Hopis and the Counterculture, page 5
“He will bring forth the destruction of the wicked”
An interesting irony about communities that entrust specialists with the preservation and interpretation of secret prophetic traditional knowledge is that the very secrecy and danger surrounding such knowledge enable those charged with its preservation to be significant sources of innovation and change.39 The keepers of prophecy unavoidably create new meanings whenever they associate new circumstances with old stories. This form of traditional knowledge is, ironically, a vehicle for creative change. Fredrik Barth first identified this paradox, and as Armin Geertz has shown, this process characterizes the role of prophecy in the Hopi Traditionalist faction.40
Hopi prophecy derives from the emergence myth, which describes a series of four sequential ages or worlds, each beginning as a paradise but deteriorating gradually due to human evil.41 Each world is destroyed catastrophically, but the faithful survive by climbing a reed through the sky into the next world where they begin life again. The current, or fourth, world has become corrupted, and its own apocalyptic end is assured. The emergence myth consists of sets of stories in a consistent sequence. The fourth story set describes a meeting with the fourth world’s ruling deity, Maasaw, and/or the stories of two brothers: the elder, Pahaana or White Brother, and the younger Hopi Brother. Details within the stories vary considerably between versions, especially when a particular social group is represented, and prestige or authority is at stake. Stories concerning the meeting with Maasaw and the two brothers are the most variable, and these are where the most prophecy resides. A consistent feature is that Maasaw permits humanity’s presence in the fourth world on condition that humans live frugally and religiously. Maasaw promises to return someday to punish humanity for its failure to live properly. Hopis vigorously debate what signs will presage Maasaw’s return, but a consistent element is that the two brothers are each given marked stone tablets or fragments of the same tablet. White Brother (Pahaana) departs to the east but will return to herald the end of the world, and his tablet or fragment will identify him. Maasaw then will return and purify, creating a new paradise. Whatever else occurs are subjects of great disagreement. Geertz found that the more “darkly apocryphal tones” in the prophecies of the Hopi Traditionalist faction originated among resisting leaders a century ago during the buildup to the Orayvi split.42 Since the prophetic stories vary between and within villages, prophetic tradition can be both unifying and divisive. By rooting their ideology in prophecy, the Traditionalist faction leadership sharply limited its ability to mobilize broad support among the Hopi.43
For many Hopi, the issue of White Brother’s return was closed when the Americans arrived. But among former resisters who opposed the Tribal Council, the matter remained very open. Dan Katchongva (1881–1972) at Hotvela was one of those anticouncil former resisters who still sought the true White Brother. As a pavansinom leader, his interpretations were influential, especially in Hotvela.44 He would become the main prophet of the Traditionalist movement, but the circumstances of his accession to leadership meant that his authority in Hotvela was always vulnerable to questions of legitimacy. When the founding Hotvela kikmongwi Yukiwma died in 1929, his legitimate heir among the matrilineal Hopi was his Kookop clan nephew, James Pongyayawma. Pongyayawma was too young at the time to assume the duties of kikmongwi and was not officially installed until 1943. In the interim, Dan Katchongva, who was Sun clan, One Horn Society, and Yukiwma’s son, functioned as a regent and coruler. Some Hopis have suggested that Yukiwma felt that Katchongva coveted but was unsuited for leadership.45 Nevertheless, Katchongva could claim to have acquired the knowledge needed to serve as regent and coruler. Around 1950 he usurped Pongyayawma’s position, becoming the de facto kikmongwi.46 By the early sixties, Nagata reports, Katchongva was described by Hotvela people as “a ‘religious leader,’ ‘advisor,’ and ‘chief’ (Mongwi) but never as a village chief (kikwimongwi).”47
Katchongva introduced new elements into the prophecy of Pahaana’s return that extended its significance beyond the Hopi people. The presence of Mormon missionaries in Hopi country since the late 1850s had raised the possibility that the Pahaana was a Mormon. With this in mind, Katchongva ventured to Salt Lake City in 1935 with his spokesman, Ralph Tawangyawma, and interpreter, Harry Nasewytewa, to share their millennial prophecies in a magazine article. Katchongva stated that the innovation of airplane travel confirmed a prophecy of “a road in the sky,” signaling that the return of White Brother was near at hand. He hoped that the article would encourage White Brother to come forward to precipitate Purification Day. After reciting an abbreviated version of the emergence myth, Katchongva began to proselytize beyond the boundaries of Hopi identity and community with his apocalyptic prophecy of the coming Purification Day:
When the winters would be very cold and the summers very dry, when earthquakes and other signs of nature came; when men would be uneasy and restless in their minds; when a road would be made in the sky, then all men would know that they must live better for the time was then come, when the White Brother would return and all things would be made right. If men did not heed these warnings and live better and more humbly, they would be destroyed when He comes. The destruction of the wicked would be the way in which the world would be cured of evil doings. . . .
[The Hopi] were further told that after the time of the destruction, the faithful people would be rewarded for their faithfulness, that there would be a place provided for the poor people for their inheritance for the reward of their sufferings, that the righteous white people and the Indians would be as brothers; they would be taken to a place in this land of ours where a lot of riches are to be found. During the peaceable time these people who have been faithful will unite and share these treasures in equal parts and live as the white people do. This shall be a time of plenty when there will be nothing but happiness for everybody. . . .
If this that I have told you is to be sent out to different places and even to the foreign countries, perhaps our White Brother will read it, for He is a person today who will come to us and will be able to translate the marble record we have with our people, which was given to us by the Mausauu. He will bring forth the destruction of the wicked and a great day of peace and happiness will follow for the good people. Then Mausauu will return to be our leader.48
Katchongva’s prophecy introduces a new missionizing message: righteous whites and the poor of all backgrounds would survive Purification Day with the Hopi and live together in peace, plenty, and happiness. Prior to this, Hopi prophecy was just for the Hopi. After White Brother did not appear in the next five years, Katchongva became disenchanted with the idea of a Mormon White Brother. By the summer of 1940, he was claiming that Adolf Hitler was the White Brother, citing the similarity between the Hopi and Nazi swastikas and other markers as evidence. This would have serious consequences for young men of Hotvela when mandatory registration for the draft began throughout the United States in October 1940.49
“We have a stone tablet”
By October 16, fourteen Hopis from Hotvela refused to register for the draft because they felt that their religious traditions forbade them from going to war, particularly a war between whites.50 Hotvela’s corulers, James Pongyayawma and Dan Katchongva, apparently had advised the young men not to register. Expecting that the men simply failed to grasp the consequences of their resistance, the draft board in Holbrook, Arizona, gave the fourteen resisters an extension until U.S. Indian Bureau commissioner John Collier could explain the law to them. Collier reportedly told them to comply with the law. The draft board chairman, Wilson Bourdon, also brought pressure by drawing attention to the influence of Pongyayawma and Katchongva on the men’s decision not to register, and when resistance continued the next day, Bourdon claimed that “one Hopi was a member of the German-American Bund and had been spreading word on the reservation that the Indians should not recognize the federal government and that Adolf Hitler soon would come and ‘free’ them from the United States.”51 A partial resolution to the standoff appeared after reservation superintendent Seth Wilson spent four days at Hotvela convincing more than half the men to register.
Seven months later, the six remaining men were on trial for draft evasion in Phoenix. Katchongva and Pongyayawma appeared at the trial to share with the press their version of the prophecy that had inspired the young men. Interpreting for Katchongva were Thomas Banyacya, Oswald White Bear Fredericks (1905–1996), and Chester Mote. The two Hotvela leaders displayed a carved stone tablet kept by Pongyayawma, which they said conveyed the following prophecy:
We have a stone tablet on which is carved a legend. That tablet has been handed down from generation to generation. It says that there will come a time when there will be great trouble involving many nations. The Hopi are to show their bows and arrows to no one at that time. . . . The legend says that someday a white brother will come who will be able to read the things on the stone. When he comes we will know him and he will enable the Hopi and all other people of the world to share equally in the wealth that is given to us who are living. . . . This white brother will be the only person who will be able to tell the entire and true meaning of the stone.52
Through advice or intimidation from federal officials, Pongyayawma and Katchongva realized that they risked their own freedom if they explicitly advised young men not to register. After mid-October 1940 they only urged men to follow their own consciences on the draft question:53 By next May, they would testify,
We do not advise any youth not to register for selective service. Nor do we advise any to register. We hold ourselves aloof from all such advice, because we feel that in the light of our prophecy we should not mix in it. The youths may register or not, each according to his own conscience. But as Holtvilla [sic] chiefs, we cannot order them.54
The six remaining resisters gave themselves strength as they awaited trial in their jail cell by reviewing the prophecy of two brothers. Their cause was hurt by statements from other Hopi religious leaders who denied that Hopi religious traditions forbade defensive war. It also became apparent that some Hotvela residents wanted the men to sign their draft documents. Failing to grasp that Hopi prophetic interpretations could differ between sources, federal officials perceived the men’s resistance as hostility to the United States rather than religious dedication, even though one of the men had just been initiated into a priesthood. At their trial the men felt that Hopi beliefs were not considered a religion by the court. As they awaited their fate, the jailed men agreed that the return of a brother whom they must not fight had been foretold. One of them recalled saying, “We are doing this for the Hopi people, we are not doing this for our selves [sic].”55 Five of them were convicted in May 1941 and sentenced to labor at the Tucson federal prison camp while one signed his draft papers. Once installed in the Santa Catalina Mountains prison camp, the men met Quaker draft resisters and Japanese Americans who had defied wartime internment.56
When the first group of Hopis convicted of draft evasion was released in April 1942, the Department of Justice prosecuted them again for refusing to answer questionnaires and for influencing other Hopis to resist the draft. Pressure also increased on Katchongva and Pongyayawma for continuing to counsel young men about the draft. Even so, the Hotvela corulers again traveled to Phoenix to make their case. This time, Katchongva explained how the creation of a new world was foretold in the inscriptions: “In this new world . . . all people who shall live will be under one name, sharing equally the wealth that shall be given to them at that time. All these things have been prophesied long before any white man set foot upon this country.”57 Once again, the press observed that only Hotvela residents embraced this prophecy.58
Press coverage of the Hopi draft resisters began in October 1940. It spread during the trial through newspapers across the nation in May through August of 1941 and again during the next trial in April through August 1942, with stories focusing on the defendants’ belief that “ancient teachings” forbade their going to war. Ammon Hennacy probably missed all of this coverage, as I have found no references to the Hopi among his works prior to the summer of 1945.59 When he reached out via letter to Chester Mote that August, Mote had been convicted and imprisoned two or three times since 1940, spending time in the Keams Canyon jail and Tucson federal prison camp. Mote was clearly Hennecy’s first Hopi contact. Thomas Banyacya does not appear in Hennacy’s papers or publications before the fall of 1947, and it looks as if Mote first spoke of Banyacya to Hennacy in summer or fall before he introduced them that winter.60
Practical Anarchy
Once Hennacy had learned of the Hopi draft resisters, he made sense of them by drawing upon an earlier fascination with Indians that drew from common strains in American primitivism. Hennacy’s earliest memories were of listening to his grandmother’s stories about how the peaceful Quakers got along with the Indians when other Americans did not. Like many youngsters in the Midwest, he collected arrowheads. When he and his first wife traveled throughout the United States, they spent a week at Taos Pueblo in 1925 as guests of the sister of Tony Lujan, just before his marriage to Mabel Dodge Luhan, the noted Southwest romanticist and patron of the arts and anthropology. After moving to Albuquerque in 1942, Hennacy befriended fellow farmworkers at Isleta Pueblo, and when the atomic bomb was tested, he wrote verses from what he imagined was an Indian’s perspective to express his horror. Some of these were published in the Catholic Conscientious Objector.61 The Catholic Worker of July–August 1945 contained Hennacy’s essay on his interactions with farmworkers at Isleta Pueblo, “Ammon Among the Indians.” Hennacy wrote, “I told them of the five Hopi Indians who had refused to register and had gone to prison, and of the injustice of Indians being made to fight the white man’s wars, after being despoiled of their country and not being allowed citizenship.”62 This is Hennacy’s first mention of the Hopi draft resisters.
Curtis Zahn’s article on the incarcerated Hopi draft resisters in March 1945 drew a contrast that must have resonated with Hennacy, since it became fundamental to his writings on the Hopi. Zahn described Hopis who joined the war effort as having “fallen from grace,” and draft resisters as “righteous” and “good” Hopis, because their resistance stemmed from their belief
that soon a great Deific force will exact an accounting from all the peoples who have persecuted them since their legends record—for two thousand years, at least. Hopi tradition—strangely paralleling the Biblical Armageddon—predicts that the time is at hand for the great summing up; that the semi-finals of oppression have been reached. And, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Hopis have been taught that it is wrong to kill or resort to violence, until that time comes.63
Eager for more information, Hennacy corresponded that summer and fall with Zahn and other southern California conscientious objectors who were trying to assist the Hopis. From August through November, Hennacy buried himself in the literature available on the Hopi at the University of New Mexico library. He was hooked. During these months, he shared his new interest in at least twenty-eight letters that give descriptions of the Hopi draft evaders, the image of Hopi culture he was forming from his readings, and the pacifist novel he was writing that featured Hopis and other Indians. As early as August 6 he expressed a desire to live among the Hopi. Before August 28 he had written to Chester Mote and by September 25 to Don Talayesva, whose autobiography, Sun Chief, had been among his readings.64 In a letter to his mother, written September 28, Hennacy explains why Hopis were becoming so important to him and gives an initial formulation of how he would characterize the Hopi for years to come.
I have read five books on the Hopi Indians. . . . Very few are converts to Christianity. Five of them went to jail against the war. In their language there are no swear words. . . . They do not drink, have no jails, police, courts, and no one has ever committed murder or suicide there in 1000 years. The whites have lied continually and broken treaties made. . . . I am writing to some of them and will visit them in time. In dealing with one another and outsiders, the worst sin is to have revenge or try to ‘get even’ with who does them wrong. There is nothing in the Christian religion as practiced by the churches which is any improvement on the Hopi religion, or half as good. Do you expect the people of India, China, Japan, would ever listen again to American missionaries after we have uselessly killed hundreds of thousands of them with the atomic bomb and have not given them any freedom, but enslaved them again to the British? We had done a thousand times worse than Hitler or any one [sic] else, and we did not need to do it for the war was already nearly won. They could have asked Jap officials and others to witness an atomic bomb explosion on some island in the ocean where no one need be killed. Roosevelt and Truman were and are supposedly Christians, but they act like Heathen—and worse.65
Hennacy clearly is captivated and has rushed to find authoritative validation of his initial interpretations of Hopi culture and history. His denial of Hopi murder and suicide is the first indication of how far he would go in romanticizing Hopis by overlooking inconvenient facts in his readings, such as the existence of the office of qaletaqmongwi, or war chief, or the 1701 slaughter and destruction of Awat’ovi by the other villages over its residents’ acceptance of Catholicism.66 Caught up in his own idealism, Hennacy envisions the Hopi as a nonviolent people living without government bureaucracy whom he proposes as a counterpoint to U.S. and other state militarisms. Lastly, we see his great concern with the atomic bomb and the way he ties that theme to his interest in the Hopi—a year or two before the nascent Hopi Traditionalist faction would do the same.
