Pollards and Copses

Weather: Snow Friday and Saturday. Last snow 2/28.

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, sandcherry 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, rabbit tracks.

Weekly update: There are only so many ways to trim a tree: cut it off above, cut it at the ground, trim the edges, or thin the middle. It doesn’t matter which technique is used. A tree or shrub will replace the amputated branches if they are important to its survival.

Oliver Rackham says Englishmen didn’t much care if they pollarded trees several feet off the ground or copsed them level. They were interested in harvesting firewood. Sometimes they wanted fence posts.

The pollarded tree responded with a bolling at the top. A stool formed at the base of a copse.

Pollarding took more effort, but was necessary if a tree was near browsing livestock. The cut was made so high animals couldn’t reach the succulent new growth.

Utility and road departments have been trimming trees here recently. They have cherry pickers which make either method easier. However, they have no use for the sawn off branches. They have to fed to a mulcher and hauled off. They cut the minimum required, then come back in a few years and cut more.

The difference between them is utility companies cut everything from the top down to some point below the wires, while road crews cut whatever threatens traffic and leave the rest.

Ditch cleaners are more likely to cut trees to the group and inadvertently create copses.

There was a time when Native American basket makers would harvest skunkbush limbs they had nurtured by burning them to the ground. Now, there are so few basket weavers they don’t have to worry about sandbar willow. They know they can always find some the right color, the right length, the right thickness this time of year.

No one, Englishman, cutting crew, or Native American does more work than necessary.

Notes: For more on harvesting skunkbush, see the post for 12 April 2009; index at right.

Rackham, Oliver. The History of the Countryside, 1986.

Photographs: All taken in the area 26 February 2015.

1. Pollarded tree under a utility line that’s come back several times. The cluster supporting the new growth is the bolling.

2. Pruned tree near the road that’s put out new growth around the cut end.

3. Trees near a utility pole that have been cut several times. The history is recorded in the thick, twisting trunk base.

4. Trees of heaven that have come back in clusters along a ditch.

5. Siberian elms that formed clumps when they were cut along the same ditch.

6. Tree by the road that has been cut more than once.

Estremaduran Oak

Weather: Last rain 2/11.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas, rose stems; leaves on grape hyacinth, Japanese honeysuckle, alfilerillo. In the warm days green is pushing up along roadsides.

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

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach, apricot, apple, sandcherry 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 Estremadura is the part of western Spain that was home to the conquistadors and some of the people who moved here in 1588. It’s town names include Albuquerque, Guadalupe, Trujillo, and Herrera del Duque.

I’ve been reading about it to see if its environment influenced the attitudes of early Spanish explorers and settlers.

It’s a dry plain surrounded by mountains with one main river winding through the center, the Tagus and one flowing in the south, the Guadiana. A little over 18 inches of rain fall a year, most of it coming in winter.

Here we get about 12 inches, with most of it coming in the summer monsoons and some in the winter snows.

Nature has responded to the Estremadura’s Mediterranean climate with trees that have wide branching habits, extensive root systems, and leaves that fall in summer. The one provides shade that slows evaporation. The second holds dry soil from blowing away and traps water wherever it lands. The third carpets the ground in summer, at the same time it reduces stress on defoliating plants.

At one time, the Estremadura was covered by woodland. The most common landscape today is the bosque Mediterráneo dominated by evergreen Holm oaks (Quercus ilex). To the south, where the climate is warmer, cork oak (Quercus suber) grows in the shade of the mountain ranges.

When trees are felled in large numbers, dense scrub intrudes. Brooms (Cistus), lavenders, and mastics (Pistacia lentiscus) replace Holm oaks. Scrub thickets, strawberries and heather supercede cork.

When that second generation protective scrub is removed, single species like brambles, heathers and gorse advance. These are more tolerant of drought, poor soils, and bush fires.

Along the mountainous perimeter, deciduous trees grow in the bosque de montaña. Melojos (Quercus pyrenaica) are most common, but there also are chestnut groves and clumps of Portuguese oak (Quercus faginea).

Near the Tagus and its more permanent tributaries riparian species grow. In the higher elevations, the bosque en galería sports willows, osiers, and alders. Aspen and ashes replace them at lower levels. In the lower bosque de ribera bushes, oleanders, tamujo brooms (Flueggea tinctoria), and vines grow under elms.

The most important Estremaduran landscape is the dehesa, an open pasture that supports cattle and cereal production. The primary wild plants are winter annuals that bloom in spring, the purple viper’s bugloss, tolpis, andryala, corn marigold, and yellow chamomile. The first is a borage, the rest members of the composite family.

The dehesa may originally have been created by wild fires, but the open savannah has been maintained for thousands of years by humans. The oaks, especially the cork oak, have adapted. The latter produces a thick coat of bark every year to protect itself.

The only oaks I’ve seen in this area were Gambel oaks in the area of Bandolier. It was 13 years after the Cerro Grande Fire had scorched the bark. The tops had died back, and new growth risen from the roots.

Notes: Instituto de Educación Secundaria les Dr.Fernández Santana. "Vegetation of Extremadura," school web site.

Photographs: Quercus gambelii near Bandolier, 4 July 2013. The first was taken on a slope at 8,159'. The clump in the last was at 7,344'. The others were on flatter land at 7,047'.

Red Piki

Weather: A little rain Wednesday.

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, sandcherry 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: Piki dyed red with amaranth existed in the late nineteenth century. However, kachinas giving it to onlookers at their dances appears to be more recent.

In 1891, Jesse Walter Fewkes said most piki was the color of "woodwork," but that "bright red striped and other colored piki are made." He said it was not unusual to see "several rolls of variegated pi-ki tied together side by side" on the "walls in dwelling rooms."

He saw a "considerable quantity of red" among the prizes the clowns and kachinas brought to the Niman ceremonial footrace at Hano. It wasn’t given to spectators, but to the winners. He added this was the only race that featured prizes.

Hano is the Tewa-speaking pueblo that shares First Mesa with Walpi and Sichomovi.

Piki was used in ceremonies, but its color wasn’t important. Voth says at Soyal in the early 1890s at Oraibi on Third Mesa, some Soyal "Katcinas carry presents (piki, watermelons, corn, etc.)" and priests throw presents to spectators.

A few years later, Barbara Friere-Marreco said "red and yellow mowa, used by certain kachina, is made by mixing vegetal dyes in the dough" at Hano. Fewkes reported amaranth was "used to impart a red color to the piki or paper bread distributed at katcina exhibitions" without specifying where or when.

A similar progression from noting the use of amaranth to vague comments of function appears in the observations at Zuñi made by Matilda Coxe Stevenson. In 1901, she simply said women occasionally dyed their piki red. In 1915, she added the colored wafer bread was "carried by impersonators of anthropic gods and thrown by them to the populace between the dances" without specifying which dances.

Observers in the 1930s reported seeing colored piki, but again were vague. Alfred Whiting said amaranth was "used as a dye to color the piki (wafer bread) a brilliant pink." At Hotevilla, Mischa Titiev saw kachinas use "parched and popped corn, melons, piki bread in various colors, and baked sweet corn" as a comic gift at an October dance.

Hotevilla is the Third Mesa settlement made by the conservatives who withdrew from Oraibi in 1906. Because it has no physical home for its kachinas, the spirits don’t disappear at Niman, but are available for harvest rituals.

By the 1970s, tourists and others uniformly remember red piki being given at Niman, the only outdoor kachina ceremony. Harold Courlander saw "kachinas give out bread, piki, fruit and other gifts to spectators." Raymond Sokolov noticed "brightly colored piki, made from white corn meal to which red or yellow dyes have been added, is distributed only by katsinas during the dances."

Between Titiev and Courlander the number of people who attended public dances increased, and their knowledge decreased. Pueblos became interchangeable, all dancers were kachinas, and gift giving was assumed.

In fact, the major gift giving dance had been the Basket Dance described in the posting made 5 February 2012. However, a major change had occurred. Baskets originally were thrown to favored men in the audience. As the number of spectators increased, women no longer spent time making special baskets since they were unlikely to land in the desired hands. Instead, Helga Teiwes says at Shungopovi on Second Mesa, "enormous amounts of plastic and aluminum kitchen items, rolls of paper towels and toilet paper, boxes of Cracker Jack" are "showered on the crowd."

Today, the knowledge of red piki as a gift is both more universal and less specific. Native Seeds notes, "The Hopi" use one of its offered varieties to "make a scarlet natural food dye to color piki bread."

A more boutique seed company has altered that to say the same plant is "still used by the Hopi to color cornbread rich red." Corn bread, of course, is not treated with lime derived from calcium, so that may explain why the color is "red" and not the "pink" of Whiting.

Another company has gone a step farther. It markets Supai Red Parch Corn as a "traditional southwestern snack, often accented with chile lime salt!" You see those green fruits on packages of lime-flavored corn chips.

It’s a long ways from the Hopi who used piki as a traveler’s food and the Iroquois who used parched corn. It’s even farther from the time when only the bravest ran from kachinas at Niman, because if they were caught they were beaten with yucca whips. Only those who evaded them got piki.

It’s farther still from the time when Alexander Stephen said a red ear was kept for four days where a person died. Then it was attached to the ceiling. "If it is still there next planting season, he who has the bravest heart takes it out and plants it."

Notes:
Courlander, Harold. The Fourth World of the Hopis, 1971.

Fewkes, J. Walter Fewkes. "The Wa-Wac-Ka-Tci-Na, a Tusayan Foot Race," The Essex Institute Bulletin 24:113-133:1892 and "A Contribution to Ethnobotany," American Anthropologist 9:14-21:1896.

Friere-Marreco, Barbara, William Wilfred Robbins, and John Peabody Harrington. Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians, 1916.

Sokolov, Raymond A. Fading Feast, 1981.

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

Stevenson, Matilda Coxe. The Zuñi Indians, 1904, and Ethnobotany of the Zuñi Indians, 1915.

Teiwes, Helga. Hopi Basket Making, 1996.

Titiev, Mischa. Old Oraibi, 1944.

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

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

Photographs:
1. Red amaranth plants have been buried by snow twice this season; 23 November 2014.

2. The Hopi did not cultivate a pure red corn; instead they treated ears of all red kernels as something special. The Italians are the ones who created a red flint corn in the Valsugana valley. Floriana was given to seed companies in this country by William Rubel.

3. The meal has red shells mixed with yellow and white interiors; from Mohr-Fry Ranches and Ian Johnson, Lodi, California.

4. Recently, Carl Barnes, bred Glass Gem specifically for its brilliant colors. Barnes was a part-Cherokee agricultural extension agent in Kansas. He developed the corn after he retired to Oklahoma. He thinks it came from crossing Pawnee miniature corn with an Osage red flour corn and another Osage corn called Gray Horse.

Piki

Weather: Sun currently reaching a level around 5 pm that sends its rays through the house from a south window into my eyes when I sitting on the north side.

Snow that was compressed by walking on it has turned into ice that persists in shadows. Elsewhere, the ground softens during the day. When I was in the post office yesterday, a man said he was ordering a load of base coarse for his drive. Last snow 1/30.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas. Rose stems; leaves on grape hyacinth, Japanese honeysuckle, alfilerillo. One man burned his field yesterday; I think he was using a flame thrower to ignite moisture laden weeds.

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

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach, apricot, apple, sandcherry 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. When I was out this morning, I saw cranes in a hay field near the river; Canadian geese were in the next field where vegetable are grown.

Weekly update: Piki is a thin corn bread made from dough like tortilla that’s cooked on a griddle. The sheets are folded or stacked. They were portable food taken by travelers, and eaten during kachina rituals.

During the fourth day of Soyal, spirit impersonators ate white wafer bread. The ceremonial meal after Powamu included piki and mutton stew containing bean plants. In the officiating kiva, the men ate "gravy, unrolled flat sheets of piki, and boiled beans."

Most often the wafer bread was made from white corn. Sheets made from blue meal are used for rites of passage like marriage and funerals. A few sheets were buried with eagles after Niman.

While it’s most associated with the Hopi today, Matilda Cox Stevenson saw Zuñi make he’wa in the early 1890s. A few decades later, Barbara Freire-Marco reported Santa Clara women used more wheat than corn for bread, but a half dozen women still made buwa. Hano called it mowa.

The three secrets to making piki are the dough, the coloring, and the stone. The use of an alkaline hydroxide solution to create an elastic dough was discussed in the posting "Corn Harvest," for 30 November 2008.

Marlene Sekaquaptewa says piki dough is made from finely ground meal and boiling water that’s stirred with a  stick made from greasewood. Then, boiling water is strained through greasewood ashes into the dough. The blue meal changes color when the pH reaches 8.

The Zuñi used slaked lime when Matilda Cox Stevenson saw them. At Hano, Barbara Freire-Marco said they used salt bush ashes. If Atriplex canescens wasn’t available in winter, then sheep dung was used.

The cooking surface is a flat stone heated over a cedar wood fire in a room reserved for the stone. Traditionally, women greased them with crushed watermelon seeds. Freire-Marco said Zuñi used chewed squash seeds, Santa Clara used marrow fat, and Hano any animal grease.

On Second Mesa today, Joyce Saufkie uses a mix of Crisco oil and pig brains. In the past she used cattle brains, but she says they aren’t available anymore.

The dough is spread on the stone, and picked off by hand. "Joyce says she retains all feeling in her palms and fingers, despite the intense heat, explaining that her swift motion and the insulating properties of the wafer-thin layers prevent injury."

Notes:
Fewel, Clifford. "Joyce Saufkie and Her Family Keep the Art of Making Piki Bread Alive on Second Mesa," Canku Ota, October 2013.

Friere-Marreco, Barbara, William Wilfred Robbins, and John Peabody Harrington. Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians, 1916, on Hano and Santa Clara.

Spencer, Victoria and Marlene Sekaquaptewa. "Piki of the Hopi Indians," University of Pennsylvania Museum Expedition, March 1995.

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

Stevenson, Matilda Coxe. Ethnobotany of the Zuñi Indians, 1915.

Titiev, Mischa. Old Oraibi, 1944, on Powamu.

Voth, H. R. "Notes on the Eagle Cult of the Hopi," Publications of the Field Museum of Natural History. Anthropological Series 11:105, 107-109:February 1912.

Photographs: Good photographs of piki can be found in a You Tube video posted by Marlene Sekaquaptewa.

1. Corn chips made with blue or white meal. The blue uses whole grain corn, vegetable oil and sea salt. The white has more finely ground corn, oil and salt.

2. Cranes near the Río Grande, 8 February 2015.

3. Very dark meal finely ground, purple corn from Peru.

4. Varying shades of blue from processing. The corn chip is on top. Bottom right is a stone ground blue tortilla from whole corn, water and lime (the alkaline).  Bottom left is a blue corn taco shell made from blue corn masa flour and vegetable oil. Masa is tortilla flour made from corn, water and lime.

5. Medium ground blue corn meal still has the blue shells separate from the whiter interiors.

6. Geese in the field next to that of the cranes, 8 February 2015.

Corn in Parts

Weather: Friday’s snow is still on the ground.

What’s still green: Juniper, piñon, and other evergreens, yuccas. Rose stems; leaves on grape hyacinth, Japanese honeysuckle, alfilerillo. Men were pruning their apple trees this week.

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

What’s reddened: Cholla, twigs on peach, apricot, apple, sandcherry 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. Horses have been brought into the valley for winter feeding.

Weekly update: Corn and beans were the staples of the Hopi diet, with corn more important in the ceremonial life. Almost every part had a role.

Pollen and meal were sprinkled on objects, people and kachinas. Meal had other uses, but there was much more of it. When pollen was unavailable, symbolic grains were made from meal. Among the neighboring Navajo pollen was considered the more sacred.

Silk is the conduit that transfers pollen fallen from the tassels above to the ovaries to which it is connected. Isleta used strands in their Corn Dances.

Dried husks hold tobacco for smoking. They also are used as wraps for collections of foods and objects distributed during Powamu. At Zuñi such packets are given to healers who perform curing ceremonies.

The entire plant is used in the rituals that follow Powamu. Mischa Titiev called them repeats. They redo the central part of the February ceremony, raising young plants, but with the more important corn.

For the Water Serpent Dance, plants are brought into the central kiva where they are placed in conical mounds arranged in rows like a field. The water serpent looks over and them and is fed meal. When satisfied, he knocks over the stalks, signifying they are ready to harvest.

During the Puppet Dance, the germination god, Muyingwa, stands with a female doll on each side behind the rows of planted corn. The dolls bend over mealing stones to grind. At the end, a bowl of sweet corn meal is passed among those watching.

Niman, the last of the ceremonies in the kachina calendar, is the most realistic. Sweet corn is raised outdoors. When it’s ripe, the kachinas are sent home to oversee the summer monsoons. The corn is eaten. The feast is repeated in September, after the regular sweet corn crop is harvested.

Notes:
Elmore, Francis H. Ethnobotany of the Navajo, 1944.

Jones, Volney H. The Ethnobotany of the Isleta Indians, 1931.

Stevenson, Matilda Coxe. Ethnobotany of the Zuñi Indians, 1915.

Titiev, Mischa. Old Oraibi, 1944.

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

Photographs:
1-3. Corn grown by Dani Kellogg in Santa Fé, 3 August 2010. #1 shows flower debris captured by the upturned leaves, #2 the female silk flower with pollen in hairs, #3 the male tassel.

4-5. Corn purchased off-season, January 2015; can see how the silk connects under the kernels and how the cob serves as a receptacles for seeds.

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.