Moqui
mo'ki, a tribe of North American Indians. The native name is Hopi, meaning peaceful people; but the present name of Moqui, by which the tribe is known, is an Apache nickname signifying "dead men." The Moqui live in northern Arizona. They were visited by Coronado in 1540. They revolted against the Spaniards in 1680 and regained their independence. The Moqui country may be reached from Winslow or Holbrook on the Santa Feroute by an overland journey of eighty miles across the Painted Desert.
The Indians, some 1,600 in number, live in eight villages built on three projecting points or precipitous mesas of a vast table land. It is six miles from the first mesa to the second, and ten miles farther on to the third. The villages consist of large houses or pueblos built of stone laid in mortar. The buildings are wide and are several stories high. The successive stories are narrower, so that an outline of the edifice looks like huge steps. In early days logs were used for floor joists, and entrance to the various stories was gained by ladders and trapdoors through the ceiling. On the approach of an enemy, the villagers not only defended the steep pathways up the faces, 700 feet high, of the mesa, but, if pressed too hard, were wont to climb up their ladders to the roofs of the houses, pull their ladders after them, and drop down through their "skylights" into safety within. Now that the Navajo and the Apache ride their raids no more, the Hopi, as they should be called, are cutting doors and windows through the walls.
The principal industry of Hopi land is agriculture. The soil is sandy and dry. There is no water for irrigation. About 2,500 acres are planted in corn each year. This is a small corn yielding not over ten bushels to the acre, but it furnishes the chief article of diet. Spanish missionaries introduced the peach. A thousand acres are set with peach orchards. There are gardens of beans, melons, squashes, pumpkins, onions, and sunflowers. Small quantities of wheat, cotton, and tobacco are raised. The men, contrary to ordinary Indian custom, do the greater part of the agricultural work. In time of food scarcity, mescal, which is a sort of cactus, together with other plants of the desert, is eaten. The hunters sally out also for jackrabbits, prairie dogs, and coyotes.
The Hopi own flocks of sheep and goats and a few cattle. Wool is sold to Indian traders or is woven into blankets. The Hopi taught the Navajos to weave and are now excelled by them, but still the Hopi blanket is a serviceable article. The men do the weaving and keep the blankets for home use. The Hopi are famous for pottery and baskets. These articles are made by the women. The basketry is made of stained native grasses and the fibers of the aloe. The decorations of the earthenware and the patterns of the baskets and plaques have each its own significance, for the old men and women hand down an ancient mythology all their own.
These people are, of course, superstitious. It is not strange in a land of drouth that they should venerate the power that causes a spring to flow or a stream to run even temporarily. Like the Greeks, they propitiate a local deity for each fountain, each stream, each pool. They practice incantations for clouds, for rains, for crops, for the averting of epidemics. The villagers are divided into clans, and each clan is held to see to it that the deities of a particular clan take no offense. The great ceremonial of the year is the snake dance. This dance is performed by the snake clan of each village. Live rattlesnakes are carried by the dancers and are released at the proper time, that they may go far down into the earth and influence the great Snake Mother to release the reservoir of waters by which the clouds are fed. Occasionally a dancer is bitten, but the squaws have an infallible herb antidote for snake bites. The method of preparation is a religious secret which no white man may share.
Most unusual of all is the superior position of the squaw. She is the house-owner, the head of the family. Marriageable maidens wear the hair in large, open whorls, one over each ear. The whorl represents a squash blossom, the Hopi emblem of virginity. These whorls are taken down on the wedding day and henceforth the squaw wears her hair in two rolls, one hanging on each side of her face. These represent the fruit of the squash, emblem of fertility. Inscriptions found in the cliff dwellings indicate that this picturesque custom was once common among southwestern tribes, but it lingers now only among the Hopi. Marriages are arranged by the women folks. On his wedding day the Hopi brave goes to live in the house of his wife. She owns the household gear, present and future. The children are known by her name. The men are said to be smaller than the women and less bright. The men, as stated, do their full share of work. They labor in the field, they weave, they knit, and are in general much more dutiful than the ordinary aboriginal husband.