The Hopi

The modern Hopi reservation is spread over 1.5 million acres, to the northeast of Flagstaff. The 11 main Hopi villages are clustered among the tops of three mesas across three mesas that serve as the concentration points of the Hopi community. Old Oraibi, located on Third Mesa, is considered the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States. As of 2000, the Hopi reservation's population numbered about 7,000. By tradition, the people are divided into several matrilineal clans that serve as a powerful source of identity for their members.

The Hopi, who are most likely direct descendents of the Anasazi, are perhaps best known for their rich spiritual life marked by yearly ceremonial cycles that are still performed in their villages today. These ceremonies are more than the expression of philosophical abstractions—they developed in part as a matter of survival. A couple millennia spent coaxing corn, beans and squash to grow in the high country, where rainfall maxes out at 12 inches a year, puts man's dependence on his environment in the forefront of the collective consciousness. The ceremonies are designed to help maintain the correct harmony among the people and the universe so the best conditions for survival continue uninterrupted.

The fanciful Kachina dolls that command the shelves of art galleries all over Arizona are an artistic outgrowth of one fascinating aspect of Hopi religious life. The Kachina (also Katsina or Katchinam) are not "gods" per se, but something like embodiments of specific aspects of the life force, who for six months out of the year, descend from their home in the San Francisco peaks to mingle among the villages and maintain social order, as well as agricultural success. In ceremony the Kachina are represented by dancers in costumes. The dolls, which have become an elaborate and prized art form, evolved from the simple stick figures given to children to teach about the various Kachina and the lessons they carried through countless generations.

While the Hopi identity is inextricably linked with a harmonious, peaceful, "correct" life, Hopi history is still fraught with struggle. They lived in relative peace until the arrival of the Spanish and their attempts at conversion, culminating in the "Pueblo Revolt" of 1680. This marked a decrease in Spanish control over the area, and also a shift in population concentration from the foothills and valley floors to the top of the mesas for better defense. There has also been nearly 150 years of conflict between the Hopi and the Navajo over land rights, and today the Hopi reservation is surrounded entirely by the Navajo reservation.

The Navajo

Anthropologists and linguists theorize that the people known today as the Navajo were part of a larger group of people that migrated south from Alaska and Canada and began arriving in the Southwest between 1000 and 1200 A.D. Part of this group settled around the Four Corners region and adopted the agricultural lifestyle of the Hopi and Pueblo peoples, and became known to the nearby Hopi and Pueblo people, and exploring Europeans as the Navajo, or in their own language, Diné (The People).

The modern Navajo Nation includes about a quarter million people within 27,000 square miles spanning across the Four Corners region. Their land is contained within a rough circle with four mountains at the compass points: Mt. Blanca to the east, Mt. Taylor to the south, the San Francisco Peaks to the west and Mt. Hesperus to the north. These mountains and the land within their circle are all considered sacred by the Navajo.

At the center of that domain is Canyon de Chelly, a place of intense natural beauty that is deeply important to the Navajo. As the epicenter of their creation stories and spiritual traditions, few physical places so fully encompass a people's historical and spiritual life like Canyon de Chelly. Dozens of Navajo families still live among its dramatic rock formations and sheer canyon walls, as the Navajo have continuously for about 300 years.

Spider Rock, one of the most dramatic rock formations in Canyon de Chelly, is also the legendary home of Spider Woman, a powerful figure in Navajo spiritual traditions. She is credited with bringing the art of weaving to the people, an art with as much symbolic significance as artistic and pragmatic. Weaving became a particularly significant economic and cultural force in Navajo life in the 1500s when the Spanish brought introduced sheep into the Southwest. Authentic Navajo rugs, tapestries and blankets are highly-sought items in galleries throughout Arizona, prized for their rich colors, durability and intricate design.

The Spanish also introduced silver jewelry-making to the Navajo, who promptly turned it into another enduring artistic tradition. The combination of local turquoise and exquisitely crafted silver jewelry has found a place on the list of jewelry classics, and the southwest is rich in gorgeous one-of-a-kind creations by contemporary Navajo artists.