THE HOPI INDIAN COLLECTION IN THE UNITED 

 STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



By Walter Hough, 

 Curator of Ethnology, United States National Museum, 



INTRODUCTION. 



This publication aims to give an impression of the arts and indus- 

 tries of a tribe of Pueblo Indians at a period when they were little 

 modified by outside influences. It may serve as a guide to the Hopi 

 collection now exhibited in the Natural History building of the 

 United States National Museum. Handbooks of this character 

 which are made up virtually of extended labels of the collections are 

 projected for other sections of the exhibit of Ethnology. 



The following descriptive label for the family group case dis- 

 played in the west north hall of the Natural History Museum of the 

 Smithsonian Institution in Washington gives a brief account of the 

 Hopi: 



The Hopi Indians occupy stone-built villages in northeastern Arizona. They 

 were first seen by wliite men in 1540 wlien Tobar and Padilla were dispatched 

 by Corouado to visit them. On account of the isolation of tlieir country, they 

 have preserved to a greater degree than other tribes the arts and customs of 

 the Pueblos. They are farmers and depend mainly upon corn for their sub- 

 sistence. Among the arts in which they are skillful, are weaving, basket-mak- 

 ing, and wood-carving, and in the minor art of cookery they are widely known 

 among the Indians. The group represents the parching, grinding, and baking 

 of maize which goes on in every household. A woman and little girl grind 

 on the slanting millstones the corn prepared by the parcher. The baker 

 spreads with her hand the batter on the heated stone slab and the result Is 

 the paperlike bread called piki. Another woman is weaving a basket of yucca 

 leaves. The man brings in from the field a backload of corn ears and the 

 boy exhibits triumphantly a rabbit which he has killed with the curvetl boom- 

 erang club peculiar to the Hopi. 



AGRICULTURE AND REARING. 



Agriculture is the principal occupation of the Hopi. They are 

 industrious and resourceful tillers of the soil under conditions which 

 would seem hopeless to a farmer. Their efforts are principally de- 

 voted to raising corn, but wheat, beans, squashes, and common vege- 

 tables are grown. They preserve an agriculture of native cotton, 

 Gossypium ?iopi, which they use for ceremonial purposes.^ 



i Lewton, F. L., The Cotton of the Hopi Indians : a new species of Gossypium, Smith- 

 sonian Misc. Coll., vol. 60, No. 6, Oct. 23, 1912. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 54— No. 2235. 



236 



