Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/135

CHAPTER 6. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—THE HOPI 122 opposition to the whites. As we left Old Oraibi we saw the village chief have his picture taken by white tourists for pay and selling kachina dolls to them. The real Hopi feel that this is making a monkey of Hopi life and traditions. Coming down again we saw small gardens and orchards in the sheltered places.

Some of those who seceded from Old Oraibi in 1906 wished to go back but they were not welcome so they formed the village of Bacobi to the north of Hotevilla. Today they fly the flag of the conqueror and are subservient. At Moencopi, 40 miles northwest of Hotevilla and two miles east of the Mormon dominated Tuba City, just outside the Hopi reservation, are two villages: upper and lower. The former have cooperated with the government idea of a Tribal Council while those at the bottom have remained true to real Hopi tradition. As the Hopi were never at war with the whites, as were the Navajo and Apache, they were included by the treaty at the close of the Mexican War in 1845, as given citizen rights, ownership of land, and the right to non-interference in their customs and religion. But the U. S. Government has broken this treaty as it has all other Indian agreements. These villages so far outlined speak one dialect and occupy the Third Mesa and beyond, westward. (This reminds me of Thoreau, who was asked on his death-bed by an orthodox relative if he had made his peace with God. His reply was characteristic of his whole life: "I never quarrelled with Him.")

The Second Mesa is ten or more miles eastward. Here is where we attended the Snake Dance at Mishongnovi, situated on a Mesa towering 400 feet over the valley below. Here the sun is greeted in early morning. Shongopovi and Shipolovi are the other villages here. In each of these villages are many of the true Hopi who have not succumbed to old age pensions and government bribes. They often speak a different dialect derived from the Tewa Indians who came from the southwest after the Great Rebellion of 1680, at the foot of the mesa. According to Hopi custom when any people come and ask to live among them they are asked what especial prayers or abilities they have to give to the Hopi. The Tewa said they would stay there and "protect" the Hopi from invaders. There are no battles on record but the Tewa were good naturedly allowed to remain.

The First Mesa is further east and a little to the north toward the shadow of the Indian Bureau at Keams Canyon. Real Hopi look upon these pueblos as an outpost of Hopiland and hardly a part of it, for they have intermarried with Navajo, Mexicans and whites, have commercialized their Snake Dance, and have taken on the vices of the white man along with his watered-down religion. (The Mormons, Mennonite and Baptist'sBaptists [sic] subvert the Hopi. No Catholic missionaries have been among the Hopi since the Great Rebellion of 1680 when the church was torn down; a result, many say, of the cruelties of the Spaniards when great beams were carried on the shoulders from the distant San Francisco mountains. I saw one of these beams near Don's home in Old Oraibi. Hano and Walpi are the villages of the First Mesa. The post office is called Polacca. Recently when the Bureaucrats were trying to put over their $90,000,000 budget for the Navajo they got the bright idea of getting the rice-Christian Hopi Agency interpreter, and some other subservient Mormon Hopi to Washington and have them apply