Sun in the Sky

This feature with illustrations is a chapter from the book, "Sun in the Sky," by Walter Collins O'Kane, published by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, and is the thirtieth in the Civilization of American Indians Series. It sells for $4.00. Dr. O'Kane, who has been with the University of New Hampshire Department of Entomology and the New Hampshire Department of Agriculture for the past forty years, is one of America's outstanding entomologists. For over ten years he has been visiting the Hopi people and has come to know them as well as any outsider can. His book is a remarkable study of a remarkable people, done with sympathy, respect and deep admiration.

One shining September morning two of us started north from Winslow by automobile, bound for the heart of the Hopi Reservation, eighty miles away. The desert road was good. The ascents and descents, which can be slippery, were dry. The sand was well packed. The crossing of a wash, where sometimes chocolate water comes roaring down, was like a smooth roadbed neatly paved with rounded stones. In three hours, including a stop at a trading post, we had arrived at our destination.

Ten days later we again set out from Winslow over the same road. A noisy desert thunderstorm had swept that part of the country the night before. One after another the level stretches, where the road had cut into the desert floor, were long and narrow lakes, of indeterminate depth and probable muddy bottom. The only way to get past these was to detour through creosote bush and rabbit brush. The ascents and descents were moist and greasy, demanding cautious driving. The wash that was paved with waterworn stones could not be approached at the usual place because the banks had been cut by the flood. A detour was necessary. We made our destination, but it took time and manipulation.

Yet these uncertainties are one of the potent reasons why the Hopi country and its people have remained unchanged and unspoiled-these and the further fact that there is no tourist center anywhere in the reservation, nor is there any restaurant as we would define the term. Isolation has meant preservation of customs and values that might otherwise have been lost, and has helped to keep the racial stock pure.

The Hopi Reservation, established by executive order in 1882, is a rectangular area extending about fifty-seven miles from east to west and about sixty-eight miles from north to south. Its southern boundary is thirty-five miles north of Winslow, Arizona. It is completely surrounded by the vast Navajo Reservation.

Within the Hopi Reservation a smaller area was designated in 1934 as a Hopi grazing unit, or "use area." This is often-but incorrectly-referred to today as if it were the reservation. The official Hopi Reservation is still the rectangle of 1882, although the use of much of it has been lost to the Navajos.

The reservation lies in the high-altitude region of northern Arizona, where the height above sea level varies from 5,000 to 7,000 feet. In every way-in climate, vegetation, and topography-this country is different from southern Arizona. The land which the reservation occupies is tilted up from south to north. The southern part drops down toward the Little Colorado, which drains the entire area. The northern part is flung across the shoulders of Black Mesa, 2,000 feet higher.

The surface of the country is deeply carved. In the southern part, black buttes rise from the broad and often sandy plains. In the northern part the elevated tableland of Black Mesa, with its dark growth of piñons and cedars, has been gouged out here and there to a distance of many miles, leaving long, irregular, knobby fingers reaching out toward the south. On these fingers or near their ends lie eleven of the Hopi villages. The twelfth, Moenkopi, is situated outside the reservation, forty miles to the west.

The villages are not conspicuous from a distance. The houses, mostly one-story, are of stone and are much the same color as their surroundings because the stone came from not far away. They are well built, for Hopi men come from a line of ancestors who have been using native stone for their housebuilding for a thousand years.

Nine of the Hopi villages are situated on top of the mesa, out near the tips of the fingers. From the valley, six hundred feet below, it is not easy to distinguish these villages unless you know what to look for and where to look. Fronting you, rises the escarpment of the mesa-with talus and larger rock fragments at the bottom, then a perceptible shelf where the strata change, and above that a vertical rock wall, ending in a sharp line where the level top of the mesa begins. The buildings that are visible blend with the rock structure.

In the broad valleys, called washes, that separate the mesa fingers, lie most of the Hopi agricultural lands and orchards. The fields and gardens, like the villages, have a way of being inconspicuous. They give little indication of their productiveness. An editor of a Western magazine who had driven through this country wrote pityingly of the Hopi people and their "struggle to wrest a meagre living from the reluctant land." He was sincere, but he did not realize that these areas, skillfully farmed as they are, really are productive. They do not look like farm lands elsewhere. By comparison they are unimpressive. But the widely spaced hills of corn, with plants no more than three feet tall, bear big ears and many of them. The beans and melons and peppers yield real harvests. Thepeach and apricot trees bear excellent fruit.

First Mesa Second Mesa Third Mesa

Most Hopi crops are raised on land which cannot be irrigated. Many of their crops depend on the rain.

A Hopi woman of seventy, a gentle and valued friend, slipped out to my waiting car one day in my absence and left on the seat an ear of corn. "That's for him to show his folks," she explained to my companion. It was corn of the quality and size the Hopis commonly raise. I still have that ear. It measures twelve inches in length and seven inches in circumference. There are sixteen rows of deep, heavy kernels, and more than fifty kernels to the row.

In crops and food supplies, in roads and transportation, the sun in the sky is paramount in Hopi life. Equally it plays a leading part in their ceremonies and mythology. Its rising and setting, its seasonal advance and retreat, are both vital and symbolic.

Each day, in the clear air of this high country, the unhampered sun pours its warmth on the land. Each night the earth loses that warmth to the starry spaces of the sky. In a larger way, the procession of the seasons brings the same sharply accented change. There is none of the soft shading that prevails in regions of moist air. In November and December as the sun sinks lower, the temperatures, day and night, drop steadily. Even in November the nights and early mornings can be sharply cold. Hopi ceremonies celebrate the advent of the period when the sun makes ready to swing back toward the north and toward warmer and more fruitful days.

In midwinter the temperature drops to zero and below, significant of the high altitude. In midwinter, also, come snowstorms. About half of the precipitation that falls on this country comes as snow.

In March the winds begin, and sometimes sandstorms. The wind seldom brings rain, for in the period March to June the skies give up little moisture. But windstorms often sweep across the country in persistent violence. This is the period when crops are started. The Hopi farmer meets this issue by setting up windbreaks to protect the plantslines of brush stuck in the ground, or bits of wood, or stones, or tin cans, close to the plants.

Some time in early July, big clouds begin to pile up in the sky and the period of thunderstorms and cloudbursts arrives. This continues through July and August. The storms do not come every day, but they threaten.

Though Hopi corn grows only four or five feet tall it bears many large ears. The Hopis are practical and versatile farmers.

In August, also, comes the anxious period when the clouds and thunder, in spite of their threatening, may not bring rain to the right places. So, in August, two impressive Hopi ceremonies take place which are prayers for rain as well as for a bountiful harvest.

By September the thunderstorms are pretty well over, and another period of little rainfall begins, extending usually through October and November. This is the glorious time of year for travel in the Hopi country-clear days, warm sunshine, cool nights, and as a rule roads that are now well repaired and settled.

The principal roads into the reservation approach from the south, from Highway 66 and the route of the Santa Fe Railroad. One of these starts at Holbrook and runs north to Keams Canyon, where the Reservation Agency has its headquarters. There it turns and runs west through the Hopi villages. A second leads north from a point just east of Winslow and comes out near the eastern group of villages. A third, also starting at Winslow, runs first west, and then north to the western part of the reservation. A fourth begins at Flagstaff, proceeds east, and joins the one just mentioned near the Indian school at Leupp. In addition, the Hopi country can be reached from the east by a road from Gallup to Keams Canyon, and from the west by a route diverging from the Phoenix-Salt Lake highway. All of these roads, of course, pass through parts of the Navajo Reservation.

Each of the the approaches to the reservation leads through vast areas of scanty vegetation. Some of these, covered with shifting sand or denuded by destructive erosion, are completely barren or nearly so. Others belie their appearance and really bear useful vegetation, although it is sparse.

Whatever the route of approach, an east-west road that zigzags through the reservation gives access to the Hopi villages.

The villages high up on the mesa are not easily discerned

This is a street scene in the village of Shungopavi, which is one of twelve Hopi villages. Houses are made of native rock.

from the valley, although the airline distance to them is not great. It is hard to realize that there are three separate communities up there, Walpi to the left at the tip of the long ridge, then Sichomovi after a gap of a few yards, and then Hano. The long rocky finger on which they are situated is called First Mesa to distinguish it from two more fingers to the west.

A road, which looks strenuous but is safe, starts back of the trading post and climbs diagonally to the top of the mesa, coming out in the midst of the houses that crowd its restricted area. A car can easily reach Hano and Sichomovi. But visitors should not drive across the narrow neck of bare rock which connects this part with Walpi. Turning around on the other side would be too difficult.

Walpi has occupied its present site for about two hundred and fifty years. Sichomovi is newer, dating back to about 1750, when apparently some of the inhabitants of Walpi felt crowded and moved across the short gap to unoccupied space.

Hano is a sort of alien, although it has been a part of the trilogy long enough to be naturalized. Even so, its inhabitants still speak a language different from Hopi. It was settled about 1720 by a group of Tewa Indians who emigrated from their ancestral home in the valley of the Río Grande, fourteen miles northwest of Santa Fé.

Beyond First Mesa the highway crosses a broad flat area, where Wepo Wash sweeps down toward the southwest. It then ascends the flank of Second Mesa, following a route cut out of the escarpment walls.

After it has attained the level top, a branch leads to Shungopavi. This is an attractive town with white houses built on a smooth rock surface that is almost white. The mesa top here is broad and ample, with plenty of room.

The remaining two villages on Second Mesa-Shipaulovi and Mishongnovi-lie to the northeast, on the skyline of a long finger extending from the main part of Second Mesa. Shipaulovi is to the left and Mishongnovi to the right. A good road leads to the bench below the two villages. Branch roads lead up from the bench to the villages themselves.

Proceeding west, the highway descends from Second Mesa and crosses the broad valley called Oraibi Wash. On the farther side a branch road leads into the village of Kiakochomovi, often called New Oraibi. Near by is the Hopi High School with its modern stone buildings. Kiakochomovi is an offshoot of Old Oraibi, which is on top of the nearby mesa. As with Polacca, some of its houses seem placed helter-skelter in the midst of short, sandy streets that find their own way to their own destination.

Formerly the route to Old Oraibi was a narrow road that made the climb by clinging to a rock knob and then crossing rough sloping ledges. The old route is still in existence. But automobiles now use a new and well-built road, which climbs by way of a near-by outthrusting prominence. From the summit, a branch leads off to Old Oraibi.

The fact seems to be well authenticated that Old Oraibi dates back further than any other community on our continent. It was in existence, on its present site, long before any other settlement now extant, and it has been continuously occupied ever since it was founded. Just how far back its history goes no one can say, but at least to A.D. 1150.

Across Third Mesa, beyond Old Oraibi, the highway skirts a vast gulf, twists and climbs to a higher level, and presently reaches another branch, which leads to Bakabi. This is the newest of all the villages, dating back only forty years. It looks its newness, for many of its houses are shining white. Its people were a part of the large group that split off from Oraibi when Hotevilla was founded.

A short distance beyond the branch to Bakabi, the main road passes through Hotevilla. Compared to Bakabi, the village seems overrun with sand. There are large dunes hereabout, important in collecting and conserving moisture. Like Bakabi, Hotevilla possesses a big spring, just below the margin of the mesa. As with Bakabi, a whole series of terraced gardens are watered and made fruitful by the carefully diverted overflow from the spring.

At the edge of Hotevilla the highway dives off the mesa and descends to a broad plain that stretches to the northwest and west. Forty miles farther along it reaches the remaining Hopi village, Moenkopi. There are really two villages here, the upper and the lower. The upper is newer and its houses are modern in character. The lower dates back about eighty years, and many of its houses are built wall to wall. Its streets are narrow. Moenkopi is the only Hopi village that possesses irrigated fields. These are the twelve Hopi villages.