Oraibi

“ The philosopher of Oraibi tells us that when the people ascended by means of the magical tree which constituted the ladder from the lower world to this, they found the firmament, the ceiling of this world, low down upon the earth—the floor of this world, Matcito, one of their gods, raised the firmament on his shoulders to where it is now seen. Still the world was dark, as there was no sun, no moon, and no stars. ”

“ All day long the people came in succession to stare at him. I can testify to the sullen unfriendliness of the Oraibi, and I have seen few places I have left with greater pleasure than that I felt when, in 1885, I rode away from this town. Garces was not able to make a favourable impression, and after, considering the feasibility of going on to Zuñi, and deciding against it, he thought he would visit the other towns with a hope of being better received, but a few yells from some herders sent him back to his Yabipai guide and several friendly Zuñis at Oraibi, where he occupied his corner again. ”

“ SHUMOPAVI.
This village, although not so isolated as Oraibi, has no near neighbors and is little visited by whites or Indians. The inhabitants are rarely seen at the trading post to which the others resort, and they seem to be pretty well off and independent as compared with their neighbors of the other villages (Pl. XXXIV) . The houses and courts are in keeping with the general character of the people and exhibit a degree of neatness and thrift that contrasts sharply with the tumble-down appearance of some of the other villages, especially those of the Middle Mesa and Oraibi. ”

“ This was to teach the Hopi children new ways—to lead them away from the ceremonies and the traditions.
Again some of the Oraibi people yielded, and took on the new ways taught by these white men of the Government. But the Ghost-and-Bird clan would not yield.
And then came the soldiers of the white men. They have come many times. Youkeoma has been a prisoner eight times, and has been taken away to forts where there were many [167] soldiers; but he has not yielded. Five years ago, because of these troubles among the people, the Ghost-and-Bird clan left Oraibi and settled here at Hotevilla. ”

“ The bird asked the Ghost if it would permit the good people of the Hopi in the Underworld to come and live at Oraibi. And the Spirit was willing, so the bird returned with this message.
Most of the people were still busy with their social dances; but the chiefs and medicine men and the good people, when they had the news, began to climb the reeds. In this they were helped by the two Gods of Hard Substances, who made the reeds firm. These people managed to crawl through the hole in the sky. ”

“ When certain Christianized worthies of the tribe have pretended to expose their knowledge, I have paid little attention, since I knew the mental calibre of such fellows before conversion, and the depth of their gray matter was never impressive. The last who gave evidence proceeded well in his story until, with a foreign fervor, he began to lie about the Oraibi happenings within my own time, and as I had taken his testimony under oath in Hopi trials, I knew just how many Bibles to trust him on. ”

“ Some of those who seceded from Old Oraibi in 1906 wished to go back but they were not welcome so they formed the village of Bacobi to the north of Hotevilla. Today they fly the flag of the conqueror and are subservient. At Moencopi, 40 miles northwest of Hotevilla and two miles east of the Mormon dominated Tuba City, just outside the Hopi reservation, are two villages: upper and lower. The former have cooperated with the government idea of a Tribal Council while those at the bottom have remained true to real Hopi tradition. ”

“ Some of the things are heavy, and I engage some Indians to help transport the cargo to Fort Wingate, where we can get army transportation.
October 24-.--To-day we leave Oraibi. We are ready to start in the early morning. The whole town comes to bid us good-by. Before we start they perform some strange ceremony which I cannot understand, but, with invocations to some deity, they sprinkle us, our animals, and our goods with water and with meal. Then there is a time of handshaking and hugging. "Good-by; good-by; good-by!" At last we
SICHUMOVI AND HANO. ”

“ Nicolls and Eglington, in the ‘Sportsman in South Africa,’ that the Oribi is even now very common. It also frequents the Transvaal in fair numbers, the Orange Free State, and parts of Matabeleland and Mashonaland. A few specimens are said to have been obtained in Bechuanaland, but it is unknown in the Kalahari Desert, and thence towards the west. The same observers tell us that “in speed the Oribi is very fast, and that it dodges from side to side when it runs in a peculiar manner with a series of leaps and rushes. ”

“ The horns of the male attain to a length of about 5 inches, and are ringed at the base.”
There is a mounted pair of this species in the gallery of the British Museum which formerly belonged to the old “South-African Museum” of Sir Andrew Smith, besides some skins and skulls from the Cape without exact particulars. There is also the skull of an adult male from the Umfili River, Mashonaland, obtained by Mr. F. C. Selous, in the same Collection.
We are not aware that the Oribi has been kept in captivity in the Cape Colony, or ever brought alive to Europe. ”

“ Hairs from the beard are in great demand as charms. Having seen all we wanted, and not being able to persuade the natives to accompany us up to the mountain to see the wild animals, I decided to return to Orofedabe; so we returned to the village, gave the taro we bought to the people, paid our attendants and for the house where our things were, and away we went. Our friends were glad to see us, and rejoiced greatly when the taboo was taken off the salt, and taro was bought. We are having rain and thunderstorms every afternoon. ”

“ The people of Aoba are remarkable for their cleanliness, the dwellers on the coast spending half the day in the water, while those from the mountains never miss their weekly bath, after which they generally carry a few cocoa-nuts full of salt water up to their homes. The women are very pretty, slim and strong; their faces often have quite a refined outline, a pointed chin, a small mouth and full but well-cut lips; their eyes are beautiful, with a soft and sensual expression; and the rhythm of their movements, their light and supple walk, give them a charm hardly ever to be found in Europe. ”

“ The Orehu are water-sprites, female like the mermaids, and they sometimes drag man and canoe down to the depths of their aquatic haunts; yet they are not altogether evil, for Brett tells a story, characteristically American Indian, of the origin of a medicine-mystery. In very ancient times, when the Yauhahu inflicted continual misery on mankind, an Arawak, walking besides the water and brooding over the sad case of his people, beheld an Orehu rise from the stream, bearing in her hand a branch which he planted as she bade him, its fruit being the calabash, till then unknown. ”

“ There are seven villages built on three mesas in the northern desert. One of the largest, Orabi, has a thousand inhabitants. Walpi numbers about two hundred and thirty people, all living in this one great building of many rooms. They are divided into brotherhoods, or phratries, and each brotherhood has several large families. They are ruled by a speaker chief and a war chief elected by a council of clan elders.
Margaret learned with wonder that all the water these people used had to be carried by the women in jars on their backs five hundred feet up the steep trail. ”

“ When the eating was finished, the snakes arose and took wooden swords and launched their canoe, for they were about to fight Arebo. And Wakeke, fearing lest he might be forbidden, coiled himself upon the outrigger. Then did they paddle, and paddle, and paddle, until they floated over the place where dwelt Arebo at the bottom of the sea. And that they might better see him they squeezed coconut milk upon the water and made it calm, and so looked upon Arebo sitting below eating betel nut. ”

“ When the moon is dark a spirit dances there, the spirit of Mauraii. 279He was my cousin, and the Taote hired him to help the other man. One day the Taote began to buy provisions, a great quantity which were stored in the cutter with other big boxes, as if for a long voyage. They sailed away, Terii and Mauraii, too. ‘Nuku-Hiva will see me next,’ said the Taote to us all. That was a lie, but I did not know it then. They went to Pukapuka. It is a little atoll, toward the Marquesas, and far from any other island. Mauraii had dived there, and the Taote knew that. ”

“ This road was used by the nomads encamping east of Edom when they journeyed to the harbors of Elath and ʻEṣjôngeber. From Maʻân northward this road remains on the border between the settlers and the nomads, between the cultivated land and the wilderness; it therefore could be called the road of ʻAraba, or the road leading along the borders of Arabia, for the Assyrian sources give the name of Arubi, Aribi, partly to the nomads and partly to the wilderness which they frequent. ”

“ It was reserved for the burial of bird-men; they were the uncanny persons whose ghosts might do unpleasant things—they were safer hidden under stones. The name Orohié is given to the whole of this corner of the mountain, with its houses, its ahu, and its statues. To this point the figures led which were round the base of the hill. If they were re-erected, they would stand with their backs not to the mountain, but to Orohié. ”

“ He is described by one of the tribes in so many words as “mightiest and most famous of Wirreenun,” or magicians.139.2 The Arawâk of British Guiana tell of a similar personage in a semi-deified position, named Arawânili or Orowâma, to whom the mysteries of sorcery were revealed by an orehu. The orehu is a sort of mermaid who is an important figure in the mythology of these Indians. She haunts the rivers, a capricious, mischievous, not always malicious and cruel, but sometimes benevolent figure. ”

“ Oriope, the old chief, was delighted to see us. His wives and children have gone with great burdens of betel-nuts and taro to trade at the seaside. The old fellow goes with us. We are now 1530 feet above sea-level, east-by-south from last camp—Mount Owen Stanley due north. Oriope is Mr. Lawes’s great p. 105friend. He used to live in Munikahila, but trouble through marrying a wife has sent him in here. He seems greatly attached to Ruatoka. He is a terrible talker, long-winded and deafening. ”

“ Among the negroes of the West Indies, Obi, or Obiah, is the name of a magical power, which is believed by them to affect the object of its malignity with dismal calamities. Such a belief must undoubtedly have been deduced from the superstitious mythology of their kinsmen on the coast of Africa. I have, therefore, personified Obi as the evil spirit of the African, although the history of the African tribes mentions the evil spirits of their religious creed by a different appellation. ”

“ Ibrahim thus undesignedly proved the correctness of his information, for it struck me, that no physical feature is so conclusive as to the character of a country, whether high or low land, than the complexion of its inhabitants. An exception, however, to thus entirely surrounding the high land of Abyssinia with the two nations of blacks was made to the north and south of the country of Adal, where two oppositely situated water-sheds are drained by the two rivers, the Tacazza and the Whabbee, the former flowing into the Nile, the latter into the Indian Ocean at Jubah. ”

“ The situation of the Amhara with respect to the Abi or Bruce’s Nile at once accounts for the designation, as they live upon the left hand of the stream as it flows south 33 from lake Dembea, whilst that portion of this people still retaining their ancient name and purity of descent, the present Gurague occupy a country similarly situated with respect to the river Zebee, or Azzabi, or Assabinus, the Ethiopian Jupiter. ”

“ Procopius, De bello persico, I, 19, also refers to the island of Iotabe. According to him the province of Palestine extends as far as the harbor city of Aila, situated at the extremity of a very narrow gulf of the Red Sea. Those sailing from Aila through this gulf have the Egyptian mountains on the right hand extending in a southerly direction, and on the left hand the desert stretching a great distance northward. The mainland can be observed on both sides, until the island of Iotabe is reached at a distance of about a thousand stades from Aila. ”

“ Oriope at once got up and gave from his own stock what was wanted. These native spiritists are terrible nuisances; they get whatever they ask, and the natives believing so thoroughly in them, they have the power of upsetting all arrangements and causing serious trouble. This morning, I found our spirit friend to be a man who sat in our house all day yesterday, a stranger from an inland village. He has quite a different look from the other natives—an anxious, melancholy expression. ”

“ The observations of that indefatigable and enterprising traveller, Dr. Beke, has proved that the river Abi, after flowing a distance of scarcely one hundred 445 and thirty miles, has excavated a valley five or six thousand feet below the general level of the table land, whilst the opposite summits of the bounding sides are distant between thirty and forty miles. We may look in vain over every portion of the known world for a similar effect of denudation, and this again illustrates the wide field of novel facts which is promised to science, by an examination of the unknown interior of Africa. ”