Notes On Hopi Economic Life

Includes material on shamanism, death, witchcraft, myth, tricksters, and kachina initiations.

Thomas Varker Keam owned and operated a trading post in Keams Canyon, Arizona Territory, from 1874 to 1902. He was the first trader to develop American Indian arts and crafts as part of his business and the first to suggest that Native artists modify their techniques to increase sales. Keam had a major impact on the evolution of Hopi pottery. Involved in early archaeological work in the Southwest, Keam was the first trader to develop lucrative contacts with museum curators and anthropologists. He sold enormous collections to the Smithsonian Institution, the Field Museum, and the Peabody Museum, as well as several European institutions. An advocate for the Indians, Keam represented the Hopis and Navajos in confrontations with the U.S. government over “civilizing” programs between 1869 and 1902, when the Indians tried to maintain their political and cultural independence. Thomas Varker Keam revised Indian trading so that he and American Indian artists profited.

“Incorporate[s] a multitude of theoretical approaches about Hopi sociological life . . . Ranging from prehistoric times until contemporary times.” —Indigenous Nations Studies Journal All anthropologists and archaeologists seek to answer basic questions about human beings and society. Why do people behave the way they do? Why do patterns in the behavior of individuals and groups sometimes persist for remarkable periods of time? Why do patterns in behavior sometimes change? A Hopi Social History explores these basic questions in a unique way. The discussion is constructed around a historically ordered series of case studies from a single sociocultural system (the Hopi) in order to understand better the multiplicity of processes at work in any sociocultural system through time. The case studies investigate the mysterious abandonments of the Western Pueblo region in late prehistory, the initial impact of European diseases on the Hopis, Hopi resistance to European domination between 1680 and 1880, the split of Oraibi village in 1906, and some responses by the Hopis to modernization in the twentieth century. These case studies provide a forum in which the authors examine a number of theories and conceptions of culture to determine which theories are relevant to which kinds of persistence and change. With this broad theoretical synthesis, the book will be of interest to students and scholars in the social sciences. “A foundation for general discourse on anthropological theory and explanation . . . Covering the prehistoric, Spanish, early historic, and contemporary periods.” —American Indian Quarterly

Becoming Hopi is a comprehensive look at the history of the people of the Hopi Mesas as it has never been told before. The product of more than fifteen years of collaboration between tribal and academic scholars, this volume presents groundbreaking research demonstrating that the Hopi Mesas are among the great centers of the Pueblo world.