Oraibi, Arizona | |
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![]() The Hopi pueblo of Oraibi from the southwest | |
![]() Location in Navajo County and the state of Arizona | |
Coordinates: 35°52′35″N110°38′25″W / 35.87639°N 110.64028°W | |
Country | United States |
State | Arizona |
County | Navajo |
Elevation | 5,679 ft (1,731 m) |
Time zone | UTC-7 (MST) |
Oraibi, also referred to as Old Oraibi, is a Hopi village in Navajo County, Arizona, United States, in the northeastern part of the state. Known as Orayvi by the native inhabitants, it is on Third Mesa on the Hopi Reservation near Kykotsmovi Village. There are no accurate census counts or estimates for the village population.[ citation needed ]
Oraibi was founded sometime before the year 1100 AD, making it possibly the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the United States. [1] [2] Archeologists speculate that a series of severe droughts in the late 13th century forced the Hopi to abandon several smaller villages in the region and consolidate within a few population centers, Oraibi being one of them. As Oraibi's population grew considerably, it became the most influential of the Hopi settlements. By 1890, the village was estimated to have a population of 905, about half of the 1,824 estimated to be living in all of the Hopi settlements at the time. [3]
Oraibi remained unknown to European explorers until about 1540 when Spanish explorer Pedro de Tovar (who was part of the Coronado expedition) encountered the Hopi while searching for the legendary Seven Cities of Gold. Contact with the Europeans remained infrequent until 1629 when the San Francisco mission was established in the village. [4] In 1680 the Pueblo Revolt resulted in decreased Spanish influence in the area and the closing of the mission. [5] Subsequent attempts to reestablish the missions in Hopi villages were met with repeated failures. The former mission is still visible today as a ruin. [6]
Hopi interaction with outsiders slowly increased during 1850–1860 due to missionaries, traders, and surveyors for the US government. Contact remained sporadic and informal until 1870 when an Indian agent was appointed to the Hopi, followed by the establishment of the Hopi Indian Agency in Keams Canyon in 1874.
Interaction with the US government increased with the establishment of the Hopi Reservation in 1882. This led to a number of changes for the Hopi way of life. Missionary efforts intensified and Hopi children were kidnapped from their homes and forced to attend school, exposing them to new cultural influences. [7]
In 1890 a number of residents more receptive to the cultural influences moved closer to the trading post to establish Kykotsmovi Village, sometimes called New Oraibi. The continuing tension caused by the ideological schism between the "friendlies" ("New Hopi" to the traditional Hopi), those who were open to these cultural influences, and the "hostiles" (or "Traditionalists" led by Yukiuma) who opposed them (those who desired to preserve Hopi ways) [8] led to an event called the "Oraibi Split" in 1906. Tribal leaders on differing sides of the schism engaged in a bloodless competition to determine the outcome, [9] which resulted in the expulsion of the hostiles (traditionalists), who left to found the village of Hotevilla. Subsequent efforts by the displaced residents to reintegrate resulted in an additional split, with the second group founding Bacavi.
With the loss of much of its population, Oraibi lost its place as the center of Hopi culture. Although the Hopi tribal constitution, maneuvered into being by the coal mining interests in 1939, provides each village with a seat on the tribal council, Hotevilla, where most of the traditional Hopi settled, has declined to elect a representative and maintains independence from the tribal council. Kykotsmovi Village is now the seat of the Hopi tribal government.
Old Oraibi | |
![]() Oraibi village, c. 1899 | |
Area | 800 acres (320 ha) |
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Built | 1150 |
NRHP reference No. | 66000188 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 [10] |
Designated NHLD | July 19, 1964 [11] |
In spite of the "friendly" ("New Hopi") outcome of the Oraibi Split, Old Oraibi has since maintained a more traditional Hopi way of life and has resisted the adoption of the more modern culture visible in Kykotsmovi. While visitors to the pueblo are welcomed (a short road connects to Arizona State Route 264), the residents tend to be very private and do not allow photographs to be taken in the town. There are thus few ground-level photographs of the settlement as it exists in the modern day. (Public satellite imagery is, however, readily available.)
Old Oraibi is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964. [11] [12] [13]
Oraibi features prominently in an extended essay by Aby Warburg, Schlangenritual: Ein Reisebericht, a transcript of a lecture given in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland in 1923 (English translation "Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America"; also translated into many other languages). [14] Warburg visited Oraibi in 1896 and with the help of Henry Voth attended a ritual spring dance. He found in the symbolism of the Hopi, in particular the snake symbol, a key to understanding similar symbols in other cultures. Warburg took several pictures of Oraibi and of the Hopi ceremonies.
Hopi life in Oraibi is also described in Don C. Talayesva's autobiography, Sun chief, the Autobiography of a Hopi Indian. Talayesva was born in Oraibi in 1890, where he was raised as a traditional Hopi. Talayesva started working in 1938 with a Yale University anthropologist, Leo Simmons, who helped him write his autobiography.
Hopi educator, writer, and potter Polingaysi Qöyawayma (1892–1990) related stories of growing up in Oraibi in her 1964 autobiography No Turning Back. [15]
The social anthropologist Sherry Ortner uses the phrase "another pot from Old Oraibi" to characterize a style of exhaustive "thickness" in ethnographic writing which—hubristically, in her view—attempts a "holistic" comprehension of the culture under scrutiny. [16]
The Hopi are Native Americans who primarily live in northeastern Arizona. The majority are enrolled in the Hopi Tribe of Arizona and live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona; however, some Hopi people are enrolled in the Colorado River Indian Tribes of the Colorado River Indian Reservation at the border of Arizona and California.
Navajo County is in the northern part of the U.S. state of Arizona. As of the 2020 census, its population was 106,717. The county seat is Holbrook.
Hotevilla-Bacavi is a census-designated place (CDP) in Navajo County, Arizona, United States, on the Hopi Reservation. The population was 957 at the 2010 census.
Kykotsmovi Village, also known as K-Town or New Oraibi is a census-designated place (CDP) in Navajo County, Arizona, United States. It is the seat of tribal government of the Hopi Reservation, a sovereign nation located in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi word is spelled Kiqötsmovi and means "mound of ruined houses". The population was 776 at the 2000 census. The Hopi reservation occupies part of Coconino and Navajo counties, encompasses more than 1.5 million acres, and is made up of 12 villages on three mesas. Kykotsmovi is one of the 12 villages located in third mesa. Third Mesa includes Hotvela (Hotevilla), Paaqavi (Bacavi), Munqapi (Moencopi), Kiqotsmovi (Kykotsmovi), and Orayvi (Oraibi).
Indigenous peoples of Arizona are the Native American people who currently live or have historically lived in what is now the state of Arizona. There are 22 federally recognized tribes in Arizona, including 17 with reservations that lie entirely within its borders. Reservations make up over a quarter of the state's land area. Arizona has the third largest Native American population of any U.S. state.
Aby Moritz Warburg, better known as Aby Warburg, was a German art historian and cultural theorist who founded the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg, a private library, which was later moved to the Warburg Institute, London. At the heart of his research was the legacy of the classical world, and the transmission of classical representation, in the most varied areas of Western culture through to the Renaissance.
The Hopi Reservation is a Native American reservation for the Hopi and Arizona Tewa people, surrounded entirely by the Navajo Nation, in Navajo and Coconino counties in north-eastern Arizona, United States. The site has a land area of 2,531.773 sq mi (6,557.262 km2) and as of the 2000 census had a population of 6,946.
Sandia Pueblo is a federally recognized tribe of Native American Pueblo people inhabiting a 101-square-kilometre (40 sq mi) reservation of the same name in the eastern Rio Grande Rift of central New Mexico. It is one of 19 of New Mexico's Native American pueblos, considered one of the state's Eastern Pueblos. The population was 427 as of the 2010 census. The people are traditionally Tiwa speakers, a language of the Tanoan group, although retention of the traditional language has waned with later generations. They have a tribal government that operates Sandia Casino, Bien Mur Indian Market Center, and Sandia Lakes Recreation Area, as well as representing the will of the Pueblo in business and political matters.
The Pueblo of Laguna, New Mexico is a federally recognized tribe of Native American Pueblo people in west-central New Mexico, near the city of Albuquerque, in the United States. Part of the Laguna territory is included in the Albuquerque metropolitan area, chiefly around Laguna's Route 66 Resort and Casino. The name, Laguna, is Spanish and derives from the lake on their reservation. This body of water was formed by an ancient dam that was constructed by the Laguna people. After the Pueblo Revolt of 1680–1696, the Mission San José de la Laguna was erected by the Spanish at the old pueblo and finished around July 4, 1699.
State Route 264 (SR 264) is a state highway in northeastern Arizona, that runs from a junction with US 160 near Tuba City to the New Mexico state line at Window Rock, where the highway continues as New Mexico State Road 264.
Tuba was a Hopi leader in the late 19th century. Tuba was the headman of the small Hopi village of Moencopi, roughly fifty miles west of the main villages on the Hopi mesas. However, he apparently was an important person in the village of Oraibi as well. Eventually, Tuba joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and later received his endowment in the St. George Temple. Tuba City, Arizona, was named in his honor.
The Awatovi Ruins, spelled Awat'ovi in recent literature, are an archaeological site on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona, United States. The site contains the ruins of a pueblo estimated to be 500 years old, as well as those of a 17th-century Spanish mission. It was visited in the 16th century by members of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado's exploratory expedition. In the 1930s, Hopi artist Fred Kabotie was commissioned by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Harvard University to reproduce the prehistoric murals found during the excavation of the Awatovi Ruins. The site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
Fred Kabotie was a celebrated Hopi painter, silversmith, illustrator, potter, author, curator and educator. His native name in the Hopi language is Naqavoy'ma which translates to Day After Day.
Don Chuka Talayesva (1890–1985) was a Hopi who is noted for his autobiography, written in conjunction with Yale University anthropologist Leo Simmons, describing his life until 1940. Talayesva was born with the name Chuka in Old Oraibi, Arizona, and grew up until the age of ten in a traditional Hopi manner, but then spent ten years largely in European culture before making a full return to the Hopi way. It has been suggested that Simmons method of interviewing may have led Talayesva to reveal more than he entirely felt comfortable doing and this aspect has been an element of discussion concerning him. In the field of anthropology he was referred to as "the most documented man".
The Bureau of Indian Education (BIE), headquartered in the Main Interior Building in Washington, D.C., and formerly known as the Office of Indian Education Programs (OIEP), is a division of the U.S. Department of the Interior under the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs. It is responsible for the line direction and management of all BIE education functions, including the formation of policies and procedures, the supervision of all program activities, and the approval of the expenditure of funds appropriated for BIE education functions.
Dan Katchongva was a Hopi Native American traditional leader. Son of Yukiuma, keeper of the Fire Clan tablets, who founded Hotevilla in 1906. He is one of four Hopis who decided or were appointed to reveal Hopi traditional wisdom and teachings, including the Hopi prophecies for the future, to the general public in 1946, after the use of the first two nuclear weapons on Japan. Katchongva was the eldest of the group of four knowledgeable Hopis, and the first to die. Kachongva was a member of the Sun Clan.
Alfred H. Qöyawayma is a Hopi potter and bronze sculptor. He was born in Los Angeles on February 26, 1938. Qöyawayma is also a mechanical engineer who has worked in the development of inertial guidance systems and a co-founder of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society.
Polingaysi Qöyawayma, also known as Elizabeth Q. White, was a Hopi educator, writer, and potter.
Waldo Mootzka (1903–1940) was a Hopi watercolor artist.
Helen Sekaquaptewa (1898-1990), was a Hopi Mormon homemaker, matriarch and storyteller, best known for her as-told-to memoir, Me and Mine: The Life Story of Helen Sekaquaptewa, which was compiled by her friend Louise Udall based on Sekaquaptewa's recollections.