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Show EVERYDAY LIFE IN PUEBLO BONITO 243 Photograph by O. C. Havens A HOPI KACHINA MAKER The Hopi religion takes into account innumerable subordinate supernatural beings known as "kachinas," a term which refers to the inherent magical powers for good or bad attributed to every natural object. Many of these kachinas are personalities of clan ancestors, while others are beings of unknown significance, but possessed of magic powers. Each kachina is endowed with individual characteristics and is represented in at least six different symbolic colors. those thieving rascals, the crows, required constant watching. They would scratch out newly sown seeds, pull up the young sprouts, strip ripening ears of their milky kernels, or rob the mature stalks of their grains. Nothing so delights a crow as an unprotected cornfield! HUMAN WOLVES PREYED UPON PEACEFUL PEOPLE But there were other and more dreadful enemies to guard against. Human wolves crept in through autumn shadows to prey upon the village and steal all that could be carried away. From far across the mesas these pillagers came. We do not know who they were, nor how far they traveled, but we do know they came. Nomads they were; hunters by instinct and rovers by preference. To them, such sedentary, home-loving folk as the Bonitians were fair game ; to them, corn ripening in the fields or drying on the housetops was a prize well worth striving for. Lone workers in the gardens were slain seeking shelter; boys and young women were taken captive and dragged away as slaves of the invaders. No witness of these periodic attacks remains ; no record of them was ever written. But similar strife between sedentary and nomadic peoples has been waged since man became man; it forms a considerable portion of the world's history. The depredations of Geronimo and his outlaw band are yet a vivid memory along the Mexican border. Old men still resident in Zufii and in the Hopi pueblos, as boys, have lived through raids by mounted Navajo ; have seen their playmates slaughtered, their sisters stolen, the goats and sheep they tended decimated or driven away, and piles of ripened corn loaded on mules for transport to distant camps. Such brigandage continued unchecked during the Spanish and Mexican occupancy of the Southwest; it was brought to an end only through American efforts during the second half of the 19th century. |
