who owned the house, was in her daughter's home, kneeling at the grinding box and grinding corn on the stone metate. Her eyes were almost closed with that frightful and infectious disease trachoma. The daughter, also afflicted, stood at one side, and two or three grandchildren, all potential victims, stood in line. Miss Keith told of our errand. Muse-nim-ka straightened up from her grinding, whipped her eyes clear with a deft stroke of the hand, and began grinding again while she deliberated. I too deliberated. I protested about the entire affair, but hers was the only house available and Miss Keith sealed the bargain, promising thorough fumigation of the house. This was accomplished and all things were removed except the stove, beadstead and springs, and chair. Soon I was living comfortably in this little house in the government village.” This incident, Miss Cory is careful to remind the listeners, was back in 1905 before much progress had been made by the government doctors in combating disease among the Indians and, as she says “This is one of the greatest reasons why governmental supervision and teaching must be given to those people. For the government doctors, living at the headquarters and going to visit each village at frequent intervals, make every effort to rid them of trachoma and other infections, most of which are the result of ignorance, try to teach them cleanliness and prevention as well as to give them evidence of the cures of medicine and hygiene. Conditions are undoubtedly much better today.” But not for long was this woman likely to be kept in the government village some distance removed from the old village of Oraibi on the high mesa. She had come out from New York to study the Hopi and their customs and ceremonies and she wanted to become “friend” with them as she could not do with the apparent “official” relationship which such a residence in the government village would imply. Soon she had arranged for another home in Oraibi. She lived and worked, though retaining also her home off the mesa. Thus living intimately in their midst, she was soon friend and to were accorded many privileges not granted to white men nor to Hopi women.

Of her home in ancient Oraibi she tells many incidents. One must first realize that in the pueblo villages the houses are connected one with another in close wall formation, but units are owned individually. Thus if one owner desires to enlarge her house, the addition must be up and not sideways. The house or “flat” which Miss Cory rented in Oraibi was one of the additions of the pueblo skyscraper type. It was the top floor of the highest house in the village. She says of this place, “You reached it by ladders and little stone steps, and made your peace with the growling dogs on the ascent; but oh! the view when you got there.” The total floor space of the one and one half room flat was less than twenty feet square and in this cozy place with its view out over the village and the surrounding desert lived the young artist from New York gaining a knowledge of Hopi words, folklore, ceremonies, and making friends with the unfriendlies. In describing life in the village as viewed and experienced in her penthouse apartment she says, “Stone steps led up by my door to the roof, the highest point in the village. Let me try to make you feel my surroundings as you are awakened in the deep of the night and listen to a soft tread on the steps on up to the roof above you. Then a loud clarion call coming from directly overhead penetrating the stillness. The call could be heard easily in the government village one mile distant. Then again the soft pad, pad of the moccasined feet on the steps outside as the crier returned either to his house or the clan kiva. Perhaps the call was a summons for the men to gather in the kiva for a ceremony, or possibly to some work in a distant field, and at an earlier time

chambers where most of the mystic rites of the pueblo Indians are enacted in secrecy. The plaza is the town square or open square usually near the center of the village around and in which the social life and the open ceremonials are held. There are no market places or stores in these villages though there is likely to be a trading post in the vicinity.

Imagine, if you can, the magnitude of change that had come into the life of this young woman whose dimensions as to open spaces was enlarged from Central Park to the limitless vastness of the desert and who had now traded art museums for kivas, and beautiful primitive. ceremonials. One can not understand all this unless one had some introduction to Miss Cary who came to Oraibi in 1905 and lived there until 1912. One must also have the panorama of "family" life, experience and desire that formed the early warp and woof of living in the early years of this young woman.

James Y. Cory had left his Canadian home at an early age and gone to Little Fort (Waukegan), Illinois to be employed by his uncle there. He was, at a comparatively early age, the editor of the Waukegan Weekly Gazette. He became shocked by the tragedy of slavery and become associated with the Abolitionists and in the work of the underground railway. During the days of the war of the States, he lost all of his help in the office of the paper and was deterred in his own desire to join the Union forces only by the request of the boys from Waukegan already fighting with the Blues who sent messages to him "Don't stop the paper!" As an editor he was interested in state and national affairs and his own attitude on major political problems led him to a personal and intimate association with Abraham Lincoln of whom he was a great admirer. In Waukegan he met Miss Eliza Pope Kellogg whom he married. They established a nice home and to this union were born two children, a son and a daughter-Kate Thompson Cory.

Both the Corys and the Kelloggs were eastern families. Grandfather Cory had gone from his New Jersey home to Canada where he had served many years as a doctor. Grandfather Kellogg, also a doctor, had been practicing in Maine. As the family of boys grew to young manhood, their desire to go to sea had caused the parents hoping to dissuade them, to move inland to Illinois. This was not to accomplish the end since two of the boys returned York, signed as ordinary sailors, and shipped on a steamer sailing around the Horn to the West Coast. In the Northwest they stayed to become builders in that vast empire and to be joined in a few years by a sister and her husband who, in later years, was to become the last Territorial and first Statehood Governor of Washington. Another of those Kellogg brothers, Miss Cory's uncle, was to go to Annapolis and later become a Captain in the U.S.N. His son in turn went to Annapolis and became the Territorial Governor of American Samoa. The Corys and Kelloggs were people of daring, conviction, and adventure. They had not been circumscribed by geographical limits, easy security, political paucity, nor family immobility. They traveled as they willed and dared to meet obstacles in a desire to build. Thus the young Miss Cary was less inhibited both by tradition and by fact than many young women at the turn of the twentieth century.

call to defense against marauding enemies. But, regardless of the purpose, these calls always start the dogs (and they vie with the flies in numbers) to barking. The burros never miss a challenge to display their vocal specialties as voice answers voice in the enchanted darkness.

"The night's sleep having been broken and one, having an insatiable curiosity, gets out of bed and peeks through the tiny window to gain a glimpse over the little flat roofs to the streets below and the plaza beyond. Yes, the call was for a ceremonial and one hears the low solemn chant in the kiva, its strange resonance coming from underground; you see the men lined up in the plaza, nude figures moving with rhythmic tread to the tempo of the rattles. What weird and spectacular sight in the moonlight! You sleep no more because the village is immediately astir. It is now early 'chicken crowing' time and soon 'twill be the white dawn."

The kiva is the underground clan ceremonial Too, she was an artist. When the family had moved from Waukegan, Kate Cory had entered Cooper Union where she studied art for four years and gained recognition which brought an instructorship to her. Later she moved on to the Art Student's League, which is probably the finest art school in America, where she studied under two of the greatest teachers of that day-Kenyon Cox and J. Alden Weir. She then was drawn to the field of commercial art and was just embarking upon this career when destiny led her to Hopiland.

Another New York experience contributes its part to the directing of Kate Cory. As we have earlier noted she was a member of Pen and Brush, a woman's club for writers and artists. Another member of this club was Mrs. Ernest Thompson Seton whose husband was early associated with programs for out-of-door activities for boys. Mr. Seton, Dan Beard of Boy Scout fame, David T. Ambercrombie, George Shields and others were members of a men's outing club called the Camp Fire Club. Mr. Shields was the editor of the magazine called "Recreation." His ideas expressed in this magazine were in the creation and furtherance of a wildlife preservation program and were vitriolically directed against the shooting and killing of wildlife for simple sport. These concepts were the foundation of the Camp Fire Club. The men went camping and were great explorers of nature and camping lore: They were all lovers of the out-of-doors and lovers of the natural animal and plant life and sought to enjoy it without destroying it. Miss Cory was an illustrator for "Recreation" and had absorbed much of the George Shields, philosophy. Too, by courtesy of Mrs. Ambercrombie, she attended the women's nights of the Camp Fire Club and was thus associated with the men who pioneered in the fields of boys' and girls' work which ante-dated such present day organizations as Boy Scout and Camp Fire Girls. In this manner her interest in the outof-doors was cultivated and her knowledge of camping and nature lore was enhanced.

It was the alluring description of Louis Aiken and the prospect of a "colony" that brought Miss Cory to the Southwest, but it was the background of training and experience that gave to her the spirit, fortitude, ability, and determination coupled with her innate interest and inherited adventuresomeness to stay on in Hopiland and to learn what few, if any others, have learned so well and interpreted so appreciatively. Her artistic temperament and training well fitted her for self-accepted role as realistic friend of the Hopi.

The entire experience of seven years in Hopiland cannot be chronicled here, but some incidents are so striking that this portrayal would be quite incomplete without them. Visiting a Kiva became a not unusual happening and thus Miss Cory is a first hand observer of secret rites and mysteries that few others have been privileged to view. Her friendship with these people opened doors that scientific experts have never set ajar.

Quite early in her stay in Oraibi she was introduced to the sacred Soyaluna or ceremony of turning back the sun at the winter solstice. The ceremony is a beautiful one and the attitude shown toward Miss Cory by the Hopi at this time is informative. She tells the whole story in this manner.

"Sacred rites take place in the kivas that would be impossible for us to understand; but also during those eight days in the kiva much string is spun of native desert-grown cotton, and about four inch pieces of it attached to hundreds of fluffy feathers for later use. A feather floats upward and is the symbol of a prayer to the gods of the sky. The forlornlooking chickens and turkeys in the streets at the time leave no uncertainty as to where the feathers come from.

"These, differently made for different purposes, and called pahos, are placed at certain springs, sometimes far away, in a plea for water; in the fields to insure good crops; and at other places for various purposes.

"And now to witness the beginning of the out-of-door features of this big ceremony, I climbed up the trail to the mesa at about dusk. The men in their black ceremonial blankets walked slowly along the paths, through and between the Walpi-Sichomovi villages, each man, a hand filled with these stringed feathers. As they met each other they stopped, exchanged a feather with bent head and a praper "Um Katchet na wekana, um wyo tanic." (May you live long, may you have good life. and passed on.

"The women were all in their homes, receiving also these good will prayers and tokens from those related by blood or clan. No children were abroad.

"I walked slowly along (white women are a law unto themselves and they didn't drive me away). Presently a man stopped beside me. "Quache, um nawa ken?" (Friend, do you want one?) "O we!" (yes) I gladly answered. He gave me one with the same prayer of good will. "Equally" (thank you) I said as I received my token and moved on. Anotheranother another and on.

"The men were moving to and fro slowly, stopping beside each other. The air was vibrant with a brotherly atmosphere. Finally I went down to the government village, thrilled at the beautiful spirit of good will I had witnessed, and been included in, among these primitive people.

"Later, some two hours past midnight, comes the crucial part of this ceremony-the symbolic turning back of the sun, when the Star-priest, a great four-pointed star upright at and above his forehead, and holding a big sun symbol before him, swings it rapidly east to west, and west to east, and short swings each way suggesting the long days and the short days, all accompanied by a lively dancing step, amid much singing and shouting by the others in the kiva. Thus the sun turns back."

Another incident relating to the friendship which many of the Hopi had for Miss Cory is one that occurred after her leaving there and the subsequent establishment of her home in Prescott. In 1933, a group of Hopi went to Prescott to see the annual Smoki ceremonials and went to see Miss Cory. While they were there she showed them various gifts that had come from Indians over the state. She showed them an old, worm-eaten planting stick, used by Indians long ago and which had been given to her by an aged chief. It seems that there had been a wide search for the stick, since it was one handed down from generation to generation as a good omen for crops. The Cloud Clan was most happy when she gave them the long lost planting stick.

During her residence in the village, Miss Cary witnessed the feuds between the "friendlies" and "unfriendlies" (names descriptive of attitudes toward white men and government agents) and one her finest paintings is "Migration" which portrays the exodus of a band of Hopi from one village and their trek to another one. Another of her works deals strikingly with the stark realism of Hopiland. "Dry Season" pictures a group of Hopi women staying through the night, with babies, near the small water hole for the little stream to trickle water in the waiting ollas, which must then be carried up the long steep trail to the homes in the village. The work portrays the pathos and the suffering that has been centuries old and yet which has given to our continent its oldest village of continuous habitation.

The Snake Dance, which is a ceremonial prayer for rain, and by which the Hopi have become world famous, was seen many times by this woman artist and it has been recorded in her painting and photographs. She reminds us that what the white man see at the dance is only the public part of the sacred rites which are preceded by many days of secret rites in the Kiva.