Blue Highways: Moscow, Idaho

Unfolding the Map

We arrive in Moscow - not Russia, but Idaho!  I haven't even considered doing a Russian book yet...though who knows.  And we feel as good as pigs in s*** because we're in a place that was considered Hog Heaven.  Check out Moscow on the map, and enjoy a little reflection on pigs.

Book Quote

"I spent the night in Hog Heaven, as early settlers called Moscow, Idaho, after they saw the gustatorial excitement pigs got into snorting up camas roots.  Although settlers refused to eat the tubers, they were an Indian staple that helped sustain the Lewis and Clark expedition.

"Citizens later tried to counteract the swinish name by changing it to Paradise, but that was much too unbelievable.  In 1877, a transplanted Easterner applied for a postal permit under the present name to honor Moscow, Pennsylvania. That ended the silliness; but, as best I could tell, many residents, unable to agree whether the last vowel is long or short, don't like the toponym Moscow any better than Hog Heaven."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 1

Downtown Moscow, Idaho. Photo by Wiley1 and hosted at Panoramio. Click on photo to go to host page.

Moscow, Idaho

My wife likes pigs.  I'm waiting for it...  "That's why she married you, Hess."  Okay, fair enough.  I should rephrase that.  My wife likes piglets.  This might not be surprising since she is from Iowa, an agricultural state that has its share of pig farms.  But that isn't why she really likes piglets, because she never grew up on a farm.  She simply likes them because they are cute.  I think it might be related to Piglet from Winnie the Pooh.

Her love for piglets doesn't necessarily extend to their adult versions, when they get big, fat, and sometimes a bit aggressive.  But piglets...she's all over that.

Pigs get a bum rap.  We insult people by calling them pigs.  Pigs are associated with uncleanliness, indolence, gluttony, and other human traits we consider less than desirable.  In the Odyssey, the sorceress Circe turns Odysseus' sailors into pigs after they gorge themselves on her drugged food, as she thought it resembled their nature.  Judaism, Islam and some Christian groups forbid eating pork, though Islam makes an exception in cases of extreme need.  These restrictions are based on the perception of uncleanliness of pigs, and the fact that they tend to scavenge and eat pretty much anything.

But reading this article, I learned that pigs do some amazing things.  They are smarter than dogs, and even smarter than a human three year old.  They dream.  They can solve complex problems.  Pigs learn words and they can recall words even after a few years of not hearing them.  And this is touching.  Mother pigs sing to their piglets while nursing them.  That's right.  Sows sing to their piglets!  Could anything be more touching than that?

I once visited a pig farm in Iowa and held some piglets.  Unfortunately, all the dust in the air made my allergies act up so I wasn't able to spend a lot of time in the pig barn, but holding a piglet was extremely fulfilling.  The piglet nestled into my arms and just lay there, content that it was being held by someone or something.  When I looked over at the mother, she appeared watchful, but not distressed that I was holding her piglet.  It was if she gave me permission to hold it.  I have also watched a huge specimen of porcine bulk trundle his bulk as quickly as he could in answering his name.  His eagerness to come over and see us was actually quite cute, if you could get past the fact that he was huge and not very attractive among the pig set.

On the other hand, pigs have been associated with power and cunning.  The intelligence of the pig is not only evident in its domesticated version, but wild hogs, feral pigs and boars are also known to have keen intelligence and can be quite dangerous.  The boar has been used as an heraldic insignia for throughout the centuries.  Boars were also sacred to the Celtic goddess Arduinna, and in Hindu mythology the third avatar of Vishnu is a boar named Varaha.

In Big Bend National Park, I saw a wild hog called a javelina.  They don't see very well, and I was on a road above the arroyo in which the javelina was sniffing about.  It heard me, and looked around, but because it didn't see me it continued until it disappeared in the underbrush.  I remember it having stripes, and looking nothing like the domesticated pigs I'd seen on farms.  In fact, Texas is trying to figure out what to do with these wild pigs whose population has grown.  A story some years back on that I heard on NPR mentioned that one of the risks of census takers in rural Texas were wild javelinas.

Modern stories about pigs have also touched us.  E.B. White's novel Charlotte's Web was one of the first books to make me cry when I was a young boy, and I got the same kind of feelings when I was older and saw the movie Babe for the first time.  Yes, I'm a romantic softie.

To me, there is nothing better than a good piece of pork.  I like pigs, and I also like to eat them.  Especially a good pulled pork sandwich, or carne adovada which is pork slow-cooked in red chile.  I've found myself, when confronted with a choice between chicken, beef or pork, usually choosing the pork dish.

Given all of the great things about pigs, religious texts notwithstanding, I'm surprised that they are so maligned.  In my imagination, not unlike LHM, I think that a small city in western Idaho could do a lot worse than be known as Hog Heaven.  In fact, give me Hog Heaven over Moscow - no offense to the residents of Moscow.  I just think that Hog Heaven has a hook and might make a person think about visiting just to see what a Hog Heaven actually looks like.

Musical Interlude

Bessie Smith, one of the most powerful chanteuse's ever to sing the blues, did a popular song in the 1930s called Gimme a Pigfoot (and a Bottle of Beer).  She was an amazing artist who was taken before her time in a car wreck, but she knew the value of a pig.  Turn her up and enjoy!

If you want to know more about Moscow

The Argonaut (university newspaper)
City of Moscow
Moscow.com
Moscow-Pullman Daily News (newspaper)
University of Idaho
Wikipedia: Moscow

Next up: Pullman, Washington

Blue Highways: Oraibi, Hopi Reservation

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWilliam Least Heat-Moon (LHM) sees Oraibi, one of the oldest communities in North America.  The Hopi are a people extremely rooted to their place.  In this post, I'll examine what that may mean both in their context.  I'll also speculate on the lessons our modern society can learn from them.  Click on the thumbnail of the map to match Oraibi to your sense of place.

Book Quote

"Clinging to the southern lip of Third Mesa was ancient Oraibi, most probably the oldest continuously occupied village in the United States. Somehow the stone and adobe have been able to hang on to the precipitous edge since the twelfth century. More than eight hundred Hopis lived at Oraibi in 1901 - now only a few. All across the reservation I'd seen no more than a dozen people, and on the dusty streets of the old town I saw just one bent woman struggling against the wind. But somewhere there must have been more."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 2

An old photo of Old Oraibi. There aren't many new photos of Old Oraibi, and I assume it's because the Hopi issue licenses for its use (like many other tribes). Photo at dennisrholloway.com. Click on photo to go to site.

Oraibi, Hopi Reservation

All of the current pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico are very old, with roots that stretch back to the 11th or 12th century, and many abandoned villages and towns throughout the Southwest attest to older settlements that go even farther back.

There is some dispute among the pueblos as to which pueblo has the oldest continuous settlement in North America.  The first pueblo I ever visited was Taos Pueblo, when I was on vacation in New Mexico in 1999.  They claimed that they had the oldest continuous pueblo settlement in North America.  Naturally, I took them at their word - I didn't know anything about them at the time anyway.  However, after I moved to New Mexico, I visited Acoma Pueblo and they claimed to be the oldest continuous settlement.  They even prefaced their assertion with "Taos will tell you that they are the oldest settled village in North America, but...".  The tour guide at Acoma said that Taos was abandoned for a few years, while Acoma always had some residents, thus Acoma was the oldest.  And now that I've done a little research, the Hopi settlement at Oraibi also makes a claim for oldest continuous settlement in North America.  Which is true?

The answer probably is that we can't truly know, and to me it doesn't matter much anyway.  That these settlements are old is unquestionably true.  They were established for hundreds of years by the time that the Spanish arrived at Zuni Pueblo looking for the seven cities of Cibola.  In what almost seems to be a hilarious case of trying to get an unwelcome guest out of the house, the Zuni people, after the Spanish were disappointed to not find a gleaming city of gold, told the conquistadores that there was a cluster of seven cities farther to the northwest, thus sending them to the Hopis.  The Hopis were willing to consider that the Spanish fit into their mythology of the return of the Pahana, the long lost white brother to the Hopi people, but soon became disenchanted when all of the expected signs and symbols of the Pahana didn't materialize through the Spanish.

In the Hopi mythology, the Earth Caretaker spread the people far and wide but told the Hopi that after a period of migration they would, upon viewing a giant star, establish a village named Oraibi.  The location of the village would then be where the Hopi became a prosperous people benefitting forever from their surroundings.  The Hopi are therefore very tied to place.  In fact, all the pueblo tribes appear to be very connected to their surroundings.  Unlike a lot of Native American tribes, which were nomadic or semi-nomadic and followed the game that sustained them, the pueblo peoples rooted down, built dwellings, and dry farmed.  In one section of this chapter of Blue Highways, LHM writes that he's not sure how the Hopi live in such a "severe land."  A trip to Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, ancient ruins of the ancestors of the Hopi, or Bandelier National Monument in the same state, or Mesa Verde in Colorado, or Walnut Canyon in Arizona, seems to only reinforce this mystery. These places today are very dry and hot.  The answer is twofold.  First, the climate was a little wetter back in the time that these places were being established.  However drought and climate changes occurred that severely affected the ability of those communities and in some places led to the abandonment of many settlements.  Second, the people perfected the art of dry farming.  Dry farming is farming without the use of irrigation - the dry farmer learns to farm where there is little natural rainfall, saving a surplus in abundant years for those years that are lean.  Unless there is severe drought, dry farming can sustain small communities.  By subsisting on agriculture, a people must become attached to their chosen place because it is the soil and the climate that will sustain them.

Oraibi is also the locus of the return of the Pahana, the lost brother of the Hopi upon whose return they expect to gain much wisdom from what he will teach them.  The Hopis have been awaiting the Pahana for some centuries - he was prophesied to return sometime in the 16th century.  Many contenders, first Spanish and then American, who have visited the Hopi have not proved to be the Pahana.  However, this belief in the Pahana's return also ties the Hopi to their place.  If they leave, how will the Pahana find them?

Finally, Hopi ceremonies and traditions further bind them to their place in the universe, though as modernization continues, traditions die out.  According Scott Peterson, in his book Native American Prophecies, the traditional ceremonies of some Hopi villages have disappeared, though the Kachina ceremonies have remained in all villages.  This may be a sign of koyanisqatsi - a loss of balance in the world.  Such a sign may signal the imminent return of the Pahana, and perhaps the dawn of a new world.

Most of us in one way or another are tied to place, whether it's the home where we grew up or where as adults we make our meals, lay down to sleep and raise our families.  Some of us "light out for the territories," to quote Mark Twain, in order to find a place that we are pointed toward that we hope will be our physical, mental, and spiritual home.  Some of us await the day, on a personal level, when we will be visited by inspiration or the answer to our inner questions about ourselves and our lives: a revelation or, perhaps, our personal Pahana?  Some of us await the arrival of a prophet or a Messiah or some other spiritual leader who will purify the world, elevate those of us who are elect and create a new one out of the ashes.  On a more mundane level, we go about our daily lives, doing what we need to do, some more successfully than others, and in the end we hope that our lives are meaningful to one or to many.  We cultivate our salaries, others' wisdom, personal learning, understanding, others' love and assistance.   We hope to store up a surplus of those things for the lean years.  When life gets out of balance, we suffer.  Some of us remain in our pain and misery.  Those of us with insight and courage strive to put the world back into balance and our lives right once again.

The Hopi, perched on the edge of mesas in the desert, have much to teach us about ourselves and our societies through their beliefs and their prophesies.  If we don't heed their lessons, however, we benefit anyway because, as Peterson writes, "the practice of Hopi religion is considered to be absolutely essential for the survival of everything on earth....That is why Anglos and other visitors have traditionally been permitted to view many of their ceremonials which are held throughout the year.  Because the Hopi dance and pray for everyone."

The Hopi stand large for the burden they take on for the rest of us.  It's not often that a whole culture advocates with the cosmos for the well-being of all their fellow humans.  The Hopi do it every day.  For that, and for myself, I thank them.

Musical Interlude

This group came to mind as I was doing this post.  The San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble (SAVAE) did a an album called Native Angels, which was music written in the Aztec language, in many cases taking Christian themes.  It has the distinction of being some of the first Christian music ever performed in the Western hemisphere. While the Hopis, to the frustration of missionaries, never completely converted to Christianity, the language of this music is Nuahatl, the language of the Aztecs and related to the Hopi language.

If you want to know more about Oraibi

Ghosttowns.com: Oraibi
TheNaturalAmerican.com: Basket Dance at Old Oraibi
Southwest Crossroads: Oraibi Before the Split
Wikipedia: Oraibi

Next up: Hotevilla, Hopi Reservation