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A fascinating example of the Dry Agriculture or Dry Farming practices of the Hopi, can be seen at a trading post/arts shop just east of the Hopi Cultural Center, on Second Mesa, as well as a small-scale land reclamation project, out back of the shop. The land parcel involved had been tended for generations (presumably hundreds, or a thousand, years) by a Hopi lineage. The land had eventually passed, on the mother's side of the family, as is the matrilineal Hopi tradition, to a granddaughter. The terraces are now being tended by an Anglo who married the Hopi woman. They moved onto her grandfather's “farm” land several years ago, and began dealing in trae items that appealed to the traditional Hopi religeon and arts, as well as to the tourists.
The wife had grown up on the land and the husband had seen the “cornfields” and “orchards” in full flower years before, while the grandfather was still alive. Neither the wife nor her husband had anticipated ever taking over the land, or attempting to farm it themselves. Ultimately however, they inherited the terraces which had been ignored for many years. The terraces were in great disrepair and had experienced significant erosion. Investigation showed that the land, runoff water patterns, and erosion control/terrace support/irrigation control had received little care for several years and that many of the trees had died and the vital flat areas had been cut by gullies.
The husband has begun a tedious process of reclaiming the gullies and tilling the plot, once again. He showed us “dams” which were simply small lines of tiny pebbles or cobbles, many the size of a pack of crackers, water-breaks made up of lines of growing grass and weeds, and tiny rows of dead vegetation too small to even classify as “sticks”. These implements marked the astonishing attention given to minute details on the surface of the land, by the traditional Hopi farmer. All of these measures were intended not to catch water in pools, but simply to slow its rate of runoff so it could drop any sand it carried and soak into the land instead of being lost downstream where it might do erosive damage as it ran off.
The Anasazi/Hopi have carried on this sort of practice and method of agriculture for over a thousand years. This is a continuing, and continuous, effort. No traverse is made across a field without pulling out the stray, useless weed or grass, and moving it to one of the lines. Pebble dams that collapse must be constantly tidied up. Dead dry brush is regularly gathered and aligned where it would do some good. No drop of water was intentionally wasted, or went unappreciated by the ancient Anasazi. The Hopi still feel that way about water, which is, in part, why they are so concerned about coal mines, water wells, or any sort of drilling or stripping or quarrying on their sacred lands.
Seeing the scale of their attention was highly enlightening. Anglos tend to view dams as things that create ponds or lakes. These Hopi dams were intended simply to slow a trickle or a rate of seepage, not to form standing pools of water. The terraces of the Grandfather's time had built up deep soils due to a thousand years of efforts by the clan. In just a few short years of neglect, many of the terrace supports had collapsed, and deep gullies had washed away much of this effort. The Anglo husband was starting the long, slow process of restoring these terraces, and replanting trees, to replace those that had died without care.
The traditional Hopi crops are also quite different from those to which the husband had been accustomed, as a farm boy growing up in Iowa. He described many types of Hopi maize or corn, each one with a highly specialized traditional use. He was growing Hopi peaches. The traditional Hopi peach tree bears fruit in its second year, a miracle, by our standards, but its “fruit” is the size, not of a large fist, but of a golf ball. The low water-requirements and quick-bearing qualities come at a price in size and flavor.
Seeing the fragility of the soil, and the scale of these dams and brush lines, it became much easier to understand why the Hopi farmers are so sensitive to Navajo sheep wandering across their “barren” land. To the non-Hopi eye, this land would generally appear barren. The terraces of the farm certainly looked, initially, like some of the driest, least vegetated land that we had seen on our trip. When the husband explained that the lack of weeds was due to him pulling plants that wasted water, and that every stone we saw had been carefully placed to catch rain, we suddenly resaw the same land in a whole new light.
By Hopi standards, this land is not barren, but is fertile, and tended and cared for in great detail. The Navajo shepherds tend to look at the land with the same, uneducated eye which we had when we got off the bus at this stop. (In actuality, the shepherd has a well-trained eye, but his is trained to look for still other features of the fields.) The shepherd's interest is getting his large number of animals enough food, and in keeping them together, and moving steadily across the land. Since so many Hopi fields are spread out over many locations, and visited irregularly, there is much opportunity for many hooves to move across tilled plots, kicking down stone dams, and eating brush or weed lines that were carefully planted. The hooves of the sheep can do tremendous damage to the tiny dams and diversions that are an integral part of the Hopi dry agriculture. This helps to explain why there has been ongoing conflict between the sheep herder and the farmer. The fact that most of these herders belong to the Navajo, while the farmers are Hopi, has aggravated this conflict.
Seeing the fragility of many of these practices, and the tiny quantities of water that the Hopi value, it becomes much easier to understand why the Hopi have opposed mining, or any other operations on their land. It emphasizes the care that we will have to use in the field during our sampling operations, if we are near any fields. Many barren acres may actually turn out to be croplands.
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Proceed to The Saga of the Navajo
Follow scholar Kokopelli to the Suggested
Reading List
Go back to The Hopi and Mineral Development
Return with Kokopelli to the hogan page, the
Table of Contents
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Black Mesa Highlighted in Sunlight on a Stormy Day
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to
treeves@ionet.net
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Contents, including illustrations, copyright T. K. Reeves, 1997.
on 5 April, 1997.