Native to Arizona, the Hopi tribe are one of the Native American tribes that have thrived in the Southwestern part of America since as far back as the 16th century.
Over the centuries, the tribe has faced the rigors of survival from Maguire, rival tribes, the Spanish, and the Americans.
But despite all of the challenges the tribe has been confronted by, they survive today with a 20,000-strong population.
How did this come to be? We review the history of the tribe from pre-European contact to the present day.
Hopi Tribe History
Pre-European Contact
The Hopi tribe descend from the Anasazi or the Ancestral Puebloans, who thrived in territories that extended through the four corners of the United States (the territories of the Ancestral Puebloans covered northeastern parts of Arizona, southwestern Utah, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern part of Colorado).
The Anasazi are believed to have lived in the Mogollon Rim between the 12 -14th century.
After this period, it is believed that the culture of the tribe may have dissolved, to form other smaller bands of tribes such as the Pueblo and Hopi tribes.
The tribe lived in the southwestern part of present-day America after emerging from the Anasazi.
It led to a pro-native lifestyle which consisted of hunting, cultivating, and fending off raids from rival tribes.
However, contact with Europeans greatly affected the tribe’s lifestyle.
European Contact (17th – 18th Century)
The first contact the Hopi had with the Europeans can be traced to 1540 A.D. when Spanish General Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, who was living with the Zuni, learned about the Hopi tribe who lived nearby.
In the true nature of exploring, the Spanish thus set out to make contact with the tribe, and thus the tribe’s village of Awatovi played host to the first European visiting the tribe.
A few years after the tribe’s first interaction with the Spanish, García López de Cárdenas, a Spanish explorer investigating the Rio Grande, made contact with the American Indian tribe.
The recorded interaction between Cárdenas and the tribe showed that they were hospitable to him Abd his men and directed him on his journey.
Between 1582 – 1583 another Spanish explorer, Antonio de Espejo, made contact with the Hopis.
Espejo noted that they were about five Hopi villages, and their number was estimated at 12,000.
Though the Spanish exploration of the southwestern part of the U.S.U.S. led to the colonization of the regions, military forces, and settlers were never sent to the tribe’s land.
The Spanish visits to the tribe were random and spread through several years, but they were different as they never settled in the tribe’s land.
Another factor that saved the tribe from the brutal weight of Spanish colonizers is that the Native American tribe did not live near lands through which the Rio Grande river could be accessed.
However, the Spanish parties were often accompanied by Catholic friars and missionaries.
At the start of the 17th century, friars who arrived in the Hopi territory erected a church in the Awatovi village.
While the Hopis were spared from the heavy hand of the Spanish settlers, contact with Europeans inflicted pain on the tribe.
The Roman Catholic priests who arrived in the tribe’s territories recorded little success in converting the Hopis to Christianity.
They thus resorted to persecuting the tribe for practicing their religion.
The oppression faced by the Hopis by the Spanish was not limited to religious persecution but extended to the enslavement of the tribe by the Spanish.
This continuous gross abuse of the tribe’s population by the Spanish made resentment grow among the Hopis and surrounding Pueblo tribes.
There were multiple instances in which the highhandedness of Spanish priests led to the death of many of the tribe members.
A historical documentary points to an instance in 1655 where Salvador de Guerra, a Franciscan priest, beat a Hopi man named Juan Cuna to death.
The priest was forcefully relocated to Mexico City as punishment.
Another instance of the oppression the tribe faced from the Spanish priests occurred in 1656 when a Hopi tribe man named Juan Suñi impersonated the Awatovi resident priest, Alonso de Posada.
The act, which was believed to be carried out in Hopi clowning spirit, led to the man being sent to Santa Fe as an indentured servant.
Persecution of the tribe’s member did not yield results, as the only reasonable conversion among the tribe took place in Awatovi.
These gross mistreatment of the Hopis and other pueblo tribes soon saw calls for a revolt against the Spanish gain massive support.
With the support of the Pueblo tribe, the Pueblo revolt began, and the village of Awatovi was burnt, resulting in the death of all the soldiers, priests, friars, and Catholic missionaries.
All the churches and buildings reserved for missionaries were entirely dismantled.
The Pueblo Revolt proved to be so massive that the Catholic missionaries and priests never returned, and the Spanish had to spend 20 years reasserting control over the Pueblo territories.
At the start of the 1700s, the Spanish friars began building a small church in the village of Awatovi.
This was matched by an immediate response from teams of men from other Hopi villages, who ransacked the village, killed all the men, relocated the women and children, and destroyed the village.
This marked heightened defiance against the Spanish colonizers, who never established their domain in Hopi territory.
19th – 20th Century
With the Mexico-US war, in which the U.S. emerged as the victor, the Hopis’ interaction shifted from the Spanish to the Americans.
The tribe’s relations with the Americans were through the Indian Affairs Agency, and the first recorded meeting between the Hopis tribe and representatives of the U.S. government was in 1850.
The tribe’s delegation included six Hopi leaders and their leader, Nakwaiyamtewa, who met with the official Indian Affairs Agent James S, Calhoun at the then headquarters of the Indian Affairs in Santa Fe.
The motive behind the tribe’s delegation to the Americans was to seek protection against the Navajos.
The result of the Hopi delegation to the Americans was the 1851 establishment of Fort Defiance in Navajo territory to reduce the tribe the Navajos posed to the Hopis.
The establishment of the Fort and the Long Walk of the Navajo, where they were forced to reside in a settlement allocated to them by the U.S. government, saw them thrive in peace.
Despite their past experiences with foreign religions, the tribe welcomed Mormons who arrived in their territory in 1847.
The Mormons had a good relationship with the tribe members, which led to the construction of a Latter-Day Saint in 1875 on the tribe’s territory.
The gradual acceptance of American culture by the American Indian tribe members soon saw the tribe embrace American education.
The foundation for this was formed when the tribe’s leaders visited President Chester A. Arthur in the U.S.U.S. capital and were greatly impressed by the grandeur of Washington D.CD.C.
By 1887, the Hopi children began attending a federal boarding school in Keams Canyon. Not all members of the tribe supported the schooling arrangement, such as the Oraibi people.
At the school, Hopi children were forced to embrace the European-American lifestyle while abandoning their culture.
The children with long hair cut were forced to speak English and abandon their traditional clothing, language, and names.
They were also taught the art of carpentry, farming, sewing, ironing, and modern dining. The children were also forced to attend the American Baptist Home Mission Society services.
The visit of Thomas Jefferson Morgan, the Indian commissioner to Hopi territory, led to the U.S. issuing threats that parents whose children didn’t attend the school would be arrested, and also led to the forceful enrollment of several Hopi children in the school.
On December 16, 1882, an executive order by President Chester A. Arthur saw the Hopi reservation established in the middle of the Navajo reservation.
The reservation, which was an 88.5 by 110 km rectangle, did not protect the Hopis from conflicts with the Navajos over land. The dispute was thus brought before the U.S Senate Committee on Internal and Insular Affairs.
To solve the issue of conflict over the vast land covering 1,800,000 acres, the Dawes act, which saw communal lands, allotted individual households.
This was, however, detrimental to the tribe, whose farms were destroyed by the allotment.
The Oraibi was particularly reluctant to embrace American policies, especially about sending their children to school.
Despite establishing the Oraibi Day School in 1893, the Oraibi still needed to be more willing to send their children to school.
This, and several more resistance from the tribe, led the U.S. government to crack down on hostility on Hopi territory, resulting in a one-year detention of 19 tribe members hostile to Alcatraz prison.
The Oraibi hostile also had a dispute with the Hopi tribes at the dawn of the 20th century, which saw those against U.S. policies leave to form the Hotevilla village.
This led to the classic action of natives who were against the American policies as hostile, while those in support as friendlies.
The 20th century saw the establishment of farming bureaus, clinics, and schools on Hopi reservations. The Hopis gained U.S.U.S. Citizenship with the passing of the 1924 Indian Citizenship Acts.
In 1834, the tribe, through the Indian Reorganization Act, established a tribal constitution and government and created a Tribal council two years later.
The constitution, which has 13 articles relating to the legislative, judiciary, and executive arms of governments, as well as membership and territory, makes the tribe a sovereign state in the U.S. but still bonded by U.S.U.S. laws.
Hopi Tribe Culture
Social dynamics
The tribe operated matrilineal social dynamics. Children from a marital union are often regarded as belonging to the wife’s clan.
The clans are interwoven and sometimes extend to many villages within the tribe.
Women from the clan of the father are tasked with naming a child.
This is done on the 20th day after childbirth when the women of the paternal clan come with gifts and names for the child.
This practice thus makes it possible for a child to bear as many as 40 names.
However, the child’s parents wield the authority of choosing which name to be used for the child.
Name change, when initiated into religious societies or after a significant period in a person’s life in the tribe, is very common.
Modern-day practice is to assign an English or non-Hopi name or a Hopi name chosen by the parent.
Ceremonies
The Hopi tribe included a complete cycle of traditional ceremonies.
The ceremonies are per the lunar calendar and are held in all tribe villages.
One such ceremony is the “Snake Dance” or Kachina rites, an annual ceremony that involves performers dancing with a snake.
Modern practices and religion have influenced the tribe, leading to numerous conversions to Christianity and the loss of their culture.
Lifestyle
The tribe, unlike their Navajo neighbors, cultivated the ground.
They engage in subsistence farming, and in recent times many have embraced the modern lifestyle of mainstream jobs.
The tribe members also create Hopi art which is sold.
These arts include the production of sterling silver and fine jewelry, earthenware ceramics crafting, and Kachina doll carving.
The tribe consumes the Hopi tea, a native perennial shrub known as the eagle’s green thread (Thelesperma megapotamicum).
The plant serves medicinal purposes in the tribe.
Hopi Tribe Facts
1. The tribe’s name translates to “peaceful people” in English.
Hopi, pronounced “hopee,” means “peaceful people,” and in line with the tribe’s name, they try to maintain peaceful relations with rivals.
They resort to violence to protect themselves but seek peaceful ways to address disputes.
2. The Hopi tribe has a high rate of occurrence of albinism.
Albinism in the tribe is very common and, in certain clans, more common than others.
In west villages and Second Mesa, for every 200 people, there is at least one albino.
3. Children in Hopi culture can have up to 40 names
The Hopi culture assigns the women from the paternal clan the right to name a child on the 20th day after birth.
This thus allows a child to be given as many as 40 names, but the name to be used is chosen by the parents from the vast number of names given.
4. The Hopi and Navajos have a deep-seated rivalry.
The bone of contention in recent times has often been disputed lands.
The rivalry between the Hopis and the Navajo dates back to the 16th century, and even as recently as 2014, both tribes still are at loggerheads.
Both tribes often seek legal measures to claim ownership of lands in reservations where they thrive.
Conclusion
The unique culture of the Hopis and its continual progress to this day points to how culture, against all odds, would strive to survive as long as the people firmly hold on to their heritage.
