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Some Hopi men were bribed to get some girls to go down off the mesa that day so these Spaniards could take them away with them. "They asked me to go and a girl friend of mine, but we would not go. One girl did go, for a famine was beginning and this poor girl thought she was being taken to visit with the Zunis and would be better off there. Nobody ever got track of her again.
The home of the Hopi would seem at first sight as unfavorable to progress as that of their Ute cousins, but the Hopi have the advantage of being the most northwesterly representatives of the Indians who dwell within the regions of summer rain. Fortunately for them, their country is too desert and unforested for them to subsist to any great degree by the chase.
The Hopi woman's life is a busy one, the never finished grinding of corn by the use of the primitive metate and mano taking much time, and the universal woman's task of bearing and rearing children and providing meals and home comforts accounting for most of her day. She is the carrier of water, and since it must be borne on her back from the spring below the village mesa this is a burden indeed.
In a broader sense the name would include an as yet unbounded country claimed by the component clans of this people as the homes of their ancestors. While this memoir is not regarded as exhaustive, it considers most of the large ruins in immediate proximity to the three mesas on which the pueblos inhabited by the Hopi are situated.
Following the analogy of a Hopi custom of building temporary booths near their fields, may we not suppose that the former inhabitants of Verde valley may have erected similar shelters in their cornfields during summer months, retiring to the cavate dwellings and the mesa tops in winter? All available evidence would indicate that the cavate dwellings were permanent habitations.
Hopi traditions assert that it was in existence when the Spaniards came, and the statement of the legendists whom I have consulted are definite that the survivors of Sikyatki went to Awatobi after the overthrow of the former pueblo.
You can imagine him with his silver trappings and harnessings and belts and necklaces and turquoise-set buttons down trouser leg, scouring below these mesas to raid the flocks and steal the wives of the Hopi; and the Hopi wives take revenge by conquering their conqueror, bringing the arts and crafts of the Hopi people silver work, weaving, basketry into the Navajo tribe.
These friends merely laugh good naturedly and answer: "O, the only reason is, that it is just the way we have always done it." Natural conservatives, these Hopi, and yet not one of them but likes a bright new sauce-pan from the store for her cooking, and a good iron stove, for that matter, if she can afford it. There is no tradition against this, we are told. Walpi.
This was symbolic of welcome; they "made" the trail, a ceremony which is still kept up when entrance to the pueblo is formally offered. The people, considering their poverty, were generous, and gave Espejo "hand towels with tassels" at the corners. These were probably dance kilts and ceremonial blankets, which then, as now, the Hopi made of cotton.
The white visitors spent the forenoon strolling around the mesa, tasting Hopi food, feeding candy to the naked, roly-poly babies, or bargaining with visiting Navajos for rugs and silver jewelry. French, Spaniards, Mexicans, Germans, Americans, and Indians jostled each other good-naturedly. Cowboys, school teachers, moving-picture men, reporters, missionaries, and learned doctors were all there.
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