Native Americans for 4th Arctic – Inuit Northwest – Kwakiutl Plateau – Nez Perce Southwest – Hopi Plains – Pawnee Southeastern - Seminole HOPE-ee

Hopi - Southwestern

Southwest - Hopi

Southwest - Hopi

The Hopi people have the longest history of occupation of a single area by any Native American tribe in the United States. The Hopi have always lived in the Four Corners area of the United States. Do you see the FOUR CORNERS?

The Hopis speak a Shoshonean language. Their name means peaceful ones.

There were two groups of Native Americans in the southwest region. The Pueblo, Hopi, and Zuni were descended from the Anasazi culture of 1,700 years ago. The Navajo and Apache came down from the north later.

The Anasazi have been called "the cliff dwellers". They built their homes high on the side of cliffs for protection. Long ladders reached the homes, and when they saw someone coming, they would pull them up or kick them down. The later pueblos were like the cliff houses.

Hopi people lived in adobe houses, which are multi-story house complexes made of adobe (clay and straw baked into hard bricks) and stone.

Each pueblo has a flat roof and is built next to or on top of it's neighbor. Families slept on rugs or animal skins. The word "pueblo" is not a native word and means town in Spanish. "Pueblo" is used for both the houses and the people who live in them.

While Hopi located their villages on mesas for defensive purposes, the land surrounding the mesas was also used by the tribe, dividing it between families and using common areas for medicinal and religious purposes.

The Hopi have been able to adapt to their arid desert climate by using different agricultural methods. These methods include dry farming in the washes or valleys between the mesas as well as gardening on irrigated terraces along the mesa walls below each village.

Around 700 A.D. the Hopi became agricultural people growing blue ears of corn using runoff from the mesas. At this time many of the small bands began to come together and large villages began to be established atop the mesas.

The Hopis were expert farming people. They planted crops of corn, beans, and squash, as well as cotton and tobacco, and raised turkeys for their meat. Hopi men also hunted deer, antelope, and small game, while women gathered nuts, fruits, and herbs.

From the Spanish, the Hopi acquired horses, burros, sheep, and cattle, as well as new fruits and vegetables. The Spanish and later Europeans also introduced smallpox which reduced the populations on the mesas from thousands to hundreds in devastating epidemics.

The clothing they wore depended on what they did.  They lived in a warm climate so they wore little clothing. They would dress in flowers and paint with feather headdresses. 

Originally, Hopi men didn't wear much clothing– only breechcloths or short kilts (men's skirts). Hopi women wore knee-length cotton dresses called mantas. A manta fastened at a woman's right shoulder, leaving her left shoulder bare. Unmarried Hopi women wore their hair in elaborate butterfly whorls while married women wore theirs in two long pigtails.

Hopi men usually wore cloth headbands tied around their foreheads Hopi men usually wore cloth headbands tied around their foreheads. Most men wore their hair gathered into a figure-eight shaped bun, though some Hopi men began cutting their hair to shoulder-length during the early 1900s. The Hopis also painted their faces for special occasions.

squash blossom or butterfly whorls

Hopi bridal costume 1900

Hopi ceremonial dance

ceremonial dance

Kachina dolls were carved out wood by the Zuni and Hopi tribes. They clothed them in masks and costumes to look like the men who dressed up as Kachina spirits or gods. They were given to children to teach them to identify the different parts of Kachina dolls, and the parts they play in tribal ceremonies.

Kachina dancer and doll

Hopis used dogs pulling travois (a kind of drag sled) to help them carry heavy loads. Once Europeans brought horses to America, the Hopis could travel more quickly than before.

-painting of what Hopi daily life might have been like: The young women on the left are grinding corn. The hair style, with the hair gathered on each side in a circle, indicates that they are not married. The man on the right is holding an arrow. On his back is a quiver that holds more arrows. He is wearing a loincloth which is strips of fabric or animal skin held at the waist with a strap.