Pages from Hopi History [antikvár]

The Hopi Indians are so different in so many ways from most of the Indian tribes of the Americas that the question often arises, even among the Hopi themselves, as to who these "peaceful people" are. Where did they come from? How did their unique way of life come about?However, those who have come to know the Hopi well understand why so many people including this author have been impelled to write about them.Government reports, scientific journals, journals kept by explorers and missionaries, magazine articles, newspaper stories, television reports and even movies, and personal reminiscences about experiences in the Hopi country are so massive in quantity as to bewilder and confuse and to seem totally out of all proportion to the size of the Hopi community of villages.Most of this material is to be found only in the specialized collections of a limited number of libraries scattered throughout the country, and is not available to the general reader. For this reason several Hopi friends requested that we attempt to set down an account of some of the more significant events in the history of their people. They felt that such an account would be of interest to the general reader, and of particular value to their own young people, who in today's rapidly changing world have scant opportunity to learn their historic background from the stories of their "uncles" and other wise old Hopi as they would have learned it in the past.The Hopi are the westernmost of the Pueblo Indians whose villages are a conspicuous and interesting part of the Southwestern scene. In search of peace and security from aggressive, warlike neighbors, ancestors of the present Hopi built their villages on high, precipitous mesa tops in the colorful part of northern Arizona called the Painted Desert.Because it is both euphonious and convenient we frequently use the term "Tusayan" in referring to the Hopi country, although we do so with misgivings. The word apparently is derived from "Tugano" which Coronado understood to be the name of one of the Hopi villages. Tusayan was commonly used by early Spanish explorers, gold-seekers, and Franciscan priests, and later by American anthropologists.[xi]