The rocks all over the Southwest bear witness that the Hopi can draw.
In thousands of instances he expressed his meaning in symbols or in
compositions representing the chase of the deer or mountain goat. One
of these groups on the smooth rocks near Holbrook, Arizona, shows a
man driving a flock of turkeys, and is exceedingly graphic. On the
cliff faces below Walpi are numerous well-executed pictographs, and
occasionally one runs across recent work on the mesa top that excites
admiration. With sculpture in the round the Hopi has done nothing
remarkable because his tastes and materials have never led in this
direction. A few rather large figures rudely carved from soft
sandstone may be seen around the pueblos, and numerous fetiches, some
of very hard stone, representing wolves, bears, and other animals, are
still in the keeping of the societies. Some of these are very well
done, but show little progress in sculpture. The visitor must beware
of the little fetiches whittled from soft stone and offered for sale
as genuine by the guileful Hopi in quest of _shiba_.
The industry which the Hopi woman has all in her own hands is
basket-making, and the work is apportioned to such as have the skill
and fancy for it, as if there were a division of labor. The women of
the three towns on the East Mesa do not make baskets at all, those of
the Middle Mesa sew only coiled baskets, while the women of Oraibi
weave wicker baskets exclusively. Thus, there is no difficulty in
saying just where a Hopi basket comes from, and there is also no
excuse for not recognizing these specimens of Hopi woman's work at
first glance, as they have a strong individuality that separates them
from all other baskets of the Indians.
If one should visit the most skilful basket-maker of the Middle Mesa,
Kuchyeampsi, that modest little woman, might be seen busily at work,
and from her a great deal about the construction of coiled baskets
could be learned. But it would take some time and patience to find
that the grass whose stems she gathers for the body of the coil is
named _takashu_, which botanists know as _Hilaria jamesii_, and that
the strips which she sews over and joins the coil are from the leaves
of the useful _mohu_ (_Yucca glauca_).
Then when Kuchyeampsi comes home laden with her basket materials one
must take further lessons in stripping the yucca leaves, splitting
them with the thumb-nail to uniform size, and dyeing some of them
various colors, for which anilines are principally used in these
degenerate days. One must have an eye for the colors of the natural
leaves of the yucca and select the yellow or yellowish green of the
old leaves, the vivid green of the young leaves, and the white of the
heart leaves, for the basket weaver discriminates all of these and
uses them in her work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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