Snow

Weather: Snow Wednesday and Thursday.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas. Rose stems; leaves on grape hyacinth, Japanese honeysuckle, alfilerillo.

What’s gray: Salt bushes, winterfat, snow-in-summer.

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach, apricot, apple and sandbar willow; purple aster leaves.

What’s yellowed: Young stems on globe and weeping willows; arborvitae have browned.

What’s blooming indoors: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds.

Weekly update: The magic has passed. For a few days snow was beyond vocabulary. Everything was its opposite.

The sun rose in the west

and set in the east.

It began Wednesday with a few large flakes that turned to something so small it might have been snow turning into water as it fell. It kept coming down, but not accumulating. It sank into the ground and wetted every surface.

Late in the afternoon, when light was failing but the needle hadn’t moved on the thermometer, it began accumulating.

Through the night, snow fell on wet surfaces that must already have turned to ice. When the weather service forecast heavy snow it was thinking about the density of flakes in the air. For the plants, heavy snow meant a burden.

In places deciduous branches collected snow and didn’t allow it to penetrate.

In the morning, the wood’s warmth began melting the coat from within. Drips formed. Birds escaped to fences and overhead lines.

Even yesterday when I drove by orchards, their floors still covered with snow, each tree stood in a circle of brown of its own making.

The weather bureau said, when the snow had moved on late Thursday, the skies would be clear and the night cold because little of the snow pack had disappeared. It was four degrees when I looked at thermometer on my front porch Friday morning.

In a few hours, branches furred over.

The sun rose higher in the sky. Its rays bounced off the metal roof. Surface heat melted snow that drained over the edge. On its way down, the warmed water was rechilled. Plants below were encased in ice.

Physicists describe it as an interplay of water, temperature, and light. When all else fails the weather bureau resorts to "unknown precipitation." By Saturday, Shy and Guyer and whoever else works in the Albuquerque office were concerned with variations on fog that would cloud visibility.

I looked out over the Jémez. It was just before temperatures warmed enough to create bogs over frozen ground. Snow was rising from Santa Clara canyon.

Photographs: Thursday was the 22^nd, Friday the 23^rd, and Saturday the 24^th.

1. Thursday 7:47 am, looking east.
2. Thursday 5:54 am, peach and bird.
3. Friday 7:07 pm, looking west.
4. Thursday 5:30 am, looking east.
5. Thursday 7:50 am, Apache plume.
6. Friday 7:54 am, black locust.

7. Thursday 7:52 am, rose stem.
8. Saturday 3:26 pm, looking west.
9. Friday 7:09 am.

Powamu

Weather: Snow Tuesday clung for a while to stems and seed heads; I wonder which appreciated the winter moisture and which were harmed; last snow 1/13.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas. Rose stems; leaves on grape hyacinth, Japanese honeysuckle; small alfilerillo plants hidden between chunks of gravel in drive.

What’s gray: Salt bushes, winterfat, snow-in-summer.

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach and apricot, purple aster leaves; sandbar willow wood is getting red, apple branches almost burgundy.

What’s yellowed: Young stems on globe and weeping willows; arborvitae have browned.

What’s blooming indoors: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds.

Weekly update: Powamu, the second part of the annual Hopi Kachina cycle, begins soon. The Badger clan officiates at Oraibi in place of Muyingwa, the god of germination.

Powalawu, the opening ceremony, occurs on the day after the dark of the moon. This year the darkest day would be Tuesday. Early in the morning, men gather in the Badger kiva where the chief makes prayer sticks. A member of the Sand Clan is sent to bring sand for the mosaic of four sacred colors representing the house of the sun.

Four prayer sticks are placed in the mosaic with four herbs: Bigelovia bigelovii in the north, Artemisia filifolia in the west, Fallugia paradoxa in the south, and another form of Bigelovia bigelovii in the east.

The two forms of rabbit bush, Apache plume, and sand sagebrush sandwort are shrubs used as windbreaks. Alfred Whiting says the first comes in many varieties and in the 1930s were identified as Chrysothamnus speciosus gnaphalodes. Today they are grouped under Ericameria nauseosa.

Midway through the song cycle, a messenger is sent to bury four ceremonial balls in four places southwest of the village to protect it against sand storms.

After the last song, messengers again leave with more food balls. One is deposited with a dead mouse on an ant hill to ask the insects to leave the crops alone.

The next morning the Badger chief takes the remaining prayer sticks to each kiva where he smokes, then tells men they may plant beans. Men bring containers of soil from a place east of the mesa. In the evening, they plant beans of all types. For the next three evenings, they continue sowing.

The kivas now must be kept warm. Men are appointed each night to stay and keep fires going. During the day they clean fields and make gifts for the young children. In the evenings they practice the songs and steps for the dances that come on the final day.

Powamu begins eight days later, when half the waxing moon is visible. The beans may have broken ground and men wait for leaves and vines to appear.

In years when there are enough children of age, they are made formal members of the communities. In the past, the initiation climaxed with ritual whippings of both boys and girls with yucca whips. Younger children were shorn of their hair.

Around three in the morning on the eighth day men harvest most of the bean plants. Some they tie to the children’s presents. The Eototo and Aholi kachinas appear. The first represents the village chief.

The afternoon includes a feast in the Badger kiva of gravy, piki, and boiled bean plants. In the homes, people eat mutton stew and beans. The first full display of kachinas occurs when they emerge from all the kivas to deliver the gifts to children.

At night, while the moon is still nearly full, the kachinas go from kiva to kiva to dance. Half are dressed as women who form a separate line. The Bean Dance lasts until dawn.

On the final afternoon, the last of the beans are cut. In a ritual that was archaic in the 1890s, young women dressed as katchimama carried trays of harvested beans to four places outside the village. Then the kachinas resumed their human forms to take the trays home.

Three days after the close of Powamu the first foot races of the season are run in widening circles outside the village. They stay within the boundaries set by the balls planted in Powalawu.

Notes:
Titiev, Mischa. Old Oraibi, 1944;

Voth, Henry R. The Oraibi Powamu Ceremony, 1901.

Whiting, Alfred F. Ethnobotany of the Hopi, 1939.

Photographs:
1. Native Seeds/Search says Hatiko (the white) and Hopi Gray (the brown skinned) are "sprouted and used during Spring ceremonies. Both are limas.

2-3. A few hours after being dropped in water, the skin of Hopi Gray and Hatiko had begun to pucker, 11 January 2014. As they absorbed more water, the skins smoothed again.

4. The first sign of germination by Hopi Gray was the outer skin splitting, 16 January 2014.

5. The first sign of germination by Hatiko was air bubbles above the beans, 18 January 2014.

6-7. The root emerged on both a day or so later, 19 January 2014.

Ceremonial Corn

Weather: Winds and clouds; last snow 1/1.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas. Rose stems; leaves on grape hyacinth, Japanese honeysuckle, alfilerillo.

What’s gray: Salt bushes, winterfat, snow-in-summer.

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach, apricot and apple; purple aster leaves; sandbar willow wood is getting more orange.

What’s yellowed: Young stems on globe and weeping willows; more arborvitae have browned.

What’s blooming indoors: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds.

Weekly update: The most archaic agricultural ritual embedded in Soyal is the use of corn meal. Kivas are opened to the kachinas by leaving meal paths outside the hatches. When the spirits arrive, they are fed corn meal: they only need the essence of food to survive. Their impersonators are sprinkled with meal.

During the ceremonies at Oraibi only white corn was used. Heinrich Voth said the sun representative at Oraibi, who later was attached by the stars, the shield bearers, carried a "white corn ear" with his bow and arrow. Before the hawk impersonator appeared, three women entered dressed in white. Each carried a "white corn ear." The three mana danced with the hawk.

When the altar was built, the staffs of four chiefs were added. They had "two large turkey feathers and a white corn ear fastened to them." After the Mastop kachinas left on the eighth day and before the messengers were dispatched to the sacred spring, the officiating priest again donned the apparel of the sun representative. "In one hand he held a white corn ear (to which was fastened a corn husk packets) an the six old eagle wing feathers used in his war ceremony."

On the final day at Walpi, before the altar was completely dismantled, the Pátki clan chief distributed "fragments of white wafer bread," according to Andrew Stephen. In the afternoon, just before the corn was brought out from the kiva, two women appeared. One was given a "black corn ear," the other a "white ear."

The ceremonial use of colored corn must have come long after new varieties were introduced. The seed corn sent to the Pátki kiva mound was multicolored, but the number of ears in a bundle varied from three to six. No obvious attempt was made to combine one of each color into a bundle tied with yucca. More likely, each woman included a sample of each type of corn her husband would plant. Elsie Clews Parsons said the blessed ears were placed on top of the seed corn, to be used first in the summer.

Niman, the summer ceremony, used more overt color symbolism. Alexander Stephen said, on the fourth day at Walpi in 1893, the ritual chief brought "the six ears of corn of the directions." As he sang, he handled the six ears in order, sprinkling them with water, then with corn meal.

He later tied the six ears into a bundle that was hung on the west wall of the kiva until the eighth day when he used them to make the Directions Altar. He set an ear in each direction with stones of the same color: opaque quartz with yellow, green agate with blue, red spar with red, white spar or tooth with white, clear quartz with black, pinkish annular beads of spar with sweet corn.

Initiation ceremonies also used the six colors of corn. During Naash’naiya in 1891, Stephen saw six ears of corn laid with different hued skins of birds and pebbles in the appropriate locations at the base.

He happened to be in Walpi in 1893 during the rites attending a girl’s first menses. He said, on the first day, the girl ground white corn, which had been shelled by the women. On the second day she ground blue corn and red on the third. On the morning of the fourth, yellow was ground, and black in the afternoon. A feast followed attended only by women.

Notes: See the last six posts for the history of corn varieties, the identity of towns, the ceremonies and their elements. Spar is a form of gypsum.

Stephen, Alexander. Notebooks, 1882-1894, edited as Hopi Journal, 1936, by Elsie Clews Parsons.

Voth, H. R. and George A. Dorsey. The Oraibi Soyal Ceremony, 1901.

Photographs:
1. Common white corn meal, Tennessee Red Cobb; Paramount Food Grains, Quinter, Kansas.

2. When corn is ground, the hard shell breaks into large pieces than does the interior. Medium grind white whole grain corn meal, Bob’s Red Mill, Milwaukie, Oregon.

3. Same corn meal as #2 in mass as it would be in a bowl.

4. The differences between outer and inner parts of the corn kernel are more obvious with medium ground whole grain yellow corn meal, Bob’s Red Mill.

5. Same corn meal as #2 in mass as it would be in a bowl. The camera software exaggerates the yellow.

6. Much commerical corn meal has the center germ removed so it won’t spoil. Aunt Jemima degerminated yellow corn meal with added nutrients, sold by Quaker Oats, Chicago.

Soyal

Weather: Very cold mornings early in the week (Monday was 8 degrees on my porch). Then came the winds on Tuesday that were so strong it was the coldest so far this season in the house (56 in the backroom). By Thursday, that cold had met warm water and we got a little snow. Though I don’t understand how, I think the water was generated by tropical storm Jangmi, which drowned the Philippines about the time that airplane crashed in the Java Sea.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas. Rose stems; leaves on grape hyacinth, Japanese honeysuckle, alfilerillo.

What’s gray: Winterfat, snow-in-summer; four-wing salt bushes are gray-green.

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach, apricot and apple; purple aster leaves; sandbar willow wood is rust brown.

What’s yellowed: Young stems on globe and weeping willows; more arborvitae have browned.

What’s blooming indoors: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds.

Weekly update: Agricultural rituals begin on the eighth day of Soyal. At Walpi, an altar is erected in the Pátki clan kiva. The frame is covered by faux white, red, yellow, and green (rather than blue) corn flowers, and larger, yellow, squash blossoms. Clouds of raw, white cotton sit above.

In the afternoon, four messengers collect bundles of seed corn from each household, which are placed at the base of the altar. A water serpent sits on the mound behind the frame with his nose peaking through the flowers. At Oraibi, the corn flowers are mounted on posts planted on each side of the altar frame.

While private rituals are being performed in the Pátki kiva, two kachinas appear in the plaza from the northwest. The Mastop make advances to women, young and old. When they finish, four messengers emerge from the kiva with objects they bury at a sacred spring.

Singing in the main kiva continues through the night. Around two in the morning at Oraibi, members of the Agave Society bring in a picture with seeds attached to the edges with clay. The officiating chief scrapes the seeds into a tray with a corn cob and scrapes the bottom rows of flowers in the altar. At Walpi, the screen also has four corn flowers in the border.

After day light, the altars are dismantled and the ears of seed corn returned to women. The Qöqöqlom kachinas appear in the afternoon. Their dance, the first of the season, completes opening the kivas for the other kachinas who will follow in a few weeks at Powamu.

Like the hunting and warrior rituals discussed last week, these elements encapsulate layers of past practices. The surface may be Roman Catholic. Elsewhere, plants are blessed on Assumption Day in mid-August and animals on the feast day of Saint Francis in early October.

However, the group credited with introducing Soyal migrated from an area less affected by Franciscans than most. The Pátki, also called the Corn, Cloud, Sun, or Water clan, say they were driven from San Carlos in the Gila River valley of southern Arizona by destructive floods. Their ancestors were invited to use their powers during a great drought on Third Mesa. When the rains came, they were allowed to stay.

Andrew Stephen saw animal figures included in baskets at the Soyal altar in 1892. The blessed effigies were planted in corrals. Jesse Walter Fewkes saw miniature animals in the kiva of the Agave Society, one of the four organizations for adult men. In the 1930s, Mischa Titiev saw prayer sticks tied to the tails of farm animals.

The use of animal surrogates may be older than Soyal. The Hakataya, who lived in the drainages of the Colorado and Gila rivers southwest of the Anasazi and Hohokam, made split twig figures of animals that were deposited deep inside caves. Some have been recovered that are 4000 years old.

Fewkes believed the image on the screen represents Alosaka, a germination god introduced by the now extinct Squash Clan. The Patuñ originally lived along the Little Colorado river. Their practices have been continued, with modifications, by the Badger and Tansy Mustard Clans.

More overt fertility rituals permeate festivities. Before the four messengers leave the Pátki kiva to collect seed corn, they lay on the ladder and go "through the motions of cohabitation." The Mastop kachinas, who emerged from the Agave Society kiva, run up to women, place their hands of their shoulders, and make "little jumps with both feet" to the same purpose. Women, who shun the clowns, welcome these kachinas.

Notes: More on the annual Kachina cycle, the towns and observers, maybe found in the post for 21 December 2014.

Fewkes, Jesse Walter. "Tusayan Migration Traditions," Bureau of American Ethnography Report, 1901.

_____. "The Winter Solstice Ceremony at Walpi," The American Anthropologist 11:65-87:1898 and 11:101-115:1898.

Schroeder, Albert H. "Prehistory: Hakataya," in Alfonso Ortiz, Handbook of North American Indians, volume 9, 1979.

Stephen, Alexander. Notebooks, 1882-1894, edited as Hopi Journal, 1936, by Elsie Clews Parsons.

Titiev, Mischa. Old Oraibi, 1944; quotation with "jumps."

Voth, H. R. and George A. Dorsey. The Oraibi Soyal Ceremony, 1901; quotation with "cohabitation."

Photographs: Fewkes noticed greasewood was burned in the celebrating kiva. Other types are sold in Española by men in pick-up trucks parked along the roads. Most offer it split and cut to length. In the last month, I’ve taken pictures of both quartered and unsplit fire wood to see the coloring and size.

Winter Solstice

Weather: As the grays darkened late Monday afternoon, rain came down, then snow. More fell on Christmas. Yesterday and this morning temperatures fell to the lowest of the season, just over 10. It’s the time of year when the sun comes into my eyes in the house around 8 in the morning.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas. Stems of roses; leaves on grape hyacinth, Japanese honeysuckle, vinca, oriental poppy, sweet pea, alfilerillo, dandelion; needle, June, pampas, and other grasses.

What’s gray: Winterfat, snow-in-summer; four-wing salt bushes are gray-green; buddleia, pinks and catmint leaves are blue gray.

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach, apricot and apple; purple aster leaves; sandbar willow wood is now rust brown.

What’s yellowed: Young stems on globe and weeping willows; some arborvitae have browned.

What’s blooming indoors: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds.

Weekly update: The winter solstice is the darkest time of year; light appears for only 9 hours and 45 minutes for three days, from December 19 to 21. Humans quake as successive days grow shorter, cold rains and snows arrive, and temperatures fall. In Santa Fé, the sun sets at 4:50 from December 3 to 10.

Then, slowly, one notices the sun sets a little later. One breathes easier. Some of our oldest rituals celebrate the days following the solstice. As civilizations changed, we clung to those remnants of the past that assuaged our deepest fears.

Every year, we see Santas that hark back to Siberian shamans, trees borrowed from pagan northern Europe, Italian Holy families, and snowmen taken from a 1950 Gene Autry recording. Neighbors usually only display one, but inflatable snowmen and Santas do appear together, and reindeer often graze outside creches.

The Hopi winter solstice ceremony, Soyal, is a similar compression of history. Ko’hituwa says Bear and Parrot journeyed together from Jémez, the one riding on the head of the other. As they neared First Mesa from the east, Parrot flew ahead to arrive first.

The Bear Clan officiates at Soyal, except at Walpi where the clan died out. There the Pátki Clan substitutes. The Parrot Clan became the Kachina Clan.

Men first were hunters. Andrew Stephen was told, sparrow hawk "is a great hunter, Eagle" and an unidentified hawk "are not very good hunters." A hawk impersonation is the most important event on the fourth night, and is repeated on the eighth night at Walpi. Walpi schedules a four-day rabbit hunt when Soyal ends.

After Bear came the warriors, the Snake from southern Utah. Masi’ told Stephen a Snake youth used to wonder where a stream went. He asked his father, who also had wondered. The man hollowed a cottonwood log for the boy to use as a boat. At the end of his journey, he met Spider Woman who greeted him as her grandson. Her two grandsons are the war gods.

Jesse Walter Fewkes was told brothers in the Horn Clan married women from the Snake. The children were not accepted by other clans, and so the brothers left. The first arrived from the east with Keres language songs, the other from the south where it had united with the Flute Clan. Fewkes believes it possible the women were Shoshone.

The Oraibi Horn Clan chief bears the greatest responsibility for Soyal. He determines when the joint initiation rites begin for four societies that must end seventeen days before Soyal. To enter the officiating kiva of Soyal, a man must be a member one of the societies, Wüwütcimtû.

On the last night of Naash’naiya, the elders stay away. At dawn they see the first kachina who appears as a sleepy old man. Sixteen days later Soyal begins.

The Horn chief at Oraibi again watches the sun on the morning of the fourth day of Soyal to confirm it has moved. Once he gives a signal, rituals for the day begin and sun watching is transferred to the chief of the Gray Flute Clan.

On the final morning, around 2:45 am, the Star priest enters the main kiva carrying a long crook with a black ear of corn. He dances "backward and forward east of the fireplace." Then he leaps toward the officiating priest, trades the crook for a sun symbol, and continues dancing "north of the fireplace sideways from east to west and west to east" and twirls "the sun symbol very fast in the same directions."

Heinrich Voth, whose description is quoted, said the Star priest at Oraibi was a member of the Sun Clan in the 1890s. That group is related to the Reed Clan who played the same role at Walpi. Fewkes believed the crook represented an ancient weapon. They appear on the altars of both Soyal and the Antelope Society, once the exclusive domain of the Snake Clan.

The chief of the Reed Clan is also head of the warrior society. According to Pautiwa of the Eagle Clan at Walpi, they originally lived in an eastern pueblo. Fewkes believes they lived for a while with the Zuñi and that many of their rituals are like those of the Zuñi bow priest. Their stars are like warrior symbols Polly Schaafsma has documented on southern and eastern Río Grande rock art.

The war chief is from the Badger Clan, whose ancestors migrated from a pueblo a few miles to the north of the mesas. On the fourth night at Oraibi, he carries the symbols of the older war twin, a stone tomahawk and old shield. During the seventh song, the head of the Coyote Clan attacks him. Coyote are related to the Snake.

On the same night at Walpi, members of Wüwütcimtû from Sichomovi enter with their chief who is wearing parrot feathers on his head and a sun disk on his back. He chants for some twenty minutes before being given a shield. Four older men attack him. He staggers up the ladder and returns to Sichomovi, home of the Badger women.

During the ninth song at Oraibi, the head of the Badger Clan drinks from the medicine tray. Then each man dips a shell or stone into the water to drink. They mix the water in their mouths with clay and return to their homes where they rub the clay on all members of their families.

Crow-wing said, at Hano, the war chief made prayer sticks for the war gods, the two brothers. He’s a member of the Reed Clan, and all male members of his clan help. After they eat supper, they return with a gun or bow and arrow to sing all night. The next morning two men dressed as the two brothers go from house to house with medicine water for boys to drink and girls to rub on themselves.

Hano came after the Reconquest. Diego de Vargas forced the Tewa speakers out of the Santa Cruz valley where they had moved from Galisteo after the Revolt. They went to Jémez for a year, then wandered from place to place. Kalakwai says the Snake Clan chief asked them to come after the destruction of Awátovi to protect First Mesa against the Ute. They accepted the fourth invitation. After they defeated the Utes, they were given farm land.

Oraibi repeats the distribution of war medicine on the last day. Four days after the close of Soyal and the day after the rabbit hunt feast, members of the Reed Clan gather in their maternal home to perpetuate war rituals whose pragmatic function had been nullified by the regional peace imposed by the United States calvary.

Soyal agricultural and fertility rituals will be discussed next week. More on the annual Kachina cycle, the towns and observers, maybe found in last week’s post.

Notes: Day length data taken from Robert Thomas, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, 2013, and Steve Edwards, Sunrise Sunset website.

Crow-wing. A Pueblo Indian Journal 1920-1921, edited by Elsie Clews Parsons, 1925.

Fewkes, Jesse Walter. "Tusayan Migration Traditions," Bureau of American Ethnography Report, 1901. Wiki, Wikyatiwa, and Kopeli provided information on the Snake Clan, Pütce the tales of the Horn and Flute Clans, Pautiwa of the Eagle Clan those of the parent Reed clan, and Kalakwai those of Hano.

_____. "The Winter Solstice Ceremony at Walpi," The American Anthropologist 11:65-87:1898 and 11:101-115:1898.

Schaafsma, Polly. Warrior, Shield and Star, 2000.

Stephen, Alexander. Notebooks, 1882-1894, edited as Hopi Journal, 1936, by Elsie Clews Parsons. Bear myth from Ko’hituwa of the Bear Clan in Shunopovi, 1888. Snake myth from Masi’.

Titiev, Mischa. Old Oraibi, 1944.

Voth, H. R. and George A. Dorsey. The Oraibi Soyal Ceremony, 1901.

Photographs: The spread of Christmas tree ornamentation from evergreens to other plants.

1-2. Tire Factory wraps lights around its buddleia and Russian sage, which are alternated at the front curb; night and day views.

3. Lights strung in a deciduous tree; early morning with sun coming through the glass.

4-5. Balls hanging from branches of deciduous trees, daytime.

Kachina Cycle

Weather: Clear night Tuesday allowed heat to escape and cooled the lower atmosphere so the moisture passing through from the Pacific fell as snow all day Wednesday. The snow melted into the ground as it continued to fall. The wet layer froze in the night. Thursday morning, mist enveloped the mesa and all but my closest neighbors’ houses. Later the sun broke through, but mists continued to rise between the badlands and the Jémez. Since, snow has been melting down to the freeze level and pooling into mud above.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas. Leaves on grape hyacinth, Japanese honeysuckle, vinca, oriental poppy, sweet pea, alfilerillo, dandelion; needle, June, pampas, and other grasses.

What’s gray: Winterfat, snow-in-summer; four-wing salt bushes are gray-green; buddleia, pinks and catmint leaves are blue gray.

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach, apricot and apple; purple aster leaves.

What’s yellowed: Young stems on globe and weeping willows; some arborvitae have browned.

What’s blooming indoors: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Rabbit tracks in snow, small birds.

Weekly update: Winter, summer, the great opposition. Santa Clara is divided between the winter people and summer ones. Traditionally, power was transferred from one to the other at this time of year. Following adoption of a tribal constitution in 1935, a governor has been elected on the first Saturday of January who serves for a year.

The Hopi still see the world in binary terms, but don’t lapse into the rigidity of modern Manichaeans who see good and evil, then reduce humans to one or the other. They also don’t fall into the legalism of some who answer crises with the mantra something wasn’t done right, we have strayed from the single pure way. Instead of reproaching themselves for error, they look for alternative ways to satisfy unmet demands of the spirits.

When one reads descriptions of ceremonies one is struck by differences. Some can be accounted for by responses to changes constantly being imposed by the dominant American culture. Thus, Jesse Walter Fewkes, Alexander Stephen and Heinrich Richert Voth saw different rituals in the 1890s than Crow-wing did in 1921 or Mischa Titiev in the early 1930s.

But even in the same year, there were variations between the twelve Hopi pueblos. Voth was at Oraibi on the Third Mesa when conservatives were beginning to withdraw from communal life. They later left to establish Hotevilla in 1906. They are the exception to the freedom from rigidity.

In the same years, Stephen was living near the federal agency at Keams Canyon and visiting Walpi on First Mesa. He noted differences between Hopi towns, and between them and the Tewa-speakers at Hano on First Mesa. He also observed Zuñi, Navajo and Havasupai who visited Walpi ceremonies. In the 1930s, Titiev described young men in Oraibi who attended ritual dances in other pueblos, much like young men everywhere visit social gatherings in nearby communities.

Some new practices were adopted, and other possibilities ignored. Stephen noted the Hopi who visited a Ghost Dance at Havasupai in 1891 were more mystified than interested in the cult then spreading among the plains bands.

The underlying view of the universe has been more durable than surface variations might suggest. The Hopi embrace the dichotomies of winter and summer, night and day, the living and the dead. Whether the Kachina rituals represent some post-drought addition or evolved from what went before, matters less than the continuities embedded in the ceremonies.

Legend says Kachinas are spirits who act as intermediaries between humans and those with power over nature. Titiev was told, they used to come as themselves but were killed or insulted. Those who remained began using the paraphernalia the Kachinas left to invoke their aid in inducing monsoon rains for their crops.

Now Kachinas arrive as clouds with the winter solstice and leave in July after the first, ritual corn crop matures. The first is Soyal, the second Niman. The only Kachina dances that occur between Niman and the next Soyal are at Hano and Zuñi where there is no ritual leave taking.

Each of the main ceremonies has both a private part held in the kiva of the clan responsible for the ceremony and a public part held in the kivas of the other clans. Voth, a Mennonite missionary born in Alexanderwohl, Ukraine, has been the only outsider ever to have been permitted to observe some of the more esoteric rituals.

Stephen had more access than many anthropologists, perhaps because he only knew a little Hopi. He communicated through Navajo, the lingua franca between the Hopi and Zuñi. If he asked about something too secret, he could be put off. He once complained, "I have been bamboozled from pillar to post all day, have received no scrap of information" about preparations for the Water Serpent in 1893.

Each ceremony is eight days long, but the public one begins the day after the private one. Both are composed of two cycles of four. The private ones begin eight days after the solstices. Many observers combine the two calendars and count nine days. There often are pre-ceremonies four days before, and post-ceremonies four days after.

Public ceremonies are held indoors from December until April, then they move outdoors. The February ritual, Powamu, focuses on beans, the others on corn. The primary rituals occur annually on a set schedule. The late spring festivals are sponsored voluntarily by individuals or kivas when and if they choose.

The late spring festivals include the Water Serpent Dance and the Puppet Doll Dance. The post-Niman ones include some best known to outsiders, those of the Flute and Snake-Antelope Societies. Women’s society rituals like Lakon follow the harvest.

Dualities permeate ceremonies. All envision different roles for men and women, with most of the official ritual life reserved for men. Gifts to young boys always include small bows and arrows. Young girls receive dolls made from cottonwood roots trimmed as Kachinas. All public performances feature both dancers who enact a ritual and clowns who secularize it.

Hopi aren’t the only ones who believe in Kachinas. It’s thought the masked dancers were known in most of the pueblos before Juan de Oñate arrived at San Juan in 1598, but they were suppressed by the Spanish. They survived in the more isolated pueblos west of the Continental Divide where Spanish friars, bureaucrats, soldiers and colonists had few material interests. The ambitious wanted to be near the center of power in Santa Fé, and most of those really wanted to be back in Mexico City.

After the reconquest, the Spanish made only token demands on the Hopi. The Hopi destroyed the pueblo of Awátovi in 1700 because it was too open to the return of the friars. They became the acknowledged curator of a tradition that had been very much in flux after the droughts of the late 1200s and again after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

Notes: Fewkes and Voth have written extensively about the Hopi. Some references to books by them by them appeared in earlier posts. For clarity, I’m using common terms like kachina here, and not more correct tribal ones like katsina.

Crow-wing. A Pueblo Indian Journal 1920-1921, edited by Elsie Clews Parsons, 1925.

Stephen, Alexander. Notebooks, 1882-1894, edited as Hopi Journal, 1936, by Elsie Clews Parsons.

Titiev, Mischa. Old Oraibi, 1944.

_____. The Hopi Indians of Old Oraibi, 1972.

Photographs: The Black Mesa on the east side of the Río Grande and Tchicoma, the highest peak in the Jémez to the west (11,561'), are the two sacred landmark geological features.

1. Sun obscured by clouds near Black Mesa on Tuesday, 16 December at 3:52 pm.

2. Sky near Tchicoma in the Jémez the morning after snow fell Sunday, 14 December at 8:38 am.

3. Traditional sun and cloud symbols, Black Mesa in right fore corner, "Mother Corn" mural, design by Rose B. Simpson of Santa Clara, with collaborative support from Warren Montoya of Santa Ana Pueblo. For more details, see posting for 2 November 2014.

4. Realistic sun and clouds near Tchicoma, same mural as #3.

5. Photograph of sun and clouds near Tchicoma, 12 May 2013, 7:36 pm.

6. Rain falling on Tchicoma, 22 April 2012, 4:12 pm.

7. Mists rising from the Río Grande, 5 December 2014, 7:10 am.

8. Mists rising between the badlands and the Jémez, 6 December 2014, 6:55 am.

9. Mists rising behind the badlands, the Jémez shrouded in clouds, 14 December 7:22 am.

Sweet Corn

Weather: Power outage early yesterday, rain after dark, then snow that’s accumulated on every leaf blade and horizontal stem.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas; leaves on grape hyacinth, Japanese honeysuckle, vinca, sweet pea, golden-spur columbine, beards tongues, winecup mallow, alfilerillo; needle, June, pampas, and other grasses.

What’s gray: Winterfat, snow-in-summer; four-wing salt bushes are gray-green; buddleia, pinks and catmint leaves are blue gray.

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach, apricot and apple; purple aster leaves darkening.

What’s yellowed: Young stems on globe willow; leaves on fernbush yellowing; some arborvitae have browned.

What’s blooming indoors: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Rabbit, small birds.

Weekly update: Sweetness is a recessive trait in Zea mays. Because plants do not reproduce easily when the two genes that control sugar are recessive (su), Paul Mangelsdorf believed all sweet corns were derived from the Chullpi strain in Peru and Bolivia. He noted the early archaeological remains of corn - and corn with its large cobs leaves lots of debris - showed evidence immature cobs and stalks had been chewed for their sugar.

Like Maíz de Ocho, sweet corn traveled from the southwest to the Mandan and Hidatsas of the upper Missouri, then skipped to the Iroquois. One would guess they obtained it during one of their forays in the west. It was growing along the Susquehanna in 1779 when John Sullivan and James Clinton destroyed forty Iroquois villages they believed were aligned with the British.

Richard Bagnal took some ears back to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where Plymotheus was growing it in 1822. The latter wrote, sweet corn "assimilated to the common corn," but he had discovered seed from suckers would breed true. He noted that, over time, the original crimson cob that had stained table linens disappeared.

Bagnal wasn’t the only source for native sweet corn. George Carter talked to a man named Hubbard at Harvard who said his family had been growing a yellow sweet corn since they received some from natives in the 1600s.

However, he was the most important. Following Plymotheus instructions, Gideon Smith described crossing Tuscarora and Sioux in Baltimore to produce Smith’s Early White, a large-grained white sweet corn he described in 1838. He mentioned he was able to restore the red cobs, but "got rid" of it because "it stained the lips and fingers while eating it."

Noyes Darling of New Haven, Connecticut, began experiments with an early yellow flint and a white sweet corn to produce Darling’s Early sweet corn in 1844. At the same time, Augustus Russell Pope was crossing a southern white corn with a northern early sweet corn in Somerville, Massachusetts, to produce Old Colony in 1845. Nathan Stowell of Burlington, New Jersey, crossed a northern sugary corn with Memomony, a soft field corn, to create Stowell’s Sweet Corn in 1850.

White sweet corn remained the snob’s choice until Atlee Burpee introduced Golden Bantam in his 1902 catalog as a cannable sweet corn that tasted better than existing varieties of white corn. He’d obtained his seed stock from a strain William Chambers developed in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Before he died, Chambers had been controlling the pollination of his ears and selecting the best.

Since, botanists have learned more about the genetic structure of corn to produce F₁ hybrids that maintain their sweetness after they’ve been picked. John Laughnan introduced the first, Illini Chief, in 1961 from a cross between Golden Cross Bantam and Iochief. Since it was difficult to reproduce, Illinois Foundation Seeds introduced Illini Xtra Sweet in 1968. J. Hove had created a triple cross. The kernels contain so little starch they shrivel when they dry.

Notes:
Carter, George F. "Sweet Corn among the Indians," Geographical Review 38:206-221:1948.

Giles, Dorothy. Singing Valleys: The Story of Corn, 1940, on Chambers. All I’ve found on Chambers is he lived in Greenfield on land he acquired in 1870 that had been a hatter’s shop on the stage road.

Larson, Debra Levey. "Supersweet Sweet Corn: 50 Years in the Making," University of Illinois press release, 7 August 2003.

Mangelsdorf, Paul C. Corn: It’s Origin, Evolution, and Improvement, 1974.

Parker, Arthur C. Iroquois Uses of Maize and Other Food Plants, 1910.

Plymotheus. Letter to the editor, New England Farmer, 7 September 1822; I haven’t see any further identification of him. Bagnal was probably the one who lived in Plymouth from 1753 to 1809.

Singleton, W. Ralph. "Noyes Darling, First Maize Breeder," The Journal of Heredity 35:265-267:1944, reprints Darling’s "Indian Corn - New Variety," Cultivator, 18 November 1845.

Smith, Gideon B. Albany Cultivator, 1838.

Photographs:
1. Canned Golden Sweet F₁ hybrid corn, Charter Research, Twin Falls, Idaho, released in 1975.

2. Canned white sweet corn. This was the preferred type over Thanksgiving in the local grocery store.

3. Silver Queen sweet corn, developed by Harvey Mauth for Rogers Brothers Seed Company of Idaho and released in 1955.

4. Golden Bantam sweet corn.

5. Xtra Sweet F₁ hybrid corn, derived from Illini Xtrasweet, bred by J. Hove and released by Illinois Foundation Seeds, 1968. Shriveled kernels.

Field Corn

Weather: Gentle rains Wednesday and Thursday, followed by morning mists rising from the river Friday and Saturday.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas; leaves on grape hyacinth, bearded iris, Japanese honeysuckle, vinca, sweet pea, violet, golden-spur columbine, beards tongues, winecup mallow, alfilerillo; needle, June, pampas, and other grasses.

What’s gray: Winterfat, snow-in-summer; four-wing salt bushes are gray-green; buddleia, pinks and catmint leaves are blue gray.

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach and apricot; purple aster leaves darkening.

What’s yellowed: Young stems on globe willow; leaves on fernbush yellowing; some arborvitae have browned.

What’s blooming indoors: Zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Small birds.

Weekly update: Anthropologist, botanists, and politicians ask different questions about the origins of corn. The first want to know who did it, where they lived, and when. Botanists insist on understanding the whats and hows, the probabilities of hybridization. Nationalists only ask that their people be given credit as the first; their offspring want the royalties.

The rest of us have simpler questions. How do I grow it? When do I eat? From that perspective, the many pueblo varieties of corn fall into two types: flour and sweet.

The Hopi planted sweet corn over four days during the waxing moon of April in secluded niches and harvested it in July. Much was roasted and eaten when it was picked. Since it’s prone to mold, the remaining kernels were removed and dried for use as a sweetener.

Dietary corn was planted in fields from mid-May to late June. Crow-wing indicated in 1920 each clan was assigned a week to plant, but individuals could plant when they chose. The four-day sowings staggered tasseling dates so neighboring patches of wind-born pollen could not fertilize each other. Unlike sweet corn, it was gathered after it dried in September and October. The ears were stored and the kernels removed when needed for grinding or boiling.

This flint corn derived from one of the primary races of maize that developed in Mexico. Chapalote came from intermediate altitudes of Sonora and Chihuahua. This is the form found in the Tehuacán valley and the one found in Bat Cave in the Mogollon Mountains of Catron County from around 2000 bc. The shell or pericarp was brown, and could be popped on the cob.

The corn found in the strata of Bat Cave underwent a major change around 500 bc when varieties appeared that had been crossed with teosinte, the closest relative of maize. Since teosinte grows around corn fields in México, it’s assumed the hybrids came from there. One distinguishing feature is the pericarp may come in many colors. Another is that teosinte may introduce mutations that become permanent.

Maíz de Ocho appeared around 700 in western México. The eight-row variety spread into the southwest, then north to Colorado and east along the Arkansas River. From there the variety moved into lower elevations following cold soils and short growing seasons north up the Missouri river after the year 1000. From there the corn moved east along the southern Great Lakes to the Iroquois and New England. The kernels were easier to grind, the yields higher than their predecessors, and the plants could handle both drought and cold.

In 1851, Lewis Henry Morgan said the Iroquois planted a white flint corn that ripened first. They soaked it in wood ash lye for hominy. The second to ripen was a soft red they picked green and charred over pits to dry. Last to ripen was the white they used for flour.

They stripped some ears and braided the still attached husks into clusters that could be hung to dry and store. Other corn, including the charred red, was buried in grass-lined pits. Neither Morgan nor Arthur Parker gave an explanation. Centuries earlier, Jesuits had reported their bark-roofed long houses were flammable. Buried corn would survive catastrophe.

The eight-rowed corn became the ancestor of modern field corn. In the middle 1840s, near Peoria, Illinois, Robert Reid planted some reddish corn he’d obtained from Gordon Hopkins before he moved west from Brown County, Ohio, on the Ohio river east of Cincinnati. Hopkins’ family says it had been in their family since 1765 when men migrated into the Shenandoah valley from Baltimore.

The gourd-seed variety only grows well from Virginia south. When it failed to germinate in the prairie environment, Reid filled the spaces in his field with leftover yellow seed he got from neighbors. The New England corn crossed the southern variety. His son, James, worked to improve it by selecting out the red. Reid’s Yellow Dent became famous when it won first prize at Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.

Feed corns are softer than southwestern flints, whose kernels are surrounded by hard starch layers. In field corn the hard starch migrates to the sides, leaving a softer starch in the center that shrinks to produce the identifying top dent. One of its advantages was animals could chew it without having it ground. It also was more prone to diseases and predators. Breeders had to reintroduce resistence to store and export it.

Notes:
Crow-wing. A Pueblo Indian Journal 1920-1921, edited by Elsie Clews Parsons, 1925.

Galinat, W. C. and J. H. Gunnerson. "Spread of Eight-Rowed Maize from the Prehistoric Southwest," Harvard University Botanical Museum Leaflets 20:117-160:1963.

Giles, Dorothy. Singing Valleys: The Story of Corn, 1940, on Reid.

Jesuits. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites, 1898.

Mangelsdorf, Paul C. Corn: It’s Origin, Evolution, and Improvement, 1974.

Morgan, Lewis Henry. League of the Ho-de’-no-sau-nee or Iroquois, 1851.

Parker, Arthur C. Iroquois Uses of Maize and Other Food Plants, 1910.

Stephen, Alexander. Notebooks, 1882-1894, edited as Hopi Journal, 1936, by Elsie Clews Parsons, on Hopi planting times.

Wallace, Henry A. and William L. Brown. Corn and Its Early Fathers, 1988 revised edition, on Reid.

Whiting, Alfred F. Ethnobotany of the Hopi, 1939.

Photographs:
1. Gila Pima A’al Hu:ñ flint corn, Gila River Reservation, Arizona, Native Seeds Search, Tucson. The low, hot lands of the Pima and Papago in southern and central Arizona were a separate diffusion route for maize into the southwest. Rounded top.

2. Río Grande Blue flour corn, Native Seeds Search; from a mix of blue corn varieties from Río Grande pueblos. Rounded top.

3. Reid’s Yellow Dent corn. The red survives in streaks. Depression in top.

4. Southern corns have a different lineage and probably moved north along the lowland coast of México through areas like Tramaulipas to the southern Mississippi valley. Hickory King, southern dent corn for hominy; grown in 1880 by A. O. King of Hickory, Virginia, from an ear he received from friend; marketed by Burpee in 1885 as having a large grain and small cob. Depression in top.

5. McCormack’s Blue Giant dent corn, developed by Jeff McCormack from Hickory King and an unknown blue dent; released in 1994 by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Mineral, Virginia. Depression in top.