Men, Myths, and Rituals

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS SEPTEMBER 1979 VOL. 55, NO. 9

Marvin Beck, Director of Publications Wesley Holden, Acting Editor Richard G. Stahl, Assistant Editor Gary Bennett, Art Director Gayle Kitchel Kiviat, Associate Art Director Shirley Mummaw, Circulation Manager Bruce Babbitt, Governor of Arizona

Arizona Department of Transportation

William A. Ordway, Director Oscar T. Lyon, Jr., State Engineer Board Members Armand P. Ortega, Chairman, Sanders Ralph A. Watkins, Jr., Vice Chairman Wickenburg Robert M. Bracker, Member, Nogales E.J. "Charlie" McCarthy, Member, Kingman John W. McLaughlin, Member, Morenci Robert R. Evans, Member, Mesa Lawrence M. Hecker, Member, Tucson Arizona Highways Publication No. (ISSN 00041521) is published monthly by the Arizona Department of Transportation. Address: Arizona Highways, 2039 W. Lewis Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85009. $10.00 per year in U.S. and possessions; $12.00 elsewhere; single copies $1.50 each. Second Class Postage paid at Phoenix, Arizona, under Act of March 3. 1879. Copyright 1979 by the Arizona Department of Transportation. Arizona Highways is printed by W. A. Krueger Co., Phoenix, Arizona. Prices subject to change without notice. Allow six weeks for a change of address. Send in the old as well as the new address including ZIP code. Telephone (602) 258-6641. The editors will not be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, artwork, or other materials sent for editorial consideration.

In This Issue Men, Myths, and Rituals The ceremonial year of the Hopi by Jo Mora, as he lived it, photographed it and painted it at the turn of the century.

Those Dam People Isolated and loving it, the keepers of the dams find happiness on the edge of civilization.

Ray Manley Country A special full-color portfolio of some of Manley's best Arizona photography.

Lovely Lady of the Catalinas The "Lemmon" offers a variety of high-country adventures almost in the heart of Tucson.

Arizona's Impossible Railroad The rough and ready history of early-day railroading in the wilderness of the Bradshaw Mountains.

Havasu Falls, Havasu Canyon, on the Havasupai Reservation. Photographing the varied beauties of Arizona has been Ray Manley's consuming passion since his first pictures appeared in Arizona Highways some 40 years ago. This month we present a portfolio of some of his best work. It begins on page 18.

(Inside front cover) The flowers of autumn. We celebrate the wonderful seasons of the year this month with a special color tour to the tall pine heights of Mount Lemmon in Tucson's famed Santa Catalina Mountains. See Lovely Lady of the Catalinas, beginning on page 30. Bill Daniels

Indomitable Spirits in an Uncompromising Land From the Editors:

In 1882, Dr. J. G. Lemmon and his new bride, Sara, came to Tucson to study the flora on the Santa Catalina Mountains. After two unsuccessful attempts to scale the rugged south slopes, they conquered the remote north side on horseback. Sara was the first white woman to reach the summit of the peak that bears her name.

In the early 1890s a man named Frank Murphy came to Prescott with a crazy idea about building a railroad to the top of the gold-and-silver-rich Bradshaw Mountains. "Impossible!" the people all agreed. But Murphy was strong-minded, resourceful and very resolute.

In 1904, a gifted young artist named Jo Mora came to the Hopi mesas of northern Arizona from California. He had traveled by wagon, horseback and on foot to spend a few days watching the Hopi Snake Dance ceremonies. So captivated was he that he spent three years there and became one of the most important early chroniclers of Hopi ceremonies and traditional dance costumes.

On March 18, 1911, Theodore Roosevelt dedicated the dam that bears his name. It was the first of a number of such works that today comprise the Salt River Project. Long since completed, they are now staffed by a small but unique group of individuals who single-handedly take care of everything from flood gates and generator turbines to maintenance and record books. They've often been called "loners" because they live in remote wilderness areas. But more apt would be self-reliant and self-sufficient.

In 1939, a young man named Ray Manley invested $10 on 10 sheets of film in hope of capturing some nature photographs worth printing in a fledgling state magazine called Arizona Highways. He succeeded. And today, 40 years later, he is recognized as one of the premier scenic photographers in the world.

There is a common thread that runs through all of these people. They have an indomitable Pioneering Spirit. And the uncompromising land in which this kind of person flourishes, even today, is called the American Frontier. You'll meet them all in this issue.

by Maggie Wilson Following the last dance, in the slant-ing rays of the setting sun, the kiva chief delivered his farewell to the kachinas.

"It's time for you to go home now, taking with you our humble prayer, not only for our people and people every-where, but for all the animals, birds and insects and all the growing things. Take our message to four directions that all life may receive renewal by having moisture. May you go your way with happy hearts and sunny thoughts."

First there is the long expectant wait in the warmth of the early sun and dry swirling dust of a Hopi village plaza packed with restive adults, jubilant chil-dren and barking dogs. There is a hush as Hopis and non-Indian spectators, crowd around the four sides of the plaza and on the flat-topped roofs surround-ing it.

Listen! You can hear the first signal-ing sounds. Off somewhere a deer hoof clanks against a tortoise shell, bells jingle, and a gourd rattle makes its peculiar rolling surf sound. Then the clanks, jingles and sighs become louder and louder still.

"They're coming," cries a little Hopi boy. "The kachinas are coming."

They are a visual shock. Awesome! Dramatic! Wondrous! Other-worldly, as Hopi spirits in masked human flesh always seem to be. Like apparitions, they evoke a time and place beyond primal knowledge, beyond collective memory. Creatures from a world only dimly imagined, never conjured, who have been transported to this high sun-drenched mesa in a plaza choked with red and white humanity, gaping at the unreal reality of it all.

These creatures wear buckskin case masks painted green and pink surmounted by elaborate terraced tabletas painted with phallic and cloud symbols and topped with heads of ripened wheat and eagle feathers. Around their necks are ruffs of spruce. Their upper torsos are painted with black corn smut overlaid with a design in white clay which forms the two crescents of the nakwach symbol of brotherhood; their lower torsos are wrapped in the traditional Hopi dance kilt, sashed with an embroidered belt from the back of which a red fox skin dangles. They are the Hemis kachinas.

With them are a group of kachina-manas, representing female figures. They wear wigs done up in traditional Hopi maiden whorls, half-masks of orange and dangling feather beards, one-shoulder dresses, maiden shawls and white boots.

They are paying their last visit to the village on this early July day before they return to their homes on the San Francisco Peaks. There they will turn back the sun to winter and rest for six months before coming back once again during the winter solstice to help the villagers “keep things right in the Hopi way.”

The Heheya Aumutaka or Tu-uqti dances in front of a line of green-faced Kuwan Heheya. Just behind the Heheya figure kneels an Alo Manas holding a notched stick which rests on a resonator (gourd). This device is scraped with an animal shoulder blade to produce musical accompaniment. The event takes place during the summer solstice at the Niman or the Kachina Going Home ceremony. This particular ceremony is called Niman or, more simply the Going Home Dance. It is a farewell of exotic, esoteric pageantry. Like all Hopi ceremonials this one, too, is shrouded in mysticism and symbolism, most of which is discerned only vaguely by non-Hopi spectators.

But never mind. It is enough to understand that this ceremony is structured to maintain the harmony of the universe and includes prayers for all the Creator's creatures. All else even the constant, ritualistic plea for rain is subordinate. The ultimate meanings of all the ceremonies of the Hopi year are rooted in the premise that the unfathomed universe within each individual is inevitably intertwined with the limitless universe of eternity.

Now the kachinas have formed their dance line. The steady rhythm of handheld gourd rattles, the bells on the leglets and the tortoise shell clankers attached to each dancer's right knee blend with their joyful deep-throated opening song and their intricate choreography. The kachina-manas, kneeling over pumpkin shells placed on the ground as resonators, keep the rhythm by scraping deer bone over a notched stick.

How strangely unsettling the dancing kachinas are in the dust and heat. How mesmerizing their sound and motion. Is it a form of hypnosis or hallucination that makes one feel he's come home again? Home to the enchanted mesa? To the center of his own psychic creatureliness? To the womb of the world? It is a prayer that purges like a confessional; it is a plea on behalf of all men of good will; it is hope, dream,vision; it is love, truth, beauty; it is a moment to cherish and to revisit in memory long after the rattles are stilled and one is far away from the pink and gold mesas of Hopiland. Perhaps it is also a holy communion with the Creator of all things visible and invisible. Or is it all a universal yearning, individually experienced, to achieve the harmony of word and deed, song and movement, that the dancing kachinas are demonstrating?

vision; it is love, truth, beauty; it is a moment to cherish and to revisit in memory long after the rattles are stilled and one is far away from the pink and gold mesas of Hopiland. Perhaps it is also a holy communion with the Creator of all things visible and invisible. Or is it all a universal yearning, individually experienced, to achieve the harmony of word and deed, song and movement, that the dancing kachinas are demonstrating?

Whatever it is, for red man or white, it never fails to give a tugging wrenchon the heartstring that is attached to man's highest inspiration and aspiration.

Artist-photographer Joseph Jacinto Mora experienced the same awe and wonderment when he saw the kachinas dance 75 years ago in the First Mesa village of Walpi.

village of Walpi.

In a letter to his parents dated December 3, 1904, he wrote about what he had seen and how it affected him.

"There goes the Indian drum! You hustle along, dodge under a couple of covered alleys and there, coming out of some kiva, is the most fantastic, weird, kaleidoscopic procession you ever saw, and as the very earth seems to vomit these beings of another sphere, you wonder if you are really in the U.S.A. 20th century!

"... the costumes are absolutely grand! Big masks and headdresses, multicolored and gorgeous in feathers, evergreen and yarns. I can't commence to describe for there are so many, all with their significant symbolism and perfectly weird. The bodies of the men, the nude torsos painted in all different colors, the necks encircled with strings of coral beads, of wampum of sky blue turquoise and silver necklaces of Navajo make. Then colored bracelets and pendant eagle feathers and rattles. Girdles of Hopi make in brightest colors and beautiful clouts of a similar kind tasseled and fringed. Naked painted legs, with ornaments of all kinds but I can't commence to describe it's most bewildering!"

Mora, born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1876, came to the states and became an artist and photographer for Boston newspapers before heading west to find "an artist's paradise" among the Hopi, a people so paintable and so picturesque that his three-week stay among them stretched into three years.

With artist friend E. A. Burbank he began to "really see and understand" Hopi religious life and the rich rubric of the tribe's year-round ceremonialism.

A non-violent people, the existence of the Hopi has depended upon skillful agricultural methods developed through hundreds, maybe thousands of years.

(Above) Mora's photo of the old Hopi citadel of Walpi, high on First Mesa. In a letter to his parents, he wrote: "Here are little cozy alleyways and covered passes where you have to 'duck' your head to pass. Nooks and crannies of the very oddestwhere the all pervading burro and the ubiquitous dog reign supreme."

(Right) In this Mora photo, a woman douses a group of Wuwuchim men with 'foul water' during a tribal initiation ceremony held in November. More in the order of mystery plays, the theatrical song-dance pageants of the Hopi are religious experiences that almost transcend reality.

(Left) Heu-Mish katchina-mana. Mana means maid, but men only impersonate a masked kachina, whether it be male or female. In the larger dances these manas perform the music, using a notched stick which is scraped over a hollow gourd.