To Be Hopi or American
Polingaysi Qoyawayma
(Elizabeth Q. White)
Like many converts to a new religion, Polingaysi was overtly zealous. She was young, she was courageous, she was brash---brash enough to challenge her Hopi elders and the whole beautifully interwoven cultural patterns of Hopi life. Had she at that time been able to do so, she would have abolished all the age-old rites, the kiva (an underground room used by Hopi men for ceremonies or councils) rituals, the sprinkling of sacred cornmeal, and especially the making of pabos, or prayer sticks.
At the same time, tempering her radical approach, she had a deep and unsatisfied curiosity concerning the very things that aroused in her the strongest resentment. As she walked across the field one day after visiting her family at New Oraibi, she saw a pabo thrust into the sand on a little hillock, its single eagle feather fluttering at the end of a short length of white cotton string.
Prayer sticks, either the long, wandlike ones with many feathers tied to them, or the short, sharpened sticks called pabos, are held in reverence by the Hopi people. For four days after the "planting" of a prayer, these sticks are thought to possess the essence of the offered prayer and to be very powerful and sacred. To disturb one before it has lost its power is to court disaster. Accident, even death, Polingaysi, had been taught, might result.
Well known to her was the story of the white woman who took prayer sticks from a shrine, then fell and broke her leg. Behind this accident the Hopi people saw the work of the invisible forces. The spirits had resented her action and had tripped her, they were convinced.
As she bent to pull the pabo from the sand, Polingaysi felt a wave of superstitious fear sweep over her. But she was a Christian now, she reminded herself, and need not fear the magic in a stick with a feather on it. Defiantly, she carried it home and challenged her father with it.
"What does this stick mean to you and to the Hopi people?" she asked with more arrogance than she realized. "To me, pah! It means nothing. It has no power. It's just a stick with a bit of cornhusk and a feather attached to it. Why do you, in this day and age, when you can have the message of the Bible, still have faith in sticks and feathers?"
Her father, true Hopi that he was, recoiled from the proffered pabo, refusing to touch it. There was a worried look in his eyes.
"Must you know?" he asked. "Of course, I must know," Polingaysi declared. "Why shouldn't I know?" "Lay it on the table," her father said, "and I will tell you."
She placed the stick on the rough board table which she had goaded the little man into making, and the two of them bent over it.
"Do you see that blue-green, chipped-off place here at the top?" her father asked, pointing. "That is the face of the prayer stick, it represents mossy places, moisture. Now this below is the body of the prayer stick. A red color, as you can see, like our colored sand. That represents the earth. Moisture to the earth, then, is what the pabo is for."
"A prayer for rain?'
"That, yes, and more. The stick carries a bundle on its back."
"The bit of cornhusk, bound with string? What is it for? What does it mean?"
"I don't know what is bound up in the cornhusk," her father said, "and I won't open it to find out. However, I think you might find there some grass seeds, a pinch of cornmeal, a pinch of pollen, and a pinch of honey."
"But, why, why?" Polingaysi demanded impatiently. "What good does it do?"
The little Hopi man had been carving a Kachina doll (a doll made of wood and decorated with paint, feathers, and other materials that represents various spirits to Native Americans in the Southwest) from the dried root of a cottonwood. He turned away and went back to his work, sitting down crosslegged on the floor and picking up his knife and the unfinished doll. Polingaysi stood looking down at him, waiting for his answer. He thought before he began to speak.
"The good it does depends on many things, my daughter. It depends most of all on faith of the one who made the pabo. If all those things I mentioned are inside the little bundle that it carries on its back, it would mean that the one making the pabo planted it in Mother Earth as a prayer for a plentiful harvest, with moisture enough to help Earth produce full ears of corn, plump beans, sweet melons." He looked up at her and his small face was worried. "Surely you have not forgotten the meaning of the feather? Feathers represent the spirits that are in all things. This one represents the spirit that is in the prayer the pabo offers up."
Polingaysi turned away and took the pabo in her hands. About to tear up the cornhusk, she looked down to see her father's hands stilled and horror in his expression. Suddenly she could not open the pabo's treasure without his permission. She could not fly in the face of tradition to that extent, knowing it would offend his spirit, however silent he remained, however little he reproached her openly.
"May I open it?"
Her father bent his head, possibly questioning the propriety of such an action and fearing the harm it might do him and his daughter. After a moment of hesitation, he sighed, saying, "It seems well weathered. I think it is more than four days old. If so, its purpose had been served and the power has left it. Use your left hand."
Gently, in spite of her pretended scorn, Polingaysi opened the bit of dried cornhusk. It had been folded while still green into a tiny triangle. In this little pouch there was a bit of material about the size of a pea. Seeds, cornmeal, pollen, held together with honey, as her father had predicted.
"Can't you see there's nothing of value in here?" Polingaysi cried.
"Not to you," her father agreed. "Not to me. But to the one who made it in prayer."
She would have questioned him further, but he took his work and went outside, his face enigmatic.
"For pity's sake, Mother," Polinaysi burst out, turning to Sevenka who had been working quickly on a basket during the discussion, "does everything in the life of a Hopi have a hidden meaning? Why, for instance, should I use my left hand to open that thing?"
"It seems foolish to you because you are young and do not understand everything," her mother said patiently. "Perhaps you are foolish because you do not understand Hopi ways, though you are a Hopi. I will tell you about the left hand.
"The left hand is on the heart side of the body. It is the hand that moves most slowly. It selects instead of grabbing as the right hand does. It is cleaner. It does not touch the mouth during the eating of food, nor does it clean the body after release of waste materials.
"Do you remember watching our medicine man---the Man With Eyes---at his work? In his healing rites and also in his religious ceremonies he uses the left hand, for those reasons I have just given you. The left hand, then, is the hand that is of the heart and the spirit, not of nature and the earth."
Polingaysi struggled to deny the beauty of the words her mother had spoken. She sought a scoffing answer, but found none. After a moment the older woman continued.
"One more thing I will tell you about the pabos. They must be kept free of the white man's ways if they are to have the full power of old times. That is why Hopi people do not sharpen them to a point with white man's steel blades, but grind them to sharpness on sandstone."
At that moment Polinaysi saw one of her mother's brothers passing the window. He knew nothing of the discussion and she had no desire to reopen it. With her left hand she placed the pabo on the window sill.
"Polingaysi!" the old man cried, his face crinkling into a big smile of welcome. "It is a great treat to my spirit to see you after so long a time. We are always happy to see our child come home, even if she does make us sit at a wooden platform when we eat."
Polinaysi lost some of her contentiousness and laughed. He had always complained about sitting at the table, insisting that he could not keep his feet warm while he was eating unless he sat on them, Hopi-fashion. Her little grandmother had been completely mystified by the table, and though Polingaysi had patiently explained its use, the old lady had laboriously climbed up on to it, instead of seating herself on the wooden bench that served as a chair.
She looked at her uncle and thought of all the new ideas that she had gleaned during her life among white people. The old man had no desire to share her knowledge. To him the old way was best. He asked little of life: enough food to keep the breath in his thin, worn old body, a little heat in the fireplace, a drink of water when he was dry.
It was she who was forever holding out her cup to be filled with knowledge. [1964]
*SOURCE: EXPERIENCING RACE, CLASS AND GENDER IN THE UNITED STATES, 2ND ED., 1997, VIRGINIA CYRUS, PGS. 23-25*
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