ARIZONA'S CALENDARS OF OLD

Arizonas Calendars

For the traveler, Southwestern lore is as colorful as her sun-dipped desert landscapes. Indian calendars of her past were among her best kept secrets. The sun-priests of the Pueblo Indians-the Hopi of Arizona, the Zuñi and Jemez of New Mexico, or the Tewa of both-felt the calendar was too sacred for the laity's knowledge. It was, after all, the record of the sun's yearly path across the sky. Other Arizona Indians, who did not surround their calendars with taboos, still felt that they were too good to be shared with invading Europeans. Especially Pima Indians (the "No" People), of the southern border, were so distrustful of the bearded Spaniards that the Indians were given this name, "Pima." The only answers, which Spaniards received, were negative, Indian words like pimatc (I do not know, I do not understand), pia (none), etc., until they threw up their hands in despair.

Calendar, says the latest Webster's dictionary, comes from the Latin word, calendarium: "an account book." Actually, old Romans manufactured this word from the Greek language, which has no letter "c." Its Greek ancestor was the simple verb kaleo (kal-AY-o), meaning "I name" or "I call." Any Arizona traveler visiting the Hopi village of Walpi, if he has the pep to rise at dawn (not the yellow dawn of sunrise, but the chill, gray dawn of first light) can watch the Tca'akmongwi or town-crier of the Hopi Indians. Town-criers are their religious go-betweens. They daily bring the calendar, piecemeal-like, from sun-priests to the people. Ascending the roof of the tallest house at dawn, the town-crier returns the word "calendar" to its Greek simplicity: he "calls" the day.

Arizona's calendars are interwoven with her scenery. Most Indian month-names would only fit Southwestern climate. The few calendars, which began their year according to the sun's position, are called "astronomical."

Even these depended on Arizona's landscapes. The Hopi year began when the sun slipped into the crumbled notch of Eldon Mesa and set behind the San Franciscan Mountains or "Mountains of the High Snows."

The remaining Southwestern Indian calendars are called: "descriptive." Their month-names describe nature. Even when they attended "Father George Washington" schools and learned "paper-talk," as the Havasupai Indians of the Grand Canyon called "book-learning," these people willingly used our month-names of strange Roman gods-Janus, Mars, etc.-rather than reveal their own.

Among Pimas, January is called "Cottonwood Flowers." These drooping catkins appear then on gray, furrowed cottonwoods growing along river banks, long before their glossy leaves do. Their March was named for a desert shrub: "Mesquite (pronounced mes-KEET) Leaves." Perhaps Pima Indians meant this as a joke on the changeable weather too. Each spear-shaped mesquite leaf hides its thorn.

"Descriptive" calendars begin their year at harvest. Apache Tonto Indians (Fool People) begin their year then. (Spaniards called Arizona's central tribes "Tontos," because they had even less luck of getting an answer from them than from the "No" People.) Harvest makes the Navajo New Year's Day too.

November, the Navajo harvest month, is called gbaji (Back-to-Back). This odd name is explained in An Ethnographical Dictionary of the Navajo Language, which the Franciscan Fathers printed at St. Michael's, Arizona. Harvest is the time "when the white of winter meets the yellow of summer." They then turn their backs to each other, say the Navajos; winter proceeds, while summer retraces its footsteps. Understandably, only calendars from the state's northern portion mention winter or snow. Perhaps Arizona's most poetic month is January among the Tewa clans of Sichomovi village. They call it, ojip'o (Ice Moon).

of old

Indian monthly calendars were unwritten: a part of tribal lore. Some records of years, however, were pictorially made. These were painted on buffalo robes, as done by the Kiowa people of Oklahoma, or notched into wooden posts. Oldest of these Indian year-counts in North America is Wapoctanxi's notched post. This supposedly dates to 901 A.D., the mythological period of the Dakota Indians. A few more year-pictures were discovered (mostly by army officers on reservations) among the Dakotas of the West, and the Delawares and Iroquois of the East. Together with the surprising discovery of the Pima calendar-sticks in Southern Arizona, these are the only written North American Indian calendars.

The oldest notched post of the Dakotas begins peace'fully with the legend of the White Buffalo coming from heaven; but it took a true, hair-raising event to start the oldest Pima calendar-stick.

On Nov. 13, 1833, roaring green lights flashed across Arizona's night sky. The Hopi said, as they always do when meteor showers occur: "The stars are visiting each other." The Pima, however, thought it was an ill-omen. One of their Medicine men, KakU, hoped to profit by their fear. KakU climbed a cottonwood tree, shouting that he would indeed bring evil, if the Pimas did not show him more respect. Nature was in no mood for pranks; the rains came suddenly. Both the Gila and Salt Rivers flooded, swallowing lowlands in noisy gulps. Panicked Indians fled to hillside crevices.After the disaster, an unknown tribesman took a bent willow-branch, carving eight pits in a circle. These represented the fireballs from the sky. From then onward, he notched his branch yearly. His record was hastily made. This willow-branch, now in the National Museum, Washington, D.C., is not even peeled. It is, however, the oldest Indian year-count of the entire Southwest.

The late humorist, Will Cuppy, once said that after the Nile River floods subsided each year, the land ofEgypt was found to be swarming with archeologists. That line suits Arizona. A late 19th century flood was soon followed by curious members of our nation's young Bureau of American Ethnology (derived from Greek words ethnos, "nation," and logos, "word-wisdom"). Let others get dirty with pick and shovel; these men were primarily diggers of the mind. They came by train, stage-coach, and mule.

Among the Bureau's members was 22-year-old Frank Hamilton Cushing, a self-taught archeologist. He settled at Zuñi, seven miles across Arizona's border. This sympathetic scientist, the better to understand Zuñi lore, was adopted into the tribe and named "Medicine-flower." Cushing, who dwelt five years there, eventually became Zuñi Head-Priest-of-the-Bow: a position only second tothe tribal High-Priest. J. P. Harrington settled among the Tewa on the Rio Grande; Washington Matthews, an ex-army doctor, among the Navajo. Frank Russell came later to live among the Pima for a year. The James Stevensons never settled in one location; but every other year, they traveled the entire Arizona-New Mexico area collecting lore, masks, and pottery. Perhaps the most unusual member was Jesse Walter Fewkes, a young marine-biologist from Newton, Massachusetts.

THE PIMA CALENDARS 1. recounted by Antonio Azul

Mr. Fewkes, now called the "dean of American archeology," was a paradox. While still an undergraduate at Harvard, he met famed Swiss naturalist, Louis Agassiz, at the latter's summer-school on Buzzard's Bay in 1873. It began his interest in marine-life. Fewkes continued schooling at the University of Leipzig, and won soon studying fishes in Bermuda with a member of the Agassiz family. At 27, this rising young scientist was invited to California by a friend. Returning home afterwards, he passed through Arizona a trip that changed his life.

Fewkes dutifully spent the next few months looking at fishes in Paris; but his heart was in the unexplored caverns of America's Southwest. These caverns, bathed in sunlight, still remained tantalizingly silent like an unread book. When he set foot in Arizona for the third time, two years later, Fewkes was head of an archeological expedition. He learned Arizona's lore from the dust upward. For a few years, he jockied his attentions between the sea and the desert; but the desert won. His major work was among Hopi Indians, on the flat table-lands of northeastern Arizona. J. Walter Fewkes (he hated his name, Jesse) soon became the Bureau's chief. He was the first to arouse public interest in our ancient cliff-dwellings, coining the words, "Pueblo Consciousness." Mr. Fewkes' last public act (May 10, 1928) was to present a bust of Louis Agassiz to the Hall of Fame. He was then Agassiz's only living pupil.

The Fort-Knox-like repository for treasures collected by these men is on the shelves of larger public libraries. These books are the Annual Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology: a frighteningly dull title, which is perfectly unfair to their colorful contents. The early volumes, 2 to 29, are mainly Southwestern lore. In these well-illustrated pages, Mr. Fewkes was the first to write about Kachina dolls of the Hopis (vol. 21). Dr. Matthews wrote the earliest about Navajo silversmiths and weavers (vol. 2). Frank Cushing is said to have written the most beautiful prose, yet with a flare to suit the modern reader, of all American scientific authors. Cushing's treasures lie in vols. 2, 4, and 13. Among all this colorful lore are the secret calendars.

II

When Frank Russell settled at Sacaton in the heart of Pima country, November, 1901, he hired a Papago Indian, Jose Lewis, as his interpreter. Pima and Papago languages are nearly alike; Mr. Lewis had the added advantage of having spent his childhood among Pimas. Russell's big find were the calendar-sticks (five of them). No one man had found as many written Indian calendars in North America. Russell, however, was vexed. His find was quite modern. Unlike other tribes, Pimas made it a custom to bury calendar-sticks with their owners. Arizona's oldest written calendars still lie undiscovered.

There is a deep notch across each stick representing a year. The calendar-artist made pictographs between the notches. These pictographs are few and even confusing to National Museum visitors. They do not always mean the same thing. A human figure, for example, indicates a man bit by a rattlesnake, hit by lightning, or almost any human event. A keyhole-shaped hollow usually meant a skirmish between Pimas and Apaches. In 1851, neighboring Apaches raided a Papago village called Koi-tatk (mesquite root); so the calendar-artist simply drew a crude picture of this desert root. Yet, Pimas were not confused by the pictures. Russell says: "On asking the narrator to go back and repeat a story for a certain year, the writer found that he never made a mistake."

Russell added that the only calendar-stick symbol, which consistently meant the same thing, was the letter "T." Indians made "moonshine" from desert cacti: the agaves (century plants) and saguaros. Yet, this was only brewed once yearly at the June festival, which begins the Pima calendar-year. "T" meant tizwin drunks: the unlucky few, who celebrated the New Year too well. One of the big surprises awaiting Russell was the Pima name for June: harsany paihitak marsat. This means, in the order of each word, "Saguaro Harvest Moon."

Arizona's lore was roughly won. There was no Traveler's Aid, although the Bureau could have used one. These easterners found themselves in the desert without water, on treacherous passes without mules, lost on rut-worn trails without road-signs. What was worse was that no Bureau member dared stray far from his rifle.

During the early eighties, Navajos were ripe for outbreak. Across the border in Colorado, Utes were waging all-out war. All Southwestern forts were halfmanned. Even when Pima and Zui tribes aided by collecting their artifacts for the "great house" (National Museum), raiding Apaches were nearby. When James Stevenson and his artist-wife gathered the largest and most valuable collection, which the Bureau ever received, in 1879, at Zui village, Stevenson asked for help from Fort Wingate (forty-five miles away). That Fort Wingate lent wagons and men during those turmoil-times, for hauling an antique collection half-ways across the state to the railroad terminal at Las Vegas, was because Gen. Sherman (army's chief) had notified that the young Bureau was to be aided in every way.

Frank Russell gathered much lore from the late Pima chief, Antonio Azul. At bull-sessions held in the shade of the chief's home were also Mr. Lewis-the interpreter -and the chief's six-foot friend, Ka'mal tkak (Thin Leather). A much respected tribal leader, Thin Leather probably won this name in later life as a joke: a Southwestern Indian habit. His friends felt his skin must be thin, to cover such a height.

At one session, Chief Azul spoke of the unwritten calendar. He called June, "Wheat Harvest Moon." Thin Leather interrupted, saying it was "Saguaro Harvest." As the two Indians argued, Russell discovered none of their month-names agreed. Hoping for one calendar, he found two.

Since wheat came to Arizona in modern times, Thin Leather was taught the older tribal secret. This is Arizona's old calendar, which best describes her monthly scenic dress. Thin Leather's last month, April, is "Black Seeds on the Saguaro."

Only one Arizona calendar mentions wildlife: the Navajo. Their February is called "Eaglets" (atsa blyazh). Yet, probably no animal was so admired and so woven into Southwestern Indian lore, as the eagle was. This bird, with an eight-foot wingspread, never fled beforethe chase. Its feathers were wanted for its courage, as much as for decoration. Both Hopi and Tewa have masked Eagle Dances. I never shared Southwestern Indians' envy of eagles until about five years ago, when my airliner circled over Grand Canyon. In past years, I had known the usual traveler's view of Arizona's canyons, in their barren beauty, in autos or on foot; but now I received the eagle's view. Even using a little mathematics, this had to be "twice as good"; now I could see both sides of the sunlit, red-striped canyon at once, while far below the Colorado River wandered aimlessly like a rivulet of blue paint. This was the beauty that eagles knew, as they swooped down, a mile-a-minute, from the sky.

THE HANO CALENDAR THE NAVAJO CALENDAR

Unlike any other Indian month-names in North America, in the Southwest, nature competes with religious ceremonies. One name was elop'o, or "Wooden Cup Moon." Mr. Fewkes discovered this meant January at northeastern Hano village, where wooden cups made a ceremonial game then. Nearby Hopi people, like the ancient Greeks, named every month after a religious festival. The Zui people, across the state-line, call six months after colors; June is "Yellow," July is "Red," August is "Blue," etc. These were the hues of monthly pabos, prayer-sticks, carried in religious ceremonies. Festivals, which broke the year into months, were many: the cry for rain, cry to the mountain-spirits, or harvests where Tewa squaws slowly danced with pumpkins on their heads. Whatever their origin, Arizona's old calendars were born among drum-beats, dancing feet, the heartaches and laughter of a people.

III

How old are the calendars? With the exception of Navajo months, no one knows. These might be about seven centuries old. The conservative Encyclopedia Brittanica estimates Navajos migrated to Arizona from Canada before 1300 A.D. Navajo month-names, however, only fit Southwestern climate.

Since Indian languages are unwritten, calendars sometimes caused tribal feuds. The classic Navajo argument is whether the merry month of May is called datso (Tall Corn) or t'atso (Large Feathers of Eaglets). Their April is in the same fix. Should it begin with letters "d" or "t"? Language experts tell us that the only difference between these letters is inhaling or exhaling the breath. Perhaps the tribal-lore instructor sneezed or yawned, while teaching squatting Navajo children.

Indian speech bewildered the young Bureau. Especially in Southwestern states, it is not quite equal to the English alphabet. The Bureau solved this knotty problem with a flare, that still amazes and befuddles searchers into Indian lore. Indian languages were given more vowel-accents than French, and more "interruptions"-as the schoolboy called apostrophes-than Greek: the two most cluttered European languages. This was not enough. They next borrowed letters from foreign alphabets, or invented their own.

J. P. Harrington was especially good at inventions. There was the letter "c," which he wrote above the line, in tsakc'a (Baby Antelope Month). This meant May to the Jemez tribe in northern New Mexico. Perhaps the height of this linguistic madness came, when Frank Rus-sell insisted that "1," in the Pima month of June, be printed up-side-down. It is true that their letter is softer than that found in King's English. Mr. Russell won, in spite of the nightmares that the government's printer probably had.

Not even an expert, however, could pronounce most of these new words. Unlike the Franciscan Fathers, who did careful work on Navajo words to guide the traveler in Navajoland, the Bureau members often forgot to mark which syllable should be stressed.

It is an old Spanish proverb that Spanish is the language for lovers, Italian for singers, French for diplomats, German for horses, and English for geese.

English is a harsh language; it probably does sound to a stranger as if the Englishman is just "honking." Although there are soft sounds among the Indians, like the Mohave of the Painted Desert who roll their "r's" like the French, Southwestern Indian speech is for tonguetwisters. They delight in combinations, like "tk" or "ts," called "fricatives" because of the friction. To the traveler, pronouncing them does seem as if his tongue has declared war on his teeth.

Speech of Navajos and Apaches, the northern immigrants, is probably best mimicked while chewing corn or maize instead. Especially Navajo talk seems a lot of gulping to a stranger's ear. (Try saying nt'ae, "it is," before the list of Navajo months.) Advising the traveler to chew maize will at least give him one true Southwestern flavor, however, even if it does not improve his speech. Nearly all Arizona's scenic calendars name one month after corn.

Months were rarely fixed by the moon's journey in the Southwest. There is even a Pima legend that the year was divided into twelve parts because of a bird. Says the legend: "When Elder Brother (their god) was leaving Pimeria for the last time, he told the people to count the tail-feathers of the little bird, Gisap. and divide the year into that number of parts." Frank Russell believed that the word "moon" in Pima month-names was an afterthought of recent times. The Hopi, who were better observers of the moon than the rest, divided the year into thirteen months; because there are thirteen "New Moons" in a year. Even to the Hopi, however, the ceremony of "calling back the sun" from its southernmost point at winter solstice was considered so important, that it began the Hopi year. Grace at Hopi meals meant flipping a speck of food heavenward and saying: "Sun (Tawa), we give this to you." It was the sun, both loved and feared because it could sere crops, that alone was Arizona's great time-indicator.

The Bureau discovered at Hano village, that the people so disregarded the moon that no name was given to the summer months. When the Indians learned that other tribes had twelve names, they hastily told Bureau members that they repeated winter month-names in summer. These names obviously did not fit. "Cactus Flower Moon" their March-was now supposed to be August too, although the desert no longer bloomed.

The Hualapai (Tall Pine People) and their cousins, the Havasupai (Blue Water People), thought so little of night and moonlight, that they count by days and call each day, "a sun." Both Havasupai, who believed the sun was their ancestor, and Hopi, make a rite each morning of greeting the sun.

The Navajo do not hold the sun in such awe, because they believe they created it by setting a huge turquoise stone afire. (A humorous legend follows that the new sun could not be lifted into the sky, because it was too hot. An old man saved the day, by suggesting to raise the sun on sunbeams. He levered the sunbeams against the rainbow.) Yet one of the greatest festivals of the Navajos, the largest tribe north of Mexico, is the Fire Dance.

It is the sun-which baked Arizona's landscapes into beauty for the traveler, which made heaven's light and warmth-that made its diary, the calendar, regarded with superstitious awe both here and among the Aztecs of Mexico.

Esteem for the order which the calendar gave was felt as far away as China, where two astronomers had invented it during the reign of Emperor Yaou (about 2200 B.C.). Kung-fu-tze, or Confucius (that often misquoted man), said of this event: "Heaven alone is great but Yaou has imitated heaven." Arizona's Indians knew what he meant. Under Arizona's closer sun, the traveler knows too.

REFERENCE

Alexander, Hartley Burr. Myths of All Races, vol. 10 (North American), pp. 127-8, 166-8, 176, 179, 195. Marshall Jones Co. Boston, 1916.

Annual Reports of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Government Printing Office. Washington, D.C.

Fewkes, J. Walter. "Tusayan Migration Traditions" Vol. 19: Part II. p. 631. 1897.

Harrinton, J. P. "Ethnography of the Tewa Indians" Vol. 29: 45, 62-6.

3. Mooney, James. "The Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians" Vol. 17: Part I. pp. 141-3. 1895-6.

4. Russell, Frank. "The Pima Indians" Vol. 26. pp. 17-9, 35-9, 41, 54, 45, 60, 63, 65, 104, 270, 302. 1905-6.

5. Stevenson, Mathilde. "The Zuni Indians" Vol. 23: 16-8.

Encyclopedia Brittanica Vol. XII: 204. 1957 edition.

Franciscan Fathers. An Ethnographical Dictionary of the Navajo Language, pp. 37-9, 58-9. St. Michael's, Arizona. 1910.

Nilsson, Martin P. Primitive Time Reckoning pp. 195, 197, 345. University of Lund. C. W. K. Gleerup. Lund, Berlingska Boktryckereit, Sweden. 1920.

Nuttall, Zelia. "The Fundamental Principals of Old World Calendars" Peabody Museum Papers in Archeology and Ethnology Vol. 2: 205, 289. Harvard University. Cambridge, Mass. 1901.

Pritchett, W. Kendrick. and Neugebauer, O. The Calendars of Athens, pp. 4-5. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Mass. 1947.

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Fewkes, J. Walter. "Ancestor Worship of the Hopi Indians" pp. 491. 1921.

2. Fewkes, J. Walter. "Hopi Katcina Altars" p. 480. 1926.

3. Fewkes, J. Walter, "Sun Worship of the Hopi Indians" pp. 495-7 and 486, 1918.

4. Swanton, John and Roberts, F. H. H. Jr. "Jesse Walter Fewkes" pp. 609-10, 615-6. 1930.

University of California Publications in Archeology and Ethnology. University of California Press. Berkeley, Calif.

1. Cope, Leona. "Calendars of the Indians North of Mexico" Vol. 16: 128-9, 125, 139-42, 152, 158-9. 1919-20.

2. Dolores, Juan. "Papago Nominal Stems" Vol. 20: 25-7. 1923.

3. Dolores, Juan. "Papago Verb Stems" Vol. 10:241, 253, 255. 1911-14.

4. Kroeber, A. L. "Phonetic Elements of the Mohave Language Vol. 10: 56, 59. 1911-14.

"Whom Languages Are For." "Long Beach Independent" p. 18. Long Beach, California. Aug. 5, 1955.