Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/130

CHAPTER 6. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—THE HOPI 117 but four steps a year toward the supiau: the hole in the bottom of the Grand Canyon ninety miles away which is the entrance to the Hopi Underground. Meanwhile he reviews his life of wasted effort, of wickedness, greed or whatever his especial sin may have been. The Good Hopi goes at once to the Underground. When this Third World War has cleaned the world of all two-hearts then the bad Hopi will be judged by "the God of the Hopi" who will push him into a pit of fire if he has not been purified by his four steps a year. Only the feeling body is burned. No soul ever dies. Then all the souls of both good and bad Hopi will be reborn into this new peaceful world. (Babies who die before they are initiated into the clan when 20 days old are at once reincarnated into the same Hopi family.) This Deferred Reincarnation, with its allied Purgatory of four steps a year, and its life in the Underground of the Grand Canyon is a mixture of the tenets of many otherwise dissimilar religious—all of course unknown to the Hopi.

The real Hopi should not live in town and cater after the fleshpots of the white man. He should not strive for big cars, go in debt or be obligated to any one in a manner which would make it difficult for him to be a true Hopi. He should live from day to day with confidence that God will not let him starve, spiritually or physically. He should not send his children to the devil worship of the public school, accept rations or gifts from the government, register for the draft, vote, or pay taxes to the war-making state. Preferably he should work hard with his hands and be ready to live or die at any time for the True Hopi Way of Life—knowing, that perhaps he alone might be left to save the city when destruction comes and he cannot save it or himself when his mind is chasing after the dollar.

The Hopi are different from any other Indian tribe, inasmuch as they do not have a tribal chief who can sell them out to the whites. Chee Dodge, former head of the Navajos for many years, died worth several hundred thousand dollars. Each of the eleven Hopi pueblos is sufficient unto itself. They practice the anarchistic principle of secession whenever a group disagrees. Over twenty clans have chiefs in various villages with authority only in their own clan and village. Thus it is difficult for the government to bribe so many chiefs.

Some years ago the government placed most of the young educated Indians away from the pueblos in a work project for a few weeks. Then they scurried around and put across the Tribal Council idea among the older folks who did not understand what it was all about. But now that the real pacifist Hopi have explained that the Council is a scheme to put over government policies of exploitation under the false front of democracy, only a few government employees belong to it and it is not recognized by Washington as a factor.

Quakers, pacifists, and other well meaning people do not understand this setup, and so have been unwitting aids to the war-making government. Thus the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Quakers called a convention of Indians in Tucson in 1948, led mostly by Quaker Indian Bureau employees of that vicinity, seeking to get cooperation of Indians with the Government. With organizations it is easy to bribe the leaders for oil and uranium leases and other million dollar boondoggling dear to the hearts of Bureaucrats. This year the convention