Novel Excerpt:

   It should be pointed out that the popular conception of Indians, or Native Americans, is of nomadic peoples who lived in tee-pees and followed Buffalo around. Once you moved off the plains, up and over the Great Divide, you reached the high desert of the northern hemisphere’s south west. The pueblo natives were not nomadic, but built rock apartments and lived in the same place year-round. The culture spread throughout the area and fostered many hybrid tribes but it was always acknowledged that the Hopi were there first, and that everyone had learned how to build apartments and plant crops from them. You might be thinking, “But wait, what about the Anasazi? Weren’t they there first?” And there’s an answer for that, but hold the thought.

     Things started for the Hopi when they found the three giant mesas they were instructed to find and began living as they were taught to live. They were told that after awhile some other people would show up, and they did. They called themselves Navajo. To make peace the Hopi gave up some of their land. The Navajos were nasty compared to the Hopi, prone to war and all, but the two tribes lived somewhat stably for hundreds and hundreds of years until the 1500s. Then soldiers, priests, and settlers began invading the pueblo lands where about forty thousand people lived. They were killed and enslaved by the hundreds and fear of whites was deeply instilled. Priests were assigned to create mini-theocracies where the people were forced to provide labor for food and materials. Check points were established along rivers and access to farmland was restricted. Especially hurtful was the assault on traditional pueblo teachings. The priests outlawed their religion and seized and burned the religious masks of their Kachina gods that they used in ceremonies.

    “It came to a head in the late 1600s when about fifty pueblo elders were arrested and accused of sorcery. Four were sentenced to death—three hung, the fourth committing suicide—and the remaining men were whipped and in-prisoned. When news reached the outer pueblos they assembled and headed to Santa Fe to free them. After a siege and negotiations the pueblo people won their release. Among those freed was an elder named Popé, he took up residence at Taos pueblo and for the next five years he and his two lieutenants Alonso and Domingo traveled from pueblo to pueblo advocating a return to the way of the Hopi. The people were asked to cleanse themselves in ritual baths, to use their pueblo names, revolt, and destroy all the things of the whites—to basically do what the whites were doing to them. All the pueblos, including the Hopi, joined in the plan. Popé promised that once the colonists were expelled the Kachina gods would return and reward them.

    On the designated morning the Taos pueblo sent out runners to all the other pueblos. The runners carried with them pieces of string, each with a set number of knots tied in them. The elders of each pueblo were to untie each knot each morning, the morning of the final knot being the day for that pueblo to rise up, kill all soldiers and priests, then advance on Santa Fe for the final route.

    The plan worked, the invaders were killed and their settlements destroyed. But a drought continued and raids by Navajo and Apache increased. The ancient gods did not return and what Popé had promised did not happen. Soon, in the early 1700s, a really large group of soldiers and priests again marched into the land of the pueblos. They marched to Santa Fe unopposed, promising the people clemency and protection along the way, if they would swear allegiance to whites and their religion. In the following months the other pueblos accepted their terms. Though the agreement was bloodless, rule became increasingly severe and the pueblo people were again provoked to revolt. And again it was over their ancient teachings. Most pueblo people were happy to go along with the silly routines of the whites, but when they cut feet and hands off of those practicing seasonal rituals, that was too much. A dozen or so pueblos attempted another organized revolt, launched with the killing of five priests. Retribution was unmerciful, prolonged, thorough, and by the end of the century the last resisting pueblo had surrendered to the whites completely. With the 1800s came the federal government of the United States, and more decades of bloodshed. By the second half of that century, due to acts by the US Congress, the Hopi lost three-quarters of what was originally marked out to them. All the things that had happened to them, going back to when the Navajo showed up and started harassing them, their teachings had prophesied would happen. Finally, in the early 1900s, the entire Hopi tribe, from all three mesas, split between the traditionalists who wanted to follow their ancient religion and those who wanted to follow the whites. The Hopi being the Hopi decided to settle the conflict with a tug of war. The traditionalists lost. They picked up and headed west about ten miles to start a new dwelling, one founded on and dedicated to the teachings and instructions originally given to them.

    By the time chain smoking ethnologist Stonefield got to the mesas to get to work on his book, about fifty years after the tug of war and tribal split, it turned out to be difficult to determine what was what when it came to the truth of Hopi teaching and prophesy. Much of what had been predicted had already taken place, leaving the whole of their instructions in a kind of limbo, up in the air.