THE HOPI INDIAN COLLECTION IN THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. By Walter Hough, Curator of Ethnology, United States National Museum, INTRODUCTION. This publication aims to give an impression of the arts and indus-tries of a tribe of Pueblo Indians at a period when they were little modified by outside influences. It may serve as a guide to the Hopi collection now exhibited in the Natural History building of the United States National Museum. Handbooks of this character which are made up virtually of extended labels of the collections are projected for other sections of the exhibit of Ethnology. The following descriptive label for the family group case dis-played in the west north hall of the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington gives a brief account of the Hopi: The Hopi Indians occupy stone-built villages in northeastern Arizona. They were first seen by wliite men in 1540 wlien Tobar and Padilla were dispatched by Corouado to visit them. On account of the isolation of tlieir country, they have preserved to a greater degree than other tribes the arts and customs of the Pueblos. They are farmers and depend mainly upon corn for their sub-sistence. Among the arts in which they are skillful, are weaving, basket-mak-ing, and wood-carving, and in the minor art of cookery they are widely known among the Indians. The group represents the parching, grinding, and baking of maize which goes on in every household. A woman and little girl grind on the slanting millstones the corn prepared by the parcher. The baker spreads with her hand the batter on the heated stone slab and the result Is the paperlike bread called piki. Another woman is weaving a basket of yucca leaves. The man brings in from the field a backload of corn ears and the boy exhibits triumphantly a rabbit which he has killed with the curvetl boom-erang club peculiar to the Hopi. AGRICULTURE AND REARING. Agriculture is the principal occupation of the Hopi. They are industrious and resourceful tillers of the soil under conditions which would seem hopeless to a farmer. Their efforts are principally de-voted to raising corn, but wheat, beans, squashes, and common vege-tables are grown. They preserve an agriculture of native cotton, Gossypium ?iopi, which they use for ceremonial purposes.^ i Lewton, F. L., The Cotton of the Hopi Indians : a new species of Gossypium, Smith-sonian Misc. Coll., vol. 60, No. 6, Oct. 23, 1912. Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 54— No. 2235. 236
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