Blue Highways: Hotevilla, Hopi Reservation

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapA little bit of a rambling, somewhat disjointed post for you this time, covering cops, wind, tumbleweeds, and journeys as destinations.  Also a little bit of original poetry, and The Marvelettes.  What would a "thought" blog about literature be without some jumping around once in a while?  Click on the thumbnail of the map to learn where Hotevilla is located.

Book Quote

"A tribal squadcar checked my speed at Hotevilla, where the highway started a long descent off the mesa. The wind was getting up, and tumbleweed bounded across the road, and sand hummed against the Ghost. West, east, north, south - to each a different weather: sandstorm, sun, rain, and bluish snow on the San Francisco Peaks, that home of the Kachinas who are the spiritual forces of Hopi life."

Blue Highways:  Chapter 5, Part 2

Water tower in Hotevilla, Hopi Reservation. Photo by "nativeone28" and hosted at Panoramio. Click on photo to go to host page.Hotevilla, Hopi Reservation

I have been stopped by police twice in my life.  One was when I was in high school.  Our road had a new stop sign on it, but people in my neighborhood who were used to driving straight through with no stops usually ignored the stop sign.  It got so bad that they stationed a highway patrol car just out of sight.  One night, I think I was around 16 at the time, I did a rolling stop where I didn't really come to a complete stop.  All of a sudden there were flashing lights.  The patrolman did the patrolman thing - he asked me if I knew why he stopped me - and I knew but it was all new to me and I was a bit intimidated.  But he let me go with a warning.

The second time was about 3 years ago.  I was traveling back to my job in Lubbock from Albuquerque after a weekend of seeing my wife.  About 30 miles across the Texas line, I was pulled over by a state trooper.  He had clocked me going 75 in a 65 mile an hour zone.  There wasn't much traffic on the road and it was probably about 11:00 at night, so he let me off with a warning also.

The interesting thing about that drive was that it was very reminiscent of LHM's description of tumbleweeds and sand.  Tumbleweeds may be a symbol of the old West, but when you drive through a windstorm and there are dozens of them blowing across the road, they are a bit of a menace.  They can also do some pretty heavy damage to your car.  If you hit one just right, it can puncture a radiator or an oil pan.  At night, they seemed to often fly out of nowhere right at you.  When I would drive the stretch between Fort Sumner and Santa Rosa, New Mexico where there was lots and lots of open land and no buildings, it was almost as if the night were throwing the tumbleweeds at me, testing my ability to dodge and weave. 

Living in New Mexico is probably a lot like living on the Hopi Reservation.  The area is arid, and windy.  The wind usually blows from the west, kicking up the dry sand.  As I write this, today we are having sixty mile-per-hour gusts outside, and the horizon is obscured because of all the dust and grit in the air.  Walking outside leaves grit in your mouth and in your teeth.  To me, the four directions in New Mexico are as such:  north-coolness; east-mountains; south-hotness; west-wind.  The wind here, especially in spring, is a force to be reckoned with.  It gets into your head.  I ride a bike as my transportation to and from work, and the worst part of my ride in the spring is that in the morning, the wind is blowing against me on my downhill ride to the office, and in the afternoon it has switched around to oppose me on my ride home.

I imagine that living on a mesa, one might cling to the land because it might seem that if one stops clutching, one might be blown off the mesa into the ether.  If one believes in cloud people as the Hopi believe in the Kachina, I can see how easy it would be to believe that the wind could carry us if we don't hold on for dear life.  If it can carry the Kachina on their journeys to the Hopi people in order to teach and convey important messages, it might also take us ordinary folk away to places or worlds unknown.  It is better to hold ourselves down here than face that kind of unknown.

But for me, the choice is between being a stone, affixed to the earth and slowly being worn away by the elements piece by piece until there is nothing left of me, or being a tumbleweed and being blown about to places the wind wants to take me.  At times in my life, such as now, I want to be rooted to a place and not move.  At other times, I want to be like LHM, riding along in my van like a tumbleweed to places unknown.  Either way, as long as I'm happy in what I'm doing, it's all good.

I'll inflict another poem on you that I wrote, which gets to this kind of feeling and fits with my reflection on wind also.  I wrote it after breaking up with someone:

Autumn Thoughts

A click, and then a lifeless, droning hum
As I dropped my phone, now overcome with shock;
I walked outside, into the setting sun
And sat upon the grass with burdened thoughts.

A cavalcade of brightly colored leaves
Ran helter-skelter down the somber street,
Driven by a soft, yet forceful breeze
That pushed them onward to an unknown fate.

How I wished that I could join them there,
And also dance away my lonely grief,
Until, with growing pain, I was aware,
That life is but the wind, and I a leaf.

I thought of love and loss, and thus entranced,
Ran out into the street to join the dance.

Michael L. Hess

A friend told me today that her revelation is that the journey is the destination.  I'm still thinking about that and what it means, but somehow, it makes complete sense.  We are all on journeys, but sometimes, the journey and not the destination is what we need to understand ourselves and our lives.

Musical Interlude

Not sure why, but The Marvelettes' hit song Destination Anywhere is speaking to me right now.  Enjoy!

If you want to know more about Hotevilla

Final Message from Hotevilla by Hopi Eldest Elder Dan Evehema
Truth of a Hopi: How Hotevilla and Bakabi were founded
Wikipedia: Hotevilla-Bacavi

Next up: Tuba City, Navajo Nation

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

Blue Highways: Hopi Cultural Center, Hopi Reservation

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe stop with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) at the Second Mesa where the Hopi have their Cultural Center.  While you rest there, I will muse and ponder on some religious, philosophical questions, based on a little knowledge of Hopi myth, about balance in self and world.  I humbly beg your indulgence, and hope it might cause you to think about balance in your own life.  Are you able or not to keep balance in your life?  Click on the thumbnail of the map to your right to see where we are currently balanced on our literary journey.

Book Quote

"Like bony fingers, three mesas reached down from larger Black Mesa into the middle of Hopi land; not long ago, the only way onto these mesas was by handholds in the steep rock heights.  From the tops, the Hopi look out upon a thousand square miles.  At the heart of the reservation, topographically and culturally, was Second Mesa.  Traditionally, Hopis, as do the eagles they hold sacred, prefer to live on precipices; so it was not far from the edge of Second Mesa that they built the Hopi Cultural Center.  In the gallery were drawings of mythic figures by Hopi children who fused centuries and cultures with grotesque Mudhead Kachinas wearing large terra-cotta masks and jackolantern smiles, dancing atop spaceships with Darth Vader and Artoo Detoo."

Blue Highways: Chapter 5, Part 2

View from Second Mesa near the Hopi Cultural Center. Photo by Susie Vanderlip at Legacy of Hope. Click on photo to go to site.

Hopi Cultural Center, Hopi Reservation

To prepare for this set of posts, I read a little on Hopi prophecy.  Okay, I happened to be at the library, saw a book on Native American prophecies, Native American Prophecies by Scott Peterson, opened it, and found a chapter on the Hopi prophecy of Pahana.  It was quite fortuitous, because I really wasn't sure what I was going to write about since I have never been to the Hopi Reservation, and my knowledge of some of the other pueblos to which they are related was only going to go so far.

After reading a synopsis of the Hopi creation story, and about the prophecy that helps define their culture and how they view the world, and then how historic and modern events play into or jar against that prophecy, I am left with some broader philosophical questions.  Perhaps these would be answered by a visit to the Second Mesa and the Hopi Cultural Center, or perhaps not.  But, since I am not really taking a trip but am riding shotgun with LHM by reading about his journey, I hope you will indulge me a little philosophical speculation and musing.

First, a quick rundown of the Hopi creation myth and prophecy.  The Hopi believe that we all live in the Fourth World, and before that, humans lived in the Third World inside the earth.  They were happy until that world got out of balance due to selfishness, greed, power, and licentiousness that affected everyone from the leaders on down.  The leaders, seeking another and better world, sent out animal and bird emissaries, and a sparrow found a hole in the sky and flew through into our world, which was dark.  There the bird met the Earth's caretaker who initially refused the people's entrance into this world but eventually relented when told that only the good ones would come.  The people planted a bamboo reed and climbed inside it up to the hole in the sky and crawled through the sipapu into our world.  There, they were taught how to plant and to live simply and in balance with the earth.  The caretaker gave gifts of corn to all of the people, but only the Hopi showed the wisdom to choose the smaller ears of blue corn.  The caretaker then scattered the people to the different directions, and the Hopi were told that after a period of migration, they would see a star and the star would guide them to a place, on the backbone of the earth, where they were to build their village and live in harmony with each other and in abundance from their environment.

What really strikes me about this creation myth is that it seems to touch upon common themes that accompany many other creation myths.  It seems that there is a powerful message in these synchronous myths - one that we continually fail to heed.  The long and short of it, to me, is that humans once lived in an almost perfect state, and then we screwed it up.  Whether humans came out of the earth after messing up the Third World, or were cast out of Eden after screwing up there, or any other creation story where humans have to fall or fail before rising again, it seems that over and over we are reminded of how things once were better until we started getting arrogant and upsetting the balance.  Balance is important in the world, and we often forget the whole in our minimal perception of the part that affects only us.  The effects of our choices on our physical and social environment, even to those we cannot see, especially harmful ones due to our selfish actions, is something that is continually addressed in our creation myths, and we ignore them.

These creation myths also, for me at least, point to our inner selves.  We were born into a state of innocence.  At some point, when we start making choices, we lose that innocence, especially when we learn that a choice is bad and suffer some kind of punishment for it.  Sometimes, our innocence is taken by others.  Childhood abuse is a way we lose our innocence, for example.  Or when we are adults and some violence is visited upon us.  But at some point, even if we've had hardships in life, our choices become our own.  We've all known people that seem to create their own miseries.  They live out patterns that may have been started by a traumatic experience that is not their fault, but through their choices they continue to create trauma and drama in their lives and others' lives.  I relate to that, because I too was a victim in early life, but as an adult, I cannot fall back on that excuse any more.  My abusers can't be blamed for any of my decisions as an adult.  Any bad choices I have made of my own free will that have upset the balance in my life and have caused me pain, and I've made a few of them in my life, are my responsibility alone.

I'm beginning to understand that when we make choices, we start to live the lives we make.  Many of us can make happy lives, a few of us make ourselves miserable over and over again and put the responsibility on others.  We can cast blame about for the terrible things that have happened to us that are out of our control, but when we make choices we can continue the patterns of trauma or stop the self-destructive tendencies that permeate our lives and put us out of balance.  We are capable of making good choices or bad ones, and if we make bad ones, then what happens after the choice is made cannot be laid at anyone's feet but our own.

My sister, who is a sort of wiccan mystic and clairvoyant, told me that she believes that souls are reincarnated over and over because they are curious and want to explore almost every possible experience.  She tries to encourage my soul to move to a better place.  Buddhists, it is my understanding, believe that our actions in a present life determines whether we are reincarnated with more understanding and wisdom.  For Hindus, reincarnation allows us to move from lower lots in life to higher ones if we don't screw up - then karma will send us tumbling back.  Judeo-Christians, of course, believe that when we die, if we were good in life we will be rewarded with everlasting life in heaven.  All of these beliefs add up to a belief in a progression based on doing well, on staying in balance in our inner and outer lives.

Peterson's book says that the religious beliefs of the Hopi about inner and outer balance govern almost all of their actions.  I, for one, could learn much from their world view, because I suffer when my life gets out of balance, and I am happiest when it is in balance.  The Kachinas, which LHM mentions above, are the Hopi equivalent of saints who live among the mountains and fly down as clouds and take human form among the people.  They warn the Hopi of the consequences if they lose sight of the balance of world and self.  I could use some Kachinas in my life, especially during my times of distress.  Perhaps they are around me, and try to help me, but I just don't listen when they speak to me.

Musical Interlude

I wanted to put a different Bruce Cockburn song here, called Hills of Morning, which I thought actually fits a little better, but I couldn't find it online.  This one, Creation Dream, will do nicely.  Though sung from a Christian perspective, I think it captures the essence of creation...a power or reality beyond our imagining and all for good.  If creation is corrupted, it is we who corrupt it.

If you want to know more about the Hopi Cultural Center

Hopi Cultural Center Website

Next up:  Oraibi, Hopi Reservation

Blue Highways: Polacca, Hopi Reservation

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe are now traveling with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) through miles and miles of reservation.   We are still in Arizona, but we are on sovereign nations within the state. We pass through the Navajo Nation and in the middle of it, we find the Hopi Reservation.  We'll slow down as we pass by Polacca, and think about how tribes like the Hopi are trying to preserve their culture and teach others about it, all while holding on to those things that ensure their ways of life and traditions will last.  To see where we've come, click on the map thumbnail at right.

Book Quote

"Although the Hopi have lived here far longer than any other surviving people and consider their mile-high spread of rock and sand, wind and sun, the center of the universe, they are now, by Anglo decree, surrounded by their old enemies, the Navajo, a people they see as latecomers.

"Holding on to their land has been a long struggle for the Hopi....But recently they have fought Navajo expansion in federal courts, and a strange case it is:  those who settled first seeing judgment from those who came later thorugh laws of those who arrived last.

"Because the Navajo prefer widely dispersed clusters of clans to village life, I'd seen nothing resembling a hamlet for seventy-five miles.  But Hopi Polacca almost looked like a Western town in spite of Indian ways here and there:  next to a floral-print bedsheet on a clothesline hung a coyote skin, and beside box houses were adobe bread ovens shaped like skep beehives.  The Navajo held to his hogan, the Hopi to his oven.  Those things persisted."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 2

Photo taken at Polacca, Hopi Reservation, by Marc Davis. It can be found on his photostream at Flickr. Click on photo to go to the site.Polacca, Hopi Reservation

Though I've never been on the Hopi Reservation, I have been on the Navajo Reservation that surrounds it when my wife and I camped at Canyon de Chelly and made two tours down into the canyon.  That doesn't tell me anything about the Hopi people because as LHM suggests, the Navajo and the Hopi are two different peoples and are historic enemies of one another.  My understanding of the Navajo, which may be wrong, is that they tend to be a pastoral and nomadic people that are relatively solitary.  That doesn't mean they couldn't be violent in the past, and they were known to raid other tribes and white settlers in the area.  However, like most other Indian tribes, they were constantly deprived of more and more land whenever the U.S. government renegotiated treaties.  Living in New Mexico, one is constantly reminded of the role that Kit Carson played in New Mexico history, one of which was the Long Walk, a sad and outrageous act of forcing the Navajo off of their tribal lands and compelling them to travel by foot to eastern New Mexico, a trip of 18 days.  There, they were forced to live for four years before being allowed to return to their homes.

The Hopi, as I understand, are related to the pueblo Indians of New Mexico and are the earlier inhabitants of the region.  I am more familiar with the pueblo peoples because I've had more experience of their history and culture.  The Hopi differ from the Navajo, it seems to me, in that they are particularly tied to their place, the three mesas upon which they live.  They speak their own particular language that is unrelated to the language groupings of the other puebloan peoples, and within their language they have at least four dialects.

I have visited three pueblos: Acoma, Zuni and Taos.  I've only passed by or through some others.  These pueblos are interesting in terms of their adobe dwellings, which were almost like apartments in that singular dwellings adjoined and attached other dwellings both horizontally and vertically.  Each pueblo can be distinguished by many things, including its artwork such as pottery and jewelry.  Zuni inlay jewelry, for instance, is an amazing thing to behold and continually fascinates me when I see it.

Many of the Puebloan peoples claim descent from the Native people that built and maintained the amazing community and religious complex at Chaco Canyon, a place that made a huge impression on me when I visited.  The mysteries of this place are still being uncovered, but the scale of the ruins and their perfect alignment with the paths of the sun and the moon are incredible for a people without modern sighting equipment.  The remains of roads have been excavated that run remarkably straight over mesas and down and up cliffs to connect distant and far flung villages to the main religious and community areas of Chaco Canyon.  If a cliff created an obstacle, then the Chacoans simply carved "staircases," little more than handholds, into the cliff.

Nowadays, some of the pueblos seeking the tourist dollar have slick and well-developed tours.  I'm not sure if the Hopis have created that yet, but Taos Pueblo with its three and four story adobe apartment buildings, and Acoma Pueblo situated 300 feet high above the valley floor on a small mesa, have really honed the art of giving really nice, informative tours and enticing people to buy native arts crafts as well as learn something of their culture.

However, one of my best pueblo experiences was at Zuni, which has definitely not developed its tourism too much yet.  We rode on a bus from the Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque to Zuni, about three hours west, and took a tour of the village.  There was a church with amazing kachina art inside that is in danger of decay.  A walk through the village showed both the ancient and the modern as we viewed the unpaved town square where, at the time, cars and trucks passed through occasionally but during festivals would be lined with rows of people, some even congregated on rooftops.  We passed down a way where Zuni women still used the horno, the adobe oven borrowed from the Spanish (who borrowed it from the Moors), to bake amazing mouth-watering loaves of bread.  The tour was simple, comprehensive, and really focused on a way of life that, as in all tribes, is in danger from modern influences. 

I loved it.  I hope that the Hopi people have found a balance between tourism and their traditional ways of life.  Even as they are surrounded by their ancient enemies, and subject to a government that has shown throughout its history at best a lack of caring for native peoples and at worst a rapaciousness toward their lands and belongings, I hope that if I were to ever visit the mesas I would see a people able to take the best of what modern life can bring without losing what defines them.

Musical Interlude

I found this song on YouTube, sung by a Hopi elder and medicine woman named Roanna Kagenveama, called the Hopi Women's Eagle Song.  She is from Polacca.  Let her voice bring you with us to the windswept Hopi homeland.

If you want to know more about Polacca or the Hopi

Hopi Cultural Preservation Office
Official Website of the Hopi Tribe
Wikipedia: Hopi
Wikipedia: Hopi Reservation
Wikipedia: Polacca

Next up:  Hopi Cultural Center, Hopi Reservation

Blue Highways: Holbrook, Arizona

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe cross an interstate and consider Holbrook, Arizona - the only town, I'm sure, with a street called "Bucket of Blood."  Are there interesting attractions to be seen on the interstate?  Or do we need to get off the beaten path?  Pull off the road, get a room at the Wigwam, and think about it.  Click on the map thumbnail at right to see where Holbrook sits.

Book Quote

"Holbrook used to be a tough town where boys from the Hash Knife cattle outfit cut loose.  Now, astride I-44 (once route 66), Holbrook was a tourist stop for women with Instamatics and men with metal detectors; no longer was the big business cattle, but rather rocks and gems."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 2

The Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Arizona. Image located at unusualhotelsoftheworld.com. Click on image to go to site.

Holbrook, Arizona

First, a little bit of a correction.  LHM in his quote above says that Holbrook sits astride I-44.  In actuality, Holbrook is on I-40.  I-44 is an interstate that runs from St. Louis to Wichita Falls, Texas.  He may have changed this in later editions of the book, but I'm not sure.

Now that we have our interstates straight, what can we say about Holbrook.  Though I've traveled past it, I've never stopped.  However, I know that it has a great old 50s motel that kind of defies LHM's wistfulness about the loss of hotels to motels.  One may never say that they have gotten the chance to stay at a "grand" motel, but they may get the chance to say that they stayed in a unique motel.  The wigwams that make up the Wigwam Motel are pretty fun and eyecatching as you drive by them.

This makes up part of a familiar theme that I've come back to time and again.  The interstates, in many ways, really took the adventurousness out driving.  Now we drive fast to get places.  But back in the 50s, before the interstates were pushed through towns and cities, people drove on trips down two-lane highways like Route 66 which, as the famous song points out, "winds down from Chicago to L.A.," to see interesting things while they were driving.  The car was mass-produced like never before and more people were driving places that they had never been.  Entrepreneurs, eager to cash in on the number of people doing leisure driving, put up fun and interesting roadside attractions, eateries and places to stay that were supposed to catch people's attention.  In the West they played on Western themes like cowboys and Indians, prospectors and mines, and other Western things.  Only a few of those types of attractions, like the Wigwam Motel, still exist.

Occasionally, you can still find these roadside attractions, though I think they are probably a mass-consumer version of what they once were.  The famous Wall Drug signs all over the country that advertise and converge on a roadside stop in South Dakota are replicated in smaller versions in the rest of the country.  During my frequent drives between Lubbock, Texas and Albuquerque when I taught at Texas Tech, I passed miles of billboards advertising the Flying J Ranch and the rest stop at Clines Corners.  The signs advertised gems, pottery, beads, moccasins, fireworks, ice cream, food ("eat here and get gas" the Flying J's signs proclaimed), and other automotive, digestive, and vanity concerns.  Going into them, however, put me in just another kitsch shop, with silly and cheap souvenirs, fudge and country music selections.  The effect was the same as visiting the Mars Cheese Castle in southern Wisconsin - same kitsch, different state. 

I guess that's what LHM was getting at when he speaks of the "rocks and gems" that seem to be the attraction of the day.  How many people, passing through on the interstate and making a quick stop at a rock shop with all kinds of tchochkes, would note that Holbrook has a street called "Bucket of Blood" street.  How many would be curious enough to wonder where that name came from?  Hint: it had to do with the cattle wars of the late 1800s and Holbrook's former reputation as a rough place due to the Hashknife gang that LHM mentions frequented the place.

I suppose it's the reason why LHM takes blue highways.  I try when I get a chance.  By doing so, one can try to find something left of an America that is rapidly disappearing as people become more homogenous in their preferences.  I hope that somewhere pockets of America still exist that are different enough to be interesting.  I felt I found that type of different-ness in New Orleans, but somewhere out on the highways I know more such places must exist, perhaps around a turn past the McDonalds or in some geologic depression just out of sight of the interstate.  It doesn't have to be a Shangri La, just something different than what's become...normal.

Musical Interlude

One of the best road songs ever written - an ode to a road that's gone.  The Nat King Cole Trio did one of the first and one of the best versions of the song Route 66, in my humble opinion.  Listen and "get your kicks!"

If you want to know more about Holbrook

AzJournal.com (newspaper)
DesertUSA: Holbrook
City of Holbrook
Petrified Forest National Park
White Mountains Online: Holbrook
Wikipedia: Holbrook

Next up:  Polacca, Hopi Reservation