The Indians of the Painted Desert Region: Hopis, Navahoes, Wallapais, Havasupais — John Shaqi
The Indians of the Painted Desert Region: Hopis, Navahoes, Wallapais, HavasupaisJames, George Wharton
Religion
The Indians of the Painted Desert Region: Hopis, Navahoes, Wallapais, Havasupais
James, George Wharton
Indians of North America -- Southwest, New
The Hopi is quite a traveller. Though fond of home, I have met members
of the tribe in varied quarters of the Painted Desert Region. They
get a birch bark from the Verdi Valley with which they make the dye
for their moccasins. A yellowish brown color, called _pavissa_, is
obtained from a point near the junction of the Little Colorado and
Marble Canyon. Here they obtain salt, and at the bottom of the salt
springs, where the waters bubble up in pools, this _pavissa_ settles.
Bahos, or prayer sticks, are always deposited at the time of obtaining
this ochre, as it is to be used in the painting of the face of the
bahos used in most sacred ceremonies. The so-called Moki trail is
evidence of the long association between the Hopis and the Havasupais
in Havasu (Cataract) Canyon, and I have often met them there trading
blankets, horses, etc., for buckskin and the finely woven wicker
bowl-baskets--kü-üs--of the Havasupais, which are much prized by the
Hopis.
Occasionally he reaches as far northeast as Lee's Ferry and even
crosses into southern Utah, and at Zuni to the southeast he is ever
a welcome visitor. The Apaches in the White Mountains tell that on
occasions the Hopis will visit them, and when visiting the Yumas in
1902 they informed me that long ago the Snake Dancing Mokis were their
friends, and sometimes came to see them.
Dr. Walter Hough has written a most interesting paper on "Environmental
Interrelations in Arizona," in which are many items about the Hopis. He
says they brought from their priscan home corn, beans, melons, squash,
cotton, and some garden plants, and that they have since acquired
peaches, apricots, and wheat, and among other plants which they
infrequently cultivate may be named onions, chili, sunflowers, sorghum,
tomatoes, potatoes, grapes, pumpkins, garlic, coxcomb, coriander,
saffron, tobacco, and nectarines. They are great beggars for seeds and
will try any kind that may be given to them.
Owing to their dependence upon wild grasses for food when their corn
crops used to fail,--that is, in the days before a paternal government
helped them out at such times,--every Hopi child was a trained botanist
from his earliest years; not trained from our standpoint, but from
theirs. We should say much of his knowledge was unscientific, and it
goes far beyond the use of grasses and plants as food. Dr. Hough in
his paper gives a number of examples of the uses to which the various
seeds, etc., are put. The botanist as well as the ethnologist will find
this a most comprehensive and useful list. For food forty-seven seeds,
berries, stems, leaves, or roots are eaten. The seeds of a species of
sporobolus are ground with corn to make a kind of cake, which the Hopis
greatly enjoy. The leaves of a number are cooked and eaten as greens.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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