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Every evening throughout the year, when a sufficient number of visitors are present to justify it, the Indians of the Hopi House give a few brief dances and songs, which faintly suggest the style of some of their more elaborate ceremonials. It is seldom that the traveler will find less than three Indian tribes of distinct family represented at or near El Tovar.
In the Hopi House, the processes of making pottery and silverware by primitive methods may be seen in active operation, though in the manufacture of silver, some modern appliances have taken the place of the ancient ones. In the pottery, however, everything is exactly as it used to be before the white race appeared on the American continent.
The Hopi were taught how to build stone houses, and then the various clans dispersed, going separate ways. And after many many generations they arrived at their present destination from all directions and at different times. They brought corn with them from the underworld. It is generally agreed that the Snake people were the first to occupy the Tusayan region.
The Hopi woman brings her clay with her from some pit or quarry in Hopiland, where experience has demonstrated a good pottery clay is found. After thoroughly washing, pulverizing and crushing, it is ready to be worked up into domestic and other utensils. Squatted upon the ground, the potter places in her lap a small basket, wood, or pottery base, upon which she places a "dab" of clay.
During the comparatively short time which Espejo had to explore the country as far as the Hopi or Moqui, he collected interesting ethnological data.
She is a fine, intelligent girl, having gone more than halfway through high school before she returned to her home on Second Mesa to live. This is her wedding picture taken last year at the moment of her "going home," after just such a wedding ceremonial as described above. A Hopi Bride.
The assertions of all Hopi traditionists that Sikyatki is a prehistoric ruin, as well as the scientific evidence looking the same way, are most important facts in considering the weight of deductions in regard to the character of prehistoric Tusayan culture.
The same method is still employed by the Hopi priests in painting their masks. The Sikyatki collection of pottery shows little or no duplication in decorative design, and every ornamented food basin bears practically different symbols. The decoration of the food basins is mainly on the interior, but there is almost invariably a geometrical design of some kind on the outside, near the rim.
Hill Ki grins as he unhitches his horses, and answers: "You understan' when you go up an' see!" But he does not offer to escort me up. As I am looking round for the beginning of a visible trail up, a little Hopi girl comes out from the sheep kraal at the foot of the Acoma Mesa.
Here also is located the United States Government Indian School, where the children of several tribes are being civilized. Two miles away is Moenkopi, a Hopi village, or pueblo, of some thirty homes, where this pastoral and home-loving people may be found engaged in their quiet agricultural pursuits, the women also busy at basket-making and the fashioning of pottery.
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