The Hopi Indian Series: Indian Time

Indian Time (SA/2024)

 

 

I. 

 

Writing in the 1930s and '40s, linguist Benjamin Whorf argued that the Hopi conceptualise time very differently from white Americans and that this difference was basically linguistic in nature; i.e., that it correlated with certain grammatical differences between English and the Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Hopi.

 

Whorf claims that the Hopi have "no words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions" that refer directly to what we call time, concluding that they therefore possess "no general notion or intuition of time as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at equal rate, out of a future, through the present, into a past" [a].

 

I would have thought that's a fairly uncontroversial thing to say, but, apparently, it gave rise to a debate within academic circles known as the Hopi time controversy. 

 

Whilst for theorists this may revolve around the complex question of linguistic relativity, it is usually understood by the lay person to simply address the issue of whether or not a redskin can ever be enslaved to the clock in the same way as those with pale faces. 

 

I suspect it's because this becomes an ethno-racial question - and not merely a grammatical one - that controversy creeps in. At any rate, during the 1960s Whorf's work increasingly fell out of favour amongst linguists and anthropologists and when in 1983 Ekkehart Malotki published his massive 600-page study on the concept of time in the Hopi language, it seemed that Whorf's work was refuted once and for all [b].  

 

 

II.

 

Now, I'm not a linguistics expert and don't speak a word of Hopi. 

 

Nor am I particularly concerned to restore Whorf's reputation, although it might be noted that the concept of linguistic relativity was revived in the 1990s when Malotki's own study was subjected to criticism from those who did not consider his work to have invalidated Whorf's claims.

 

As a Lawrentian, however, Whorf's work continues to resonate sympathetically; for he's basically repeating what Lawrence observed during his stay in New Mexico in the 1920s, when he came into contact with Native Americans and expressed an interest in their religious beliefs and understanding of the universe. 

 

And so, without wishing to sound like a New Age hippie who subscribes to any myth so long as it seems to reveal the supposed limitations of Western thought, I'd like to take a closer look at what Lawrence wrote, thereby challenging the Kantian idea that time and space are universal categories underlying all human thought. 

 

For despite what Malotki says, it seems clear that not everyone is as clock-observant and time-obsessed as the Germans, for example.   

 

 

III. 

In Mornings in Mexico [c], Lawrence describes the white man as "some sort of extraordinary white monkey, that, by cunning, has learnt lots of semi-magical secrets of the universe, and made himself boss of the show" [36]. 

 

And one of these secrets is the secret of time:

 

"Now to a Mexican and an Indian, time is a vague, foggy reality. There are only three times [...] in the morning, in the afternoon, in the night. There is even no mid-day and no evening. 

      But to the white monkey, horrible to relate there are exact spots of time, such as five o'clock, half-past nine. The day is a horrible puzzle of exact spots of time." [36]

 

The white monkey, says Lawrence, has a perverse passion for exactitude; for time is money and every second counts. And he insists that everyone should be as enslaved to the clock as he is; always fretting about what happened yesterday or anxious about what might happen the day after tomorrow; living and dying to the same monotonous rhythm: tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock ... 

But, according to Lawrence, the Native American is essentially different from us: "The Indian is not in line with us. He's not coming our way. His whole being is going a different way from ours." [61]

 

Again, I don't know how true that is, but there are times, like today, when I admire Lawrence's attempt to learn something from the Indian and appreciate what he calls in Apocalypse [d] the "pagan manner of thought" [96] which allows the mind to "move in cycles, or to flit here and there" [97].

 

Challenging the Western concept of time, Lawrence writes:

"Our idea of time as a continuity in an eternal straight line has crippled our consciousness cruelly. The pagan conception of time as moving in cycles is much freer, it allows movements upwards and downwards, and allows for a complete change of the state of mind, at any moment. One cycle finished, we can drop or rise to another level, and be in a new world at once. But by our time-continuum method, we have to trail wearily on over another ridge." [97]

Anyway, I have to stop here: it's dinner time ... 

Notes

 

[a] Benjamin Lee Whorf, 'An American Indian model of the Universe', in Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, ed. John B. Carroll (The Technology Press of MIT, 1956), pp. 57-64. Lines quoted are on p. 57. The essay was written c.1936.  

 

[b] Ekkehart Malotki is a German-American linguist, known for his extensive work on the Hopi language and culture and his refutation of the claim (some might say myth) that the Hopi have no concept of time. 

      Malotki published two large volumes, the first in German; Hopi-Raum: Eine sprachwissenschaftliche Analyse der Raumvorstellungen in der Hopi-Sprache (Gunter Narr Verlag, 1983), and the second in English; Hopi Time: A Linguistic Analysis of the Temporal Concepts in the Hopi Language (Mouton Publishers, 1986). 

      This latter work provided hundreds of examples of Hopi words and grammatical forms referring to temporal relations and Malotki demonstrated that the Hopi do, in fact, conceptualize time as structured in terms of an ego-centered spatial progression from past, through present into the future, despite what some - including, as we shall see, D. H. Lawrence - choose to believe and despite not having any word in their native tongue that exactly corresponds to the English noun 'time'.  

 

[c] D. H. Lawrence, Mornings and Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Page numbers given in the post refer to this edition.  

 

[d] D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1980). Page numbers given in the post refer to this edition. 

 

 

To read other posts in the Hopi Indian series, click here and/or here.

 

 

The Hopi Indian Series: Kachina Dolls

Hopi Kachina dolls (aka Katsina figures)

Bowers Museum (Santa Ana, California) 

For more info click here. 

 

 

I.

 

As torpedophiles will know, I'm a big fan of all types of doll: from wooden dolls to rag dolls; sex dolls to voodoo dolls. But I think my favourite dolls at the moment are Hopi kachina dolls - once described by Paul Éluard as the most beautiful things in the world [1] ...

 

 

II. 

 

Typically carved from the root of the cottonwood tree and traditionally given to young girls (and new brides) of the Hopi tribe, kachina dolls represent the immortal beings - the katsinam - that control various aspects of the natural world, such as rainfall, and act as messengers between humans and the spirit world.  

 

Whilst, invariably, these fabulous-looking dolls are now sold as examples of Native American folk art to the public, they still, I think, retain something of their powerful magic - although they obviously do not speak to us as they do to the Hopi, for whom they are sacred objects with more than merey a decorative function or an aesthetic charm.

 

Having said that, it should be pointed out that the figures only began to take on a more naturalistic look and have a professional finish once white Americans began to take an interest in buying and collecting them during the twentieth-century. I'm not quite sure what it tells us about the Hopi, or the transformative effects of the free market, but an attention to detail was only shown once there was money to be made.

Elders of the Tribe may not have been very happy at first, but even they were impressed that as the carvings became more extravagant and consumer demand went up, prices also rose significantly. From once selling for a few cents by the roadside, some kachina dolls carved by those recognised as genuine artists can now fetch up to $10,000.

 

So, having said earlier they still retain something of their powerful magic, let me now qualify that by adding that this could simply be the allure of commercial value; i.e., more capitalist authenticity than religious authenticity.   

 

Notes

 

[1] Paul Éluard writing in a letter to his wife in late May 1927. See Lettres à Gala (Gallimard, 1984), p. 22. A bilingual (English/French) edition ed. Pierre Dreyfus, trans. Jesse Browner, was published by Paragon House in 1989.  

      The Surrealists, of course, were well-known for their love of work produced by indigenous peoples (or what was known at the time as primitive art).

 

 

To read other posts in the Hopi Indian series, click here and/or here.  

 

 

The Hopi Indian Series: Snake Dance

Hopi Snake Dance (Oraibi, Arizona)

Photo by George Wharton James (1898)

 

 

The most celebrated of traditional ceremonies amongst the Hopi is the annual Snake Dance, during which performers handle live snakes. 

 

Never one to miss out, in August 1924 D. H. Lawrence travelled the seventy miles or so from his home in Taos, New Mexico, to the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona in order to enjoy the spectacle, which he first described in a brief satirical sketch written on the journey home. 

 

He later wrote a revised - more serious, more philosophical - version of the essay, of which he was particularly proud. 

 

Here, I would like to comment on both texts, beginning with the first of these, entitled 'Just Back from the Snake Dance', which appeared in Laughing Horse (September 1924), and then discussing 'The Hopi Snake Dance', which was first published in Theatre Arts Monthly (December 1924) [a].   

 

 

Just Back from the Snake Dance 

This short piece opens with Lawrence asking himself a rhetorical question that we have probably all asked ourselves at one time or other: Why on earth does one bother to go to such events ...?

 

For not only does it involve a bumpy car journey, but Hopi country, declares Lawrence, is hideous - "a clayey pale-grey desert with death-grey mesas, sticking up like broken pieces of ancient, dry, grey bread." [185] 

 

Lawrence is not overly impressed with the pueblos either; little grey houses mostly in a state of "disheartening ruin" [185]. 

 

Nor does he think much of the spectators who have come in their black motor cars to watch: "Americans of all sorts" [185], including women in trousers and a "negress in a low-cut black blouse and a black sailor hat" [185] who seems to catch his eye in particular.  

 

Not that, according to Lawrence in this account, there is much to see: 

 

"No drums. No pageantry. A hollow muttering. And then one of the snake priests hopping slowly round with the neck of a pale, bird-like snake nipped between his teeth, while six elder priests dusted the six younger, snake-adorned priests with prayer feathers, on the shoulders, hopping behind like a children's game." [186]

 

That doesn't sound great, although things do liven up a little as several more snakes of different size and species are introduced into proceedings, including rattle snakes. Lawrence writes:

 

"When all the snakes had had their little ride in a man's mouth [...] they were all gathered, like a lot of wet silk stockings [...] and let to wriggle all together for a minute [...] Then - hey presto! - they were snatched up like fallen washing, and two priests ran away with them westward, down the mesa, to set them free among the rocks, at the snake-shrine (so called)." [186]

 

And that was it; the show - and Lawrence calls it a show, regarding the snake dance as little more than a circus performance put on for the amusement of white Americans - was over, and he can't decide which were the more harmless; the nice clean snakes or the long-haired Indians. 

 

His disappointment with the latter - muttering queer gibberish, dangling snakes, and selling "clumsy home-made trinkets" [187] - is matched only by his obvious contempt for those who come to have a fun day out at the former's expense, knowing nothing and caring less about the Hopi's religiosity.      

 

 

The Hopi Snake Dance

 

As mentioned, Lawrence is far more thoughtful - and far less dismissive - in this essay on the Hopi Snake Dance than in his earlier piece. Here, to his credit, he attempts to understand it from the religious perspective of the Hopi, rather than "the angle of culture" [80], or simply as a crude form of public entertainment.  

 

And Lawrence rightly acknowledges that the snake dance is actually the culmination of more than a week's preparation and that there were other ritual activities taking place during this time:

 

"They say that the twelve officiating men of the snake clan of the tribe have for nine days been hunting snakes in the rocks. They have been performing the mysteries for nine days, in the kiva, and for two days they have fasted completely. All these days, they have tended the snakes, washed them with repeated lustrations, soothed them, and exchanged spirits with them." [84]

 

Lawrence describes the Hopi as a "dark-faced, short, stocky, thickly-built" [80] people, who have chosen to make their home in a "parched grey country of snakes and eagles, pitched up against the sky" [80]. 

 

And he identifies their religion as a form of animism in which all things - objects, places, plants creatures - are in some sense alive, although they are separate and distinct and do not share One Spirit: "There is no oneness, no sympathetic identifying oneself with the rest." [81-82]

    

Like Lawrence, I'm attracted to this idea - particularly in its impersonal aspect and the fact there is no dualist division into spirit (or mind) and matter. And like Lawrence, I rather admire the fact that the Hopi have retained a gentleness of heart, despite being faced with the challenging task of surving in a world that is "all rock and eagles, sand and snakes and wind and sun" [83]. 

 

When the snake-priests start to do their thing, Lawrence again comments on their physicality; they are all "heavily built, rather short, with heavy but shapely flesh, and rather straight sides [...] They have an archaic squareness, and a sensuous heaviness" [85-86].

 

This, combined with the "wild silence of concentration" [86] that is typical of the Native American, briefly cancels the "white-faced flippancy" [86] of the spectators. Well, that's true for a few seconds at least; until their impatience gets the better of them. Anxious as they are to see the snakes, they quickly get bored with the dancing and chanting and mummery. 

 

And soon enough, there were plenty of snakes on show:

 

"Snake after snake had been carried round [...] dangling by the neck from the mouth of one young priest or another [...] some very large rattle-snakes [...] two or three handsome bull-snakes, and some racers, whip-snakes." [90]

 

Lawrence seems to admire the bodies of the snakes as much as he does the bodies of the men; "one was struck by their clean, slim length of snake nudity" [90]. 

 

But most of all, amidst all the crudity and sensationalism - "which comes chiefly out of the crowd's desire for thrills [92] - he admires the courage of the snake-priests; "one cannot help pausing in reverence before the delicate, anointed bravery" [92-93] of those who commune with serpents and immerse themselves in the mystery of the latter. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Both of these texts can be found in D. H. Lawrence, Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde (Cambridge University Press, 2009):  'The Hopi Snake Dance', pp. 77-94 and 'Just Back from the Snake Dance', pp. 183-187. All page numbers given in this post refer to this Cambridge edition.

 

 

To read other posts in the Hopi Indian series, click here and/or here.    

Get Off Your Knees and Hear the Insect Prayer: Notes on the Ant People

Get Off Your Knees and Hear the Insect Prayer

 

I. 

 

When I came across a reference the other day to the Ant People, I immediately thought of the Adam and the Ants slogan: Ant Music for Sex People: Sex Music for Ant People [1]. 

 

I had long believed that this line simply referred to those whom the cultural commentator Peter York once described as the "'extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars'" [2] - i.e., those who used to hang around Sex - and, secondly, to those who were hardcore fans of Adam and the Ants.

I now discover, however, that existing long before Adam and Marco ever walked through the doors of 430 King's Road, were a legendary race of highly advanced beings (possibly of extraterrestrial origin) known as the Ant People, and venerated by the Hopi Indians; a tribe of Native Americans who have lived on the high arid mesas of northern Arizona for thousands of years [3]. 

 

 

II. 

 

According to Hopi legend, in times of global catastrophe, it was the Anu Sinom, or Ant People, who come to their rescue and offered them sanctuary in underground caves, which essentially formed a natural network of subterranean prayer chambers, or what the Hopi call kivas (a word which etymologically means beautiful dwelling place).      

 

No wonder then that the Hopi refer to the Ant People with their elongated skulls, almond-shaped eyes, tiny waists, and long skinny arms and legs, as their friends: Anu-naki.  

 

And one can only hope that if members of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil are correct in their dire predictions of a coming eco-apocalypse, that we palefaces will have some benevolent insects come to our rescue (although I doubt it and don't think we deserve such).    

 

Notes

 

[1] This line is a refrain in the Adam and the Ants track 'Don't Be Square (Be There)', found on the album Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS Records, 1980): click here.   

[2] Peter York, writing in an article entitled 'Them', Harpers & Queen (October 1976), quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329. 

[3] See Gary A. David, 'The Ant People of the Hopi' (13 October, 2013) on the website Ancient Origins: click here.