Identifier: cu31924028656738 (find matches)
Title: American Indians : first families of the Southwest
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Huckel, John Frederick, 1863-1936 Harvey, Fred
Subjects: Indians of North America
Publisher: Kansas City, Mo. : F. Harvey
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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oom in the house of one of the leading members is used as aceremonial chamber. An altar bears symbols of rain clouds and lightning andthe men surround it, singing sacred traditional songs. The priests proceed to adistant spring where elaborate ceremonies take place around two altars and atthe spring during the day. On the ninth day, a great foot race takes place in the afternoon. The men,stripped to the skin, start from a point far in the desert and run at their topmostspeed towards the village; the winners are rewarded with consecrated ceremonialobjects. These, buried in the owners field, are to insure success in crops. Thepriests in the meantime lead a slow procession to a certain spring near the village,where there are more songs and impressive rituals, accompanied by the droningof flutes. The ceremony at an end, all proceed slowly to the village, observingmany sacred rites as they enter. The ceremonies terminate in the ancestral homeof the Flute society. Digitized by IVIicrosoft®
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HOPI FLUTE BOY Digitized by IVIicrosoft® Taking the Elevator in Hopi Land To enter a Hopi house one takes a ladder which leads to the roof of the firststory. Then another ladder to the second story or terrace, and another to thethird. The first story is used as a store room and the roof as a yard where thefamily may bask and sun themselves in security. The ladder style of architecture was, of course, a necessity in the days of tribalwarfare. Perched on the summit of almost inaccessable mesas the Hopi houseswere impregnable so long as the supplies in the first story held out. In this store-room corn was stacked up as neatly as cord wood; great earthen-ware vesselscontained the water supply; pumpkins, dried peaches and watermelons wereheaped up for the winter, for the Hopi have always been good farmers and fruitgrowers. The fields and orchards are on the slopes and at the foot of the mesa, asare the springs and as they were centuries ago. The second floor of a Hopi house is usually the

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