Jesse Walter Fewkes

“ I will arise with tomahawk in my hand, and I must have revenge on that nation which has slain my poor people. I arise with war club in my hand, and follow the bloody track of that nation which killed my people. ”

“ This union is weaker in the mind of the modern Hopi, yet still potent; but as the new conception of beauty has crowded out the religious element, the character of the pottery and its decoration have deteriorated. Many patterns which once had a religious symbolism are mechanically followed, through conservatism, and pottery of fair character is still made, but every Pueblo shows a marked decadence in the potter's art. As time goes by and the Hopi are more modified by their new environment—contact with civilization—the white crockery of the traders will replace the aboriginal wares. ”

“ This figurine bears on her head the symbol of the ear of maize. No field of corn may be harvested without the protection of the warrior in a country harassed by enemies, and the fourth effigy represents the god of war, whose effigy naturally has a place on this altar. The white meal which is sprinkled on the heads of all the idols represents the prayers of the faithful, for as each priest approaches the altar she breathes her prayer on sacred meal and scatters it on the heads of the effigies. ”

“ In the evolution of ornament among the Hopi, as among most primitive peoples where new designs have replaced the old, the meaning of the ancient symbols has been lost. Consequently we are forced to adopt comparative methods to decipher them. If, for instance, on a fragment of ancient pottery we find the figure of a bird in which the wing or tail feathers have a certain characteristic symbol form, we are justified, when we find the same symbolic design on another fragment where the rest of the bird is wanting, in considering the figure that of a wing or tail feather. ”

“ It is a universal characteristic of primitive men that the most enduring and best-constructed buildings are those devoted to worship. We find, for instance, throughout the Old World that the prehistoric structures of this kind which have survived as monuments of the past are temples, either in the form of rude monoliths or imposing buildings, the habitations of their builders having long since disappeared, as they were built of perishable material and their sites can now be detected only by low mounds. ”

“ The science of archeology has contributed to our knowledge some of the most fascinating chapters in culture history, for it has brought to light, from the night of the past, periods of human development hitherto unrecorded. As the paleontologist through his method has revealed faunas whose like were formerly unknown to the naturalist, the archeologist by the use of the same method of research has resurrected extinct phases of culture that have attained a high development and declined before recorded history began. ”

“ Between this ruined village and the ancestral home there are large and as yet undescribed ruins, such as those of the Chaco Canyon, which may once have been inhabited by some of these people.
Our knowledge of the former shifting of ancient clans, derived from legends, is fragmentary, and one way to gain further information and revivify forgotten or unrecorded history, is to study the remains of their material culture. Architecture is a most important survival, and pottery, which has transmitted ancient symbolism unchanged, is also valuable. ”

“ Suddenly the fifteen or twenty members of the society drew back from their chief, who then sprang upon the sípapû plank, and quickly turning faced them as all burst forth in an ecstatic shouting, with wild flinging of their arms as they approached the shield-bearers. They naturally formed two clusters, and as the shield-bearer dashed his shield in their faces they surged back, to leap again toward him. ”

“ In view of the tenacity with which the women of Hano have clung to their language, even when married to Hopi men, it seems strange that the Asa lost their native dialect during the short time they lived in Tsegi canyon; but the Asa men may have married Navaho women, and the Tanoan tongues become lost in that way, the Asa women being in the minority. There is such uniformity in all the legends that the Asa were Tanoan people, that we can hardly doubt their truth, whatever explanation may be given of how the Asa lost their former idiom. ”

“ POTTERY FROM NAVAHO NATIONAL MONUMENT
If environment has had so marked an influence on the character of building, we can readily see how it has affected arts and crafts. We can hardly imagine a people living any length of time in this region without being mentally influenced by the precipitous cliffs that rise on all sides. The summits of these heights are eroded into fantastic shapes resembling animals or grotesque human forms. ”

“ The women of Spruce-tree House were expert potters and decorated their wares in a simple but artistic manner. Until we have more material it would be gratuitous to assume that the ceramic art objects of all the Mesa Verde ruins are identical in texture, colors, and symbolism, and the only way to determine how great are the variations, if any, would be to make an accurate comparative study of pottery from different localities. ”

“ As in Hopi conceptions the Sun is father of all life, a ceremony called the Powalawu, appropriate to the object or aim of Powamu, precedes the planting of beans in the kivas. The ceremony is strictly a part of Powamu, showing it is a form of direct sun worship. In it a special sun altar is made of a sand mosaic upon which, during ceremonial songs, a tray of meal composed of all kinds of seeds used by the Hopi is copiously sprinkled on the picture of the sun; medicine water is then thrown upon the same to typify the rains which under the sun’s action causes these seeds to germinate and grow. ”

“ Maize is painted on the masks of sacred dancers and represented by effigies on altars. It gives names to several supernatural beings. Every babe, when 20 days old, is dedicated to the sun and receives an ear of corn as its symbolic mother. The badges or palladia of religious societies are ears of corn wrapped in buckskin—symbolic, no doubt, of the time when seed corn was the most precious heritage and preserved by the chiefs. The foremost supernatural being in the Tusayan Olympus is the Corn Maid, who is figured on food bowls, baskets, and elsewhere. ”

“ Considering ethnology, or culture history, as the comparative study of mental productions of groups of men in different epochs, and cultural archeology as a study of those objects belonging to a time antedating recorded history, there has been sought in Cliff Palace one type of prehistoric American culture, or rather a type of the mental production of a group of men in an environment where, so far as external influences are concerned, caves, mesas, and cliffs are predominant and aridity is a dominant climatic factor. ”

“ The vein of similarity in the old and the new can be used in an interpretation of ancient paleography, but we overstep natural limitations if by so doing we ascribe to prehistoric culture every concept which we find current among the modern survivors. To show how much the paleography of Tusayan has changed since Sikyatki was destroyed, I need only say that most of the characteristic figures of deities which are used today in the decoration of pottery are not found on the Sikyatki ware. ”

“ The megalithic dolmens of England exhibit no walls superior in masonry to massive walls in the mountain canyons of Utah and Arizona constructed before the advent of the whites. In other words it is evident that the architecture of a people is not wholly an index of stage of culture. If the prehistoric aborigines of our Southwest be judged by buildings we may say they had progressed in historic development into a stage attained by nations more advanced because they were acquainted with metals. ”

“ The geographical position of the country about Gallup renders it a very important area in the study of the migration of aboriginal peoples in the Southwest. It lies midway between the Rio Grande on the east and the Little Colorado on the west, and between the San Juan on the north and the Zuñi on the south. In their intercommunication, the trails of migration in prehistoric times must have crossed this region, and as this migration was marked by successive stages where buildings were constructed we should expect here to find remains of former migratory peoples. ”

“ They call on the spectators to follow them, with loud calls mingled with the music: these cries now become louder and more boisterous, and the coil rapidly unwinds, moving more and more quickly, until some one of the dancers, being unable to keep up, slips and falls. ”

“ No achievements in American anthropology are more striking than those that, from a study of human buildings and artifacts antedating the historic period, reveal the existence of an advanced prehistoric culture of man in America.
The evidences of a phase of culture that had developed and was on the decline before the interior of North America was explored by Europeans are nowhere better shown than in southwestern Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, the domain of the Cliff-dwellers, or the cradle of the Pueblos. ”

“ We are justified in accepting the theory that sun and moon [14] worship is usual among primitive men. Whether that of the sun or of our satellite was the earlier it is not in the province of this article to discuss, but it is doubtless true that sun worship is a very ancient cult among most primitive peoples. The Pueblos are not exceptions, and while we can not say that their adoration is limited to the sun, it forms an essential element of their ritual, while their anhydrous environment has led them into a rain-cloud worship and other complexities. ”

“ In other parts of America among warriors he is appealed to to destroy enemies. Among those people whose environment necessitates rain he is regarded as all powerful for that purpose. Like ancient Aryans, the Tusayan Indians pray to the rising sun for blessings, but the meaning of the word “blessing” is always rain, that the farms may be watered and the crops grow to maturity. The worship of the sun, therefore, is of great importance; it pervades all the ritual, but it is always with one intent—the over-powering need of the agriculturist for rain in a desert environment. ”

“ The evolution of a ceramic area in the neighborhood of the modern Hopi mesas is due to special causes, and points to a long residence in that locality. It would seem from traditions that the earliest Hopi people came from the east, and that the development of a purely Hopi ceramic culture in the region now occupied by this people took place before any great change due to southern immigration had occurred. The entrance of Patki and other clans from the south strongly affected the old Hopi culture, which was purest in Sikyatki, but even there it remained distinctive. ”