Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/129

CHAPTER 6. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—THE HOPI 116 Eric Gill and Frank Lloyd Wright would have squirmed also at this monstrosity. If they had to have a church couldn't they have painted it brown?

Chester was working a few miles away in his cornfield, but another Hopi Conscientious Objector friend welcomed us. He had gone to college and on coming home was given the best paid job an Indian could get in the office of the agent, at nearby Keams Canyon. It took him several years to see that the inefficiency, graft, and favoritism to Indians who would blindly follow the whims of the officials was undermining the old Hopi responsibility and character. When the war came he did not register, and was let out of employment. After several visits by the FBI and other officials he finally got a year in Tucson road camp, and later a three year sentence for his second refusal to register. The constitution says that a person cannot be twice put in jeopardy of life and limb for the same offence, but the constitution means nothing to war mongers.

Upon his release he studied the Hopi traditions given by Dan of the Sun Clan of Hotevilla, Adviser and spiritual leader of the real Hopi. Now he is the interpreter of the traditions of the Hopi—of those who do not take old age pensions or assume the rice-Christian status based on gifts from the whites.

Massau'u, the Hopi name for God who rules the Universe, permitted two men to come to this world from the Underground where they had lived previously. Each was given a stone map upon which were inscriptions. This stone is at Hotevilla under the care of the chief of the Spirit Clan. God first made the sun which gives light and warmth to all living things; then the moon which is covered with a deer skin and gives a dimmer light; then the stars; and lastly the great Bird or Eagle which scours the sky awaiting the devouring of the refuse and offal of the earth.

Among the Hopi the wicked or evil one is said to have two-hearts. We might say a split personality. Symbolically speaking the hard hearts of mankind through the ages piled up and piled up until they formed great glaciers. Likewise the white man, hopping around after money, produces the great hordes of grasshoppers which did not exist before the white man came. The Hopi, like Atlas, hold the world upon their shoulders. Every good deed makes for harmony of nature, not only on this earth but in the universe. Every bad deed makes for storms, drought, earthquakes, wars and misery. Prayers accompanied by eagle feathers and proceeding from one who is not a two-heart can overcome evil. As with Gandhi, all true deeds make towards a build-up that is invincible. In fact one good Hopi can save a pueblo from destruction, which the Hopi have predicted from old time will soon come. The prediction reads that the purification of the world by fire and the destruction of evil-two-hearts will be accomplished by white brothers coming from across the water in what we would call World War III. Somewhere in this turmoil the White Brother who has the replica of the Sacred Stone will appear with it, and when the two are compared and found the same, then peace and brotherhood will begin and a New world with no armies, prisons, government, courts, or Indian Bureaus will cover the earth.

When a bad Hopi dies (and God is judge of what is good or bad—not the Indian Bureau) he still has the feelings of his old time body and its personality, but he cannot be seen by others. From the place where he is buried he can take