Few narratives of the katsinam survive among the Eastern Pueblos of the Rio Grande region, but the spirits’ arrival in the area is manifest in the rich rock art iconography that suddenly appears on the valley’s black basalt outcroppings. Where abstracts, zoomorphs, and stick-figure humans once prevailed, in the fourteenth century clearly identifiable “masks” of classic katsinam figures appear by the hundreds, usually in close association to images directly related to conflict and warfare—shield-bearers, bows, axe-bearers, and Venus “stars”—all masculine symbols. Similar concentrations of Katsina and war imagery may be seen along the mesa escarpments to the west at the proto-Hopi settlements of the Homol’ovi cluster.
Katsina imagery at San Cristobal Pueblo, New Mexico.
These images and iconography resonate vividly in Hopi oral history, where, in several accounts of “tales of destruction” visited upon early Hopi villages, katsinam figure as allies of village chiefs who immolate their own communities when they discern wickedness or sorcery, koyaanisqatsi, spreading among their people—just like Ta’polo at Awat’ovi. Efforts to return the people to a condition of suyanisqatsi (a life of harmony and balance) are effected not through gentle reform but through overwhelming supernatural force, as when the kikmongwi (crier chief) of the Third Mesa village of Pivanhokyapi summons the Yaayapontsa (wind and fire katsinam) from the San Francisco Peaks to march as a firestorm and immolate his own followers. In this case, the corruption that inspired the violent cleansing lay in “women who began to leave their homes and abandon their husbands and children” in a desire to “go into the kivas” and join men there for the gambling game of totolospi, as well as to engage in sex with the men and boys.
Women figure centrally in all extant Hopi narratives of destruction, either as objects of desire who lead men to corruption, as powaka (sorceresses) who use love medicine to attract powerful men, or as the focus of violence between men from opposing villages. The fact that katsinam appear prominently as allies of senior men in their efforts to maintain political control of their own people suggests deep underlying tensions within Hopi villages, a theme consistent with much more recent Hopi history. That women in the Eastern Pueblos were quite explicitly cordoned off from most aspects of the Katsina Religion is also significant; young males, even noninitiates, were informal members of the ritual organization, with formalization coming at puberty; whereas women, associated with moieties, served as “pathmakers” when katsinam visited the villages. This period seems also to show archaeological evidence for women’s disfranchisement from the most powerful aspects of ceremonial life. Small kin-or-clan kivas in scattered hamlets had long served both as domestic dwellings and ritual chambers, thereby displaying women’s material culture (especially grinding stones) along with that of men. Yet from A.D. 1300 forward, women among the Eastern Pueblos seem increasingly excluded from kivas as they grew larger and oriented toward community-level ritual—similar to the process by which women were excluded from the Great Kivas at Chaco. With the arrival of the Katsinam, kivas again became the domain of men, thereby signaling “a decline in the power and prestige of women.”
Franciscans appeared at the Hopi mesas as yet a new variant in “cycles of evangelism” that Indians had been experiencing for centuries, as “outsiders” who brought the power to disrupt and the power to reshape. Between 1629 and 1680, Franciscans at Mission San Bernardo doubtless heard the Pahaana prophecy as well. It seems probable that Hopis made sense of the arrival of padres Porras, Gutiérrez, and Concepción in 1629 in terms of the Pahaana prophecy. The missionaries were initially “received with some coolness, because the devil was trying in all possible ways to obstruct and impede the promulgation of divine law.” Among the threats that the people of Awat’ovi had been alerted to by an “Indian apostate from the Christian [Rio Grande] pueblos” was that the “Spaniards with tonsures and vestments were nothing but impostors” and that they intended to “behead their children,” certainly an allusion to Pahaana. The “miraculous” healing of the blind boy affected by the laying of a Cross upon his eyes may have further convinced Hopis that the Castillam were associated with Pahaana, as evidence of their capacity to “make anew.” Franciscan conversion pedagogy also mirrored themes in the prophecy. The friars, “soldiers of the gospel, girded themselves with the armor of prayer in order to subdue and conquer the wiles of Lucifer . . . set forth through the streets, preaching, the sonorous echoes of their voices bringing men and women to listen to them, compelled by a mysterious impulse.” While announcing their message of salvation, they likewise dispensed “rattles, beads, hatchets, and knives”—the “grandeur of plenty”—yet found the Hopis cautious, for they had been warned that if they “accepted anything from the friars they would die.” Despite the caution, Porras pursued a deeper communion with the people of Awat’ovi and neighboring towns, mastering their language, which was “very barbarous and difficult,” and in a period of nine months claimed to have converted and baptized more than “four thousand souls.”
Like Pahaana, the friars’ methods displayed compulsion as well as attraction. Wíkvaya, keeper of oral histories at Oraibi Village, recalled in 1902 that Hopis called the priests tuutachi, a term approximating “dictator” for their habit of giving orders, such as traveling long distances for water to make adobe bricks or timbers for mission construction, as far away as Black Mesa, some fifty miles from Hopi lands. He also accused the priests of preying on Hopi women while the men were away, of destroying pahos and ordering the backfilling of kivas with rubble and sand. If these orders were not followed, the priests threatened that the Hopis “would be slashed to death or punished in some way.” Punishments other than slashing included flogging, or, in extreme cases, enslavement through the sale of one’s labor for a period of time, as much as ten years. At once reviled as “filthy” outsiders and revered as representatives of Elder Brother, the Franciscans lived in a liminal state in many Hopi’s minds. Ambivalence, paradox, and anxiety, all of which lay at the core of the Pahaana narratives, were part of daily life at Mission San Bernardo. When the revolt came in 1680, it may be that some “converted Indians of Aguatubi” died at the hands of the rebels, who were, in their own way, fulfilling the purification aspects of the Pahaana prophecy.
Likewise, the Pahaana prophecy probably resonated with the Franciscans’ vision of apocalyptic conversion, in which they “believed themselves a divinely inspired elect whose role was the renovatio of the evangelical life in the last age of the world.” Influenced by Joachim of Fiore’s vision of history, in which mankind evolved through three successive stages “culminating in an age . . . of bliss and understanding,” Franciscan apocalypticism “emphasized events near the end of time which included the salvation of all the world.” Salvation, in the Franciscan worldview, required the birth of the Antichrist and the martyrdom of the prophets Elijah and Enoch, as well as the conversion of the Jews. Only then would “nations of the world enter into the church” to herald “a time of peace before the final judgment.” The Franciscans, therefore, shared many of the fundamental performative and philosophical elements, at least, of the Pahaana prophecy. When martyrdom did visit Mission San Bernardo, Hopis and Franciscans alike may have sensed an “end of days” narrative unfolding. Only early in the twentieth century, however, would the force of prophetic history be manifest for all to see.
If the central theme of the Pahaana prophecy lies in destruction and rebirth as the essence of Hopi history, no event illuminates this more clearly than the “split,” or fissioning in the Third Mesa community of Oraibi. The crisis came to a head in 1906 and reverberated over the years to finally produce five new villages (Kykotsmovi, Bacavi, Hotevilla, Upper Moencopi, and Lower Moenkopi). The Oraibi fission, at least for many Hopis, is seen as “the culmination of a series of events presaged by past cycles, indeed, foretold by them.”
Perhaps the most ancient of the settlements in Tusayán, with archaeological evidence dating back into the twelfth century, Oraibi was among three popu
lous towns chosen by Franciscans as the location for Mission San Francisco (later changed to San Miguel) in 1629. By 1664, the mission census reported 1,236 “souls” (converted), “very good church . . . good provisions for public worship, a choir with many instruments, and a good convento.” In the revolt of 1680, two priests resident at Oraibi, Augustín de Santa María and the former priest (and choral master) at Awat’ovi, José de Espeleta, suffered death at the hands of Warrior Katsinas from the Badger Clan, after which their bodies were tossed from the cliffs. In June and July 1701, Spanish governor don Pedro Rodríguez Cubero, after learning of the attack on Awat’ovi the previous autumn, led a military expedition to punish the “apostate Indians of the province of Moqui.” The thin documentary record indicates the campaign proved a failure, beaten back by the “multitudes of the enemy . . . especially as the Moqui had with them the Tanos Indians, who, after committing outrages, had taken refuge among them and had risen at their command.” And yet Hopi memory of this event leans toward a different angle. In 1936, Edmund Nequatewa, casting back to these troublous times, recalled that although the Spanish were indeed repulsed, it was not before a member of the Strap Clan of Oraibi identified the ceremonial leaders behind the assault on Awat’ovi. Seized by the Spanish captain, Juan Domínguez y Mendoza, the men were executed by musket fire. Thus the Spaniards, as Pahaanam, appear as judge, punisher, and redeemer in marked similarity to the story that Cushing heard some fifty years before.
Even after the expulsion of the Franciscans and the destruction of Awat’ovi, Oraibi would retain its prominence in Tusayán in the centuries ahead, among the Hopi villages and in encounters with Mexicans and Americans. Following the American conquest of New Mexico in 1847, Hopis welcomed James S. Calhoun, the first American superintendent of Indian affairs for the New Mexico Territory by sending a delegation to Santa Fe, composed from the leaders of each of the pueblos, including the largest, Oraibi. Each of the pueblos “was an independent republic, having confederated for mutual protection,” but Oraibi was clearly the most prominent, and populous. In 1851, Antoine Leroux, guide to the Sitgreaves Expedition, counted 2,400 residents at Oraibi and a total Hopi population of 6,720. Before the end of that decade, white Americans became an everyday presence in Hopi life with the arrival of Mormon colonists who cast their own missionary efforts at conversion, based on their belief that Hopis descended from the Welsh adventurer Prince Madoc and his A.D. 1164 expedition to colonize new lands beyond the western sea. Between 1858 and 1873, Mormons dispatched fifteen official missions to the Hopis, who were, at least initially, well received, since Hopis could obtain farming and blacksmithing implements from the missionaries. Mormons, too, held apocalyptic beliefs, based on their reading of the Book of Revelation in the Bible, and founder Joseph Smith’s own revelation of the White Horse Prophecy. Whether or not Hopis absorbed these into their cosmology isn’t clear, but a certain resonance may have existed with that of the Franciscans. Still, Hopis maintained discrete categories for these new arrivals, terming them Monomam to distinguish them from Pahaanam (other Anglos). A few Hopis did convert—Tuuvi and his wife, Katsinmana, from Oraibi, visited Utah and upon their return welcomed the establishment in 1873 of the Mormon town of Moencopi, where Oraibis cultivated summer gardens, in part to gain their military protection from Navajos, who often raided Hopi cornfields. In 1876, Mormons founded Tuba City (named for Tuuvi). Although pressure from the U.S. government forced Mormons out of Hopi country by the late nineteenth century, their insinuation of modern farming technologies and crops—peas, potatoes, beets, radishes, lettuce, alfalfa, onions, turnips, wheat, and barley—would later be viewed by some Hopis as harbingers of a negative transformation in Hopi lifeways, according to ethnographer Peter Whitely.
The U.S. government also established a presence among the Hopis at Keams Canyon in 1873. The people of Oraibi seemed unique in their hostility to the government presence, refusing annuity goods and refusing to take part in the annual census. Keams Canyon also hosted a small school for Hopi children, but Oraibi seems not to have allowed any from their village to attend. An invitation for Oraibi chiefs to attend a Washington, D.C., council in 1878 was also rebuffed—the chief at Oraibi said that if the government so wished to consult, the president ought to visit Oraibi.
The intrusion of outsiders like Frank Cushing accelerated rapidly in the 1880s. The Union Pacific Railroad extended down the Little Colorado Valley, establishing the town of Winslow, from which vastly more American goods and visitors traveled northward on horseback and in wagons to visit the mesas. This was especially so after the publication of John Gregory Bourke’s The Snake-Dance of the Moquis of Arizona in 1884. So avid was fascination with a priesthood whose “magic” included the ability to lull rattlesnakes into a slumber that would allow the dancers to perform with them clenched in their mouths that special tours were arranged by the Fred Harvey Company, which had built a hotel in Winslow.
Street in the Pueblo of Oraibi, c. 1888, Tusayan, Arizona, De Lancey W. Gill.
Cultural pressures also intensified with changes in U.S. Indian policy in the 1880s. With the Indian Wars largely in the past (although the Wounded Knee Massacre would take place in 1890), government reformers sought a quick path to acculturation and assimilation for all Indian “wards” of the nation. Even as ethnographers like Cushing sought to preserve ancient “myths and traditions,” reformers sought ways to “kill the Indian, and save the Man.” Foremost among their programs was a belief that the collective ownership of tribal lands, especially suited for market-oriented ranching and farming, stood as a barrier to Indians’ ability to become full-fledged citizens of the United States. Thus a two-pronged program of education for Indian youth toward wage labor and the cash economy, as well as allotment of land to individuals and families and out of clan control, took root in the U.S. Indian affairs policy discussions. Hopi youth who learned English, and the American “system of values,” would help to shape citizen-farmers who could leave traditional ways behind and effect a gradual transition to full citizenship.
In the fall of 1887 the Bureau of Indian Affairs opened a boarding school at the Keams Canyon Agency, thirty-five miles from Oraibi. Schooling would lie at the heart of factionalism that grew increasingly volatile over the next two decades. Hopi Agency superintendent David L. Shipley made clear that the aims of his model of education would be to erode the pagan influences that had stunted Hopi development and instill the light of Christian values among his charges. Little wonder, then, that the oldest and most conservative Hopi village would prove reluctant to send their children away for months at a time, and see them transformed in the manner Shipley proposed.
Oraibi resisted the call for students far more than other villages. Since they had declined annuity goods over the years, the agency had little leverage with which to persuade them. In June 1890, the BIA invited five Hopi village chiefs—Loololma from Oraibi, Simo and Ahnawita from Walpi, Honani from Shungopovi, and Polacca from Walpi—to Washington. In addition to enjoying the National Theater and a session with President Harrison that included ritual tobacco smoking, they traveled to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, and viewed industrial workshops in Terre Haute, Indiana. These leaders came to an agreement with Harrison to accept the government’s education program, Christian missionaries, and the allotment of land in severalty to individual titleholders.
Whether they requested so or not, the government built each leader a model home of stone masonry and pitched, gable roofs, which the Hopis termed palakiki (red houses), as their tin roofs rusted following summer rains. These were to serve as model homes for the “yeoman” farmsteads that the Bureau hoped to see scattered across the Hopi reservation once acculturation was complete. Yet that autumn saw little enthusiasm for the boarding school, with student enrollment ranging from two to eighteen on any given day. Loololma, who seemed deeply impressed with the power of Anglo culture and society after his trip east, was unwilling or unable to convince others, opposing the boarding schoo
l idea, to send their children away. Accordingly, Commissioner of Indian Affairs T. J. Morgan imposed a quota system that would ultimately require each village to furnish seventy-five children to the school, or leaders would suffer arrest and imprisonment. Only after an Army patrol entered Oraibi did the parents form their children in a line. From this group Superintendent Ralph P. Collins seized all he wished, thereby forcing Oraibi to surrender its children to the U.S. government.
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