166 
Indians of the Stone Houses 
Of the stone villages where the dwellers 
still live and go about their daily tasks, 
much as they did a century ago, are the 
seven cliff-perched villages of the Hopi: 
Walpi, Shongopovi, Shipaulovi, Mishong- 
novi, Sichomovi, Hano and Oraibi; Acoma, 
the beautiful, whose only rival is Walpi of 
Hopi-land; Zuni, all that is left of the seven 
cities of Cibola; Laguna, of a later day, but 
conveniently skirted by the railroad, giving 
the tourist a glimpse of the Pueblo life 
without the effort of leaving the Pullman; 
Isleta, with its primitive and interesting 
life, also close to the railroad; Sandia, San 
Felipe, Santa Ana, Sia, Jemez, far up in 
the mountains, Pecos, Tesuque, San Ilde- 
fonso, the almost extinct Pojuaque; Nam- 
be, old and interesting, but fast blending 
its blood into the Mexican; Santa Clara, 
San Juan, Picuris, and lastly Taos, the 
courageous and primitive, nestling in the 
forested foot-hills of the Don Fernandez 
Mountains. 
At none of these villages can the inter¬ 
esting and picturesque life be studied as 
well as with the Hopi. Their life is rich 
in ceremony and mythology and they are 
comparatively less secretive. The reader 
must not suppose by this that the Kiva, 
their primitive sanctuary, is open to those 
who would enter; far from it! but by long 
and serious effort much can be seen and 
gleaned. Their life is one intricate net¬ 
work of ceremonies, each following the 
other in their regular order. Scarcely a day 
of the year but the naked bronze-skinned 
participants of the holy orders can be seen 
running from Kiva to a far-away spring, 
to deposit their prayer plumes at the life- 
giving waters, that the gods of the North, 
West, South and East may see and an¬ 
swer their people’s prayer. The Hopi 
home is in the thirsty desert land where 
water is life. What more natural than that 
all live springs should be prayer shrines 
for receiving the pahos as visible offerings! 
The greatest of all the Indian ceremonies 
is the Snake Dance of the Hopi; in it we 
see the devout followers of the primitive 
religion of their forefathers going into the 
desert and gathering snakes, which are to 
them sacred. Day by day, through the 
mystic circle of Four, they gather and carry 
them back to the Kiva. Here, in the un¬ 
derground chamber, lit only by the opening 
in the top, we see enacted strange rites, 
which must equal those of the snake- 
charmers of India; and then, at the sinking 
of the sun on the ninth and last day of the 
ceremony, they carry the snakes, as messen¬ 
gers to the gods, back to the desert whence 
they were gathered. 
The village and home life of the Hopi 
is almost as interesting as their ceremonial 
one. At the coming of the yellow light in 
the eastern summer sky the village crier 
goes to the housetop and, in a loud voice, 
cries out to the village the plans of the day, 
urging the men and women in their duties 
to the community and to the family. He 
is more than a newspaper. He is the exec¬ 
utive, in direct communication with every 
subject, adult and child. By the close of 
the morning exhortations to the people, 
the men are preparing for the work in the 
field. The burros, two or a dozen, as the 
case may be, are driven from the small 
stone corrals at the mesa’s edge. The 
Hopi uses one as a beast of burden and 
drives the others before him. The way is 
down the winding trail cut in the rock cliff 
and across the sand-dunes far out to the 
tiny farms in the desert. These farms are 
small spots of ground in which are grown 
corn, beans, melons, squash and pumpkins, 
and are usually in the drifted sands of low- 
lying spots in the desert, situated at points 
where they can catch the freshet water as 
it flows down from the table-lands above. 
Patiently the Hopi farmer tends his crops, 
and daily, thrice daily and hourly, prays to 
his gods that the low-hanging clouds may 
come walking and pour out their life-giving 
showers. 
The men are but started for the fields 
when the women take up the labors of the 
day. From the homes we hear the low 
song of the women at the mealing-troughs. 
These mealing-troughs are at one end of 
the living room. The grinding stones are 
placed side by side, and here the maids and 
matrons take their position and, with 
rhythmic stroke, crush the corn into fine 
meal. With the sound of the grinding 
comes that of the accompanying song. One 
begins with the yellow light before the sun 
appears; then comes the song of the ap¬ 
proaching sun, followed, perhaps, by the 
flying of the butterfly, and so on. Once a 
group of women were singing the songs that 
I might make a record of them. A neigh¬ 
boring woman came in anger to the door, 
