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: Animas, New Mexico

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapGhost Dancing, William Least Heat-Moon's (LHM) van, is a very appropriate name as we enter Animas, New Mexico.   LHM points out the Native American children, and then turns his attention to the mountains.  We'll explore a little more on Native Americans in New Mexico.  Click on the thumbnail at right to see where Animas is located.

Book Quote

"...and Animas, with a schoolyard of Indian children, their blue-black heads gleaming like gun barrels in the sun.  Then the road turned and went directly for an immense wall of mountain that looked impossible to drive through and improbable to drive around.  It was the Chiricahuas, named for the Apache tribe that held this land even before the conquistadors arrived."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 12

Animas Post Office. Photo on "courthouselover's" photostream at Flickr. Click on photo to go to site.Animas, New Mexico

LHM, in his quote above, highlights Native American kids in a schoolyard in Animas.  The name may mean "ghosts" or "lost souls," which is very poetic and conjures up all kinds of interesting images.  According to some, Animas may have been established on the ruins of an Indian village.

When I moved to New Mexico, I didn't fully appreciate the richness of the cultural heritage of the various native groups in the state.  Nor did I understand just how much they contribute to the cultural and economic life of New Mexico.

It sounds ignorant, but I never really gave it much thought.  Growing up in California, I don't think I ever saw or met a Native American, at least that I know of.  I remember my grandmother, who grew up in a very small town in the woods of northern California, telling me that as a young girl she saw Indians who walked down the road in front of her family's farm on their way to the ocean.  She said she was always afraid of them, because she said they were either drunk or they didn't talk to anyone.

My education about Native Americans began in Milwaukee, where my girlfriend and I began attending a Native American Catholic community called Congregation of the Great Spirit.  The pastor, who told me that his tribe was Polish, led a congregation made up Natives from a number of different tribes around the Midwest.  The celebration of the Mass was almost perfect for us - we were always late for everything but it seemed no matter how late we were, Mass never started before we got there.  It was a true community experience.  People greeted each other and talked for a long time before the Mass began.  Mass started when everyone seemed to think it was supposed to start.  The readings, as explained by the pastor, made sense to me finally, because the pastor related Israel's tribal experiences to the Natives tribal experiences and in the process made the context easier to understand.  My girlfriend and I were outsiders to the community, but we were never made to feel unwelcome.  We were also occasionally invited to participate in some community activities and to go to pow wows.

In New Mexico, there are tribes living on reservations and on pueblos.  The tribes living on pueblos are some of the oldest inhabitants of the United States.  The Natives practice Catholicism, introduced by the Spanish, and their own native traditional and religious customs.  Their ceremonies, some of which are open to outsiders and some which aren't, reflect this mixture of Church and something much older.  They built elaborate adobe dwellings and many still live in the traditional communities.  If you travel through the northern and western parts of the state, you will see amazing communities like Taos Pueblo, with its multi-story adobe homes and kivas (religious chambers), or Acoma, situated 300 feet above the valley floor on the top of a mesa. 

My wife (the girlfriend mentioned above - we were married by the pastor of the Congregation of the Great Spirit in Milwaukee) and I always take visitors to see Acoma, and we were lucky to take a tour of Zuni Pueblo, sponsored by the pueblo, which is not very developed for tourism.  Walking through the pueblo, we saw artwork of Kachinas painted in the crumbling church, art they are desperately trying to save.  We saw women baking loaves of bread in hornos, mud-ovens introduced by the Moors to the Spanish, and then by the Spanish to the southwest Natives.  We ate a traditional Zuni meal at the house of a seventy-year old Zuni midwife who still travels to Albuquerque when called to help deliver children.

I love the creation myths of the Pueblo peoples.  The stories say that the first people crawled from the other world through a hole in the ground and settled the lands.  This creation story is represented in every kiva in every pueblo in the form of a sipapu - a small hole in ground.  It connects the past with the present.  Visit Chaco Canyon and its amazing ruins of a long ago Native civilization, or the ruins at Bandelier National Monument, and you will see sipapus in the floor of the ruins of the kivas.

We also, when possible, attend the Gathering of Nations pow-wow in Albuquerque, where representatives of tribes from all over the United States and Canada compete in dancing and strengthen the connections between tribes.  Gallup, New Mexico also has a large pow-wow.

Within the past three years, I have discovered that I have the blood of Natives running in me.  I was adopted, and did not know my heritage.  My biological mother's side has both African-American and Native-American blood (specifically Delaware) running through their veins.  I was extremely happy when I found this out.  To me, I have the best of America inside me.  The creativity and passion and talent and culture that intermingles in me in the form of African, Native and Caucasian, waiting to be tapped, is part of what has made this country what it is.

Lately, as the years have passed while we've lived in Albuquerque, the few artworks and jewelry we have collected have taken a decidedly Southwest Native flavor.  Now, instead of going to a church that is for a Native community, we attend Mass at a Church where whites, blacks, Asians and Natives mingle and worship together.  The more that I learn, the more that I am astounded at the richness and the vitality of the Native communities in this state, and I am thankful that they are here, expanding my horizons and teaching me new ways to see myself and the world.  I know that on the reservation and in the Native communities there are many problems that need to be resolved, and the past treatment of Natives by white settlers and their governments is one of the dark blots on our country's history.  However, in my experience with Native peoples, the spirit, or "ánima" of their communities is very alive, and anything but lost.

Musical interlude

At KUNM, one of Albuquerque's public radio stations, the station airs Singing Wire each Sunday afternoon.  "Singing Wire," you may recall, was the name that Natives gave to telegraph wires.  The show is programmed and hosted by Native American volunteers.  They play a lot of pow-wow music, traditional native music, rock and roll and reggae by Native artists.  (I've learned that Indians are big fans of hard driving rock and the mellow beats of reggae.)  One of our favorite songs that they air often is Indian Car, by Keith Secola.  On our way to Chaco Canyon, traveling 25 miles per hour in a rental car on a road that was so rough and washboardy I thought we'd puncture the oil pan, we were passed by an old sedan filled with young Native Americans doing about 60 miles per hour, and as I watched they swerved off the main road onto a road only they knew and headed out across the desert.  I think of them every time I hear this song.

If you want to know more about Animas

Animas, Cotton City, and Playas
Wikipedia: Animas

Next up: Portal, Arizona