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A Hopi Social History
A Hopi Social History
A Hopi Social History
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A Hopi Social History

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“Incorporate[s] a multitude of theoretical approaches about Hopi sociological life . . . Ranging from prehistoric times until contemporary times.” —Indigenous Nations Studies Journal
 
All anthropologists and archaeologists seek to answer basic questions about human beings and society. Why do people behave the way they do? Why do patterns in the behavior of individuals and groups sometimes persist for remarkable periods of time? Why do patterns in behavior sometimes change?
 
A Hopi Social History explores these basic questions in a unique way. The discussion is constructed around a historically ordered series of case studies from a single sociocultural system (the Hopi) in order to understand better the multiplicity of processes at work in any sociocultural system through time. The case studies investigate the mysterious abandonments of the Western Pueblo region in late prehistory, the initial impact of European diseases on the Hopis, Hopi resistance to European domination between 1680 and 1880, the split of Oraibi village in 1906, and some responses by the Hopis to modernization in the twentieth century.
 
These case studies provide a forum in which the authors examine a number of theories and conceptions of culture to determine which theories are relevant to which kinds of persistence and change. With this broad theoretical synthesis, the book will be of interest to students and scholars in the social sciences.
 
“A foundation for general discourse on anthropological theory and explanation . . . Covering the prehistoric, Spanish, early historic, and contemporary periods.” —American Indian Quarterly
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 27, 2014
ISBN9780292767898
A Hopi Social History

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    A Hopi Social History - Scott Rushforth

    A HOPI SOCIAL HISTORY

    Anthropological Perspectives on Sociocultural Persistence and Change

    Scott Rushforth and Steadman Upham

    Copyright © 1992 by the University of Texas Press

    All rights reserved

    First Edition, 1992

    Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, Texas 78713-7819.

    utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/rp-form

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Library ebook ISBN: 978-0-292-76788-1

    Individual ebook ISBN: 9780292767881

    DOI: 10.7560/730663

    Rushforth, Scott.

    A Hopi social history / by Scott Rushforth and Steadman Upham. — 1st ed.

    p.     cm.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN: 978-0-292-73067-0

    1. Hopi Indians—History. 2. Hopi Indians—Social conditions. I. Upham, Steadman. II. Tide.

    Contents

    Preface

    Part One. Persistence, Change, and History

      1.  Perspectives on Persistence and Change

      2.  The Western Pueblo and the Hopis

    Part Two. A Hopi Social History

      3.  Regional Abandonments and the Western Pueblo (A.D. 1450-1539)

      4.  Colonial Contact, Disease, and Population Decline in the Western Pueblo Region (A.D. 1540-1679)

      5.  Hopi Resistance to Subjugation and Change (A.D. 1680-1879)

      6.  Village Fission at Old Oraibi (A.D. 1880-1909)

      7.  Accommodation to the Modern World (A.D. 1910-1990)

    Part Three. Process, Explanation, and Social History

      8.  Environment, Population, and Cultural Contact: The Exogenous Processes of Persistence and Change

      9.  Social Structure, Culture, and Human Agency: The Endogenous Processes of Persistence and Change

    10.  Explanation and Hopi Social History

    Notes

    References

    Index

    Figures

      1.  Northeastern Arizona and the Hopi Reservation

      2.  Puebloan Peoples of the American Southwest

      3.  Native American Languages of Arizona and New Mexico

      4.  The Spread of Infection in a Completely Susceptible Host Population of 1,000, Using Different Contact Parameters

      5.  Hopi Population, 1520-1989

      6.  The Oraibi Valley

    Tables

      1.  Variable Terminology Used to Describe the Manifestations of Variola Major

      2.  Iterations of the Vaccination Model per 1,000 Population with an Estimated 30 Percent Mortality and Variable Contact Parameters

      3.  Multiple Linear Regression on Rogers’ Raw Data

      4.  Sinusoidal Least Squares Regression with Periodic Terms and Averaged Data

      5.  Estimates of Death Rate Generated from the Sinusoidal Regression Analysis

      6.  Generalized Climatic Data by Elevation for the Southwest

      7.  Twentieth-Century Hopi Population by Village

    Preface

    THIS BOOK is an outgrowth of long and stimulating discussions about sociocultural persistence and change that we have had over the last few years. The dialogue began as we read each others’ research papers, books, and monographs and offered advice and criticism on work in preparation. Although our anthropological training and backgrounds are different (Rushforth is a cultural anthropologist; Upham is an archaeologist), we found common ground in the way we conceived of culture and society. We also discovered similarities in our views about how behavior and material culture can be identified, described, and used to construct explanations of sociocultural persistence and change.

    Further, we found common ground in our interests in the prehistory, history, and ethnology of Southwestern Native American peoples. Rush-forth has conducted most of his anthropological fieldwork among the Northern Athapaskan-speaking Bearlake Indians of Canada’s Northwest Territories. His most recent work about Bearlake culture focuses on the persistence of fundamental values among these people. He has worked on linguistic projects among the Mescalero Apache of New Mexico who, along with other Apache and Navajo, also speak languages belonging to the Athapaskan language family. Upham has conducted most of his archaeological investigations in the American Southwest. He has written extensively about prehistoric and early historic Puebloan sociocultural systems. He has focused on the evolution of social and political institutions among these groups, but has also written about indigenous agricultural systems, prehistoric trade and exchange, and the effects on Native Americans of diseases that Europeans introduced during the colonial period.

    In our discussions about sociocultural persistence and change we often referred to various prehistoric, historic, and ethnographic examples from the Southwest. We discovered that by concentrating on examples we were able to discuss more clearly and understand the explanatory arguments at issue. If, for instance, we were interested in the role of individual intentional behavior in sociocultural processes, it was useful to focus on an example such as the decline of traditional ritual practices in modern Hopi villages from 1909 to the present. According to one anthropologist (Whiteley 1988a), this ceremonial decline is partially the result of Hopi priests’ conscious decisions to achieve this end. We found that attending to such specific cases made anthropological argumentation more transparent. It was easier to discuss the form of the explanation, evidential requirements, and connections among various ideas. This experience partially motivates our writing of this book. Our objective is to share that experience with the reader.

    We thank Peter Whiteley for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this book. His criticisms were extremely useful and the book is better because of his help. We also thank anonymous reviewers for the University of Texas Press who read our earlier manuscript. We benefited from their suggestions. Mistakes that remain are our own. We thank Theresa Hanley for helping us with the bibliography.

    Part One

    Persistence, Change, and History

    1.    Perspectives on Persistence and Change

    IN THIS BOOK, we address numerous questions about sociocultural persistence and change. To begin, we consider how anthropologists describe and explain behavior, culture, and society for the groups they investigate. Because anthropology is the study of humankind, anthropologists are concerned about all features of the human condition. Since beliefs about humankind vary and there are so many components of the human condition, anthropologists approach their subject matter from widely divergent positions. Some view their discipline as akin to the hard sciences. These scholars seek objective explanations of facts about the real world and emphasize the necessity of formal observation, controlled investigation of empirical phenomena, and the need to avoid subjectivity in sociocultural description and explanation. Other anthropologists consider their studies to be similar to the interpretive sciences. They seek to discover, describe, interpret, and understand the meanings embedded in symbolic interaction. These scholars emphasize the role of mental phenomena in human existence, view reference to the nonob-servable aspects of human life, such as beliefs and values, to be essential to almost any anthropological description or explanation, and stress the attendance of subjective factors in all scientific endeavors.

    Despite such important differences within anthropology, the discipline is unified by a common concern with certain basic questions about individuals and social groups. Among the most crucial of such questions are those about human behavior. Why do people behave the way they do? Why do people from different societies often act in different ways? Why do patterns in the behavior of individuals and groups sometimes persist through time? Why do such patterns sometimes change? Anthropologists answer these and related questions in different ways. Cultural anthropologists like Rushforth frequently do so by providing ethnographic or cultural descriptions. These anthropologists assume that people behave the way they do, in part, because of their culture; because of the beliefs, knowledge, and values they acquire as members of a particular society. Since culture varies from group to group, so does behavior. When cultural systems persist, all other things being equal, patterns in behavior persist. When beliefs, knowledge, and values change, the associated behavioral patterns also change.

    Social anthropologists often answer questions about behavior and patterns in behavior by referring to sociological constructs such as social organization and social structure. These anthropologists assume that people behave in specific ways because of the positions they occupy in systems of institutionalized social relationships. Real individuals come and go, but the system of social positions that those individuals occupy (and from which they acquire their rights, duties, and responsibilities) is reproduced and persists.

    Archaeologists like Upham answer questions about individuals and social groups by analyzing material culture, the artifacts and other material residues that humans produce. Archaeologists describe, classify, and date all forms of material culture. They are, however, most interested in how such artifacts and material residues are associated and distributed on the landscape, and how the form and structure of these distributions change through time. Because material objects and their distributions reflect aspects of the cultural and behavioral systems in which they were made, used, and discarded, they are useful for studying the origin and development of such systems.

    The concepts of culture and society are basic to anthropology. Because of their centrality, other fundamental questions emerge from and relate to these ideas. Questions about culture pertain to systems of belief, knowledge, and values. Why do different cultural systems possess certain traits and patterns? Why are there usually both similarities and differences in the cultural systems of different societies? Questions about society pertain to patterns of interaction among individuals in groups. What is the inherent nature of social interaction? Why are social interactions organized or structured the way they are? Why are social arrangements and institutions in different societies sometimes similar and sometimes different? We stress three points about these questions and their answers. First, they are logically separate from the more general questions and answers mentioned earlier. Explanations of individual and group behavior by explicit or implicit reference to culture or to social organization and structure are independent of explanations about the existence of specific knowledge, belief, and value systems or about the existence of specific social institutions and arrangements. An anthropologist might, for example, explain why a man avoids his mother-in-law by referring to that man’s beliefs and values. The man might believe it inappropriate to speak, touch, maintain eye contact, eat with, or interact in any other way with her. These beliefs and values might be widely shared among the members of a social group, and the man might have acquired them by virtue of his membership in that society. Hence, the man’s behavior is explained by reference to his (or his group’s) culture and by his preference, disposition, or tendency to employ such beliefs and values in the organization of his own behavior. Patterns in the behavior of the group as a whole are thus explained by explicit or implicit reference to the social distribution of the relevant beliefs, values, and dispositions. This kind of explanation, however, does not itself explain why and how those cultural traits originated, developed, or presently exist in the society (Brown 1963: 92-98). Answers to these questions require a separate framework, possibly incorporating such variables as are mentioned in the next paragraph.

    Second, questions about the existence of cultural and social systems are usually complex. Answers to them can vary tremendously. Such answers might refer to disparate variables. Answers to the question, Why do men in the aforementioned society have beliefs and values that lead them to avoid their mothers-in-law? might, for example, incorporate historical, cultural, social-structural, psychological, or biological factors, or a combination of some or even all of these variables. The men might have such beliefs because, for example: (1) the beliefs are part of a specific historical tradition, and the men acquired them from their parents and other members of previous generations; (2) the behavior associated with those beliefs communicates respect for one’s in-laws, and such a message is somehow materially advantageous to the individual whose behavior is so interpreted; (3) the behavior produced by adherence to these beliefs provides for the reduction of conflict within the social group by minimizing contact between potentially contentious parties; (4) the behavior associated with this belief system prohibits contact between persons observing the incest taboo, between whom there may be incestuous desires; or (5) these beliefs and the associated behavior do all of these things and perhaps more.1

    Third, differences in the answers anthropologists provide to such questions distinguish competing schools of thought in the discipline. Sociobiologists, for example, emphasize human biological variables in their explanations of cultural similarities and differences. Historical particularists give explanatory priority to the historic events that led to the emergence and development of specific cultural traits and configurations. Marxist anthropologists emphasize the forces and relations of production that give rise to other features of culture and society. Cultural ecologists stress the natural and social environments to which people must adapt (largely through cultural means) if they are to survive.

    Finally, anthropologists also ask basic questions about continuity and change. Why do cultures (or aspects of cultures) and societies (or aspects of societies) sometimes persist, and why do they sometimes change through time? What are the bases for cultural and social continuity? What are the causes of cultural and social discontinuity, instability, and change? Again, these questions raise difficult issues, and their answers are often complex, changing significantly from one school of thought to the next. One anthropologist might suggest that the cultural traditions of some small-scale society persist because that group exists in essential isolation. Another might propose that a system of social arrangements persists because of stability in the organization of production of the society under investigation. One anthropologist might speculate that the social structure of a small-scale society changed because of contact with or the influences of a larger, sociopolitically dominant group. Another scholar might propose that the shared beliefs and values of some society changed because of shifts in the environmental conditions within which the group exists.

    Our opinion about these and other similar explanatory claims is influenced by our beliefs about culture and society. We begin with the assumption that cultural systems are intrinsically related to social systems. We believe that people behave the way they do, in part, because of their beliefs, knowledge, and values, and that a significant portion of human action is intentional. Human action frequently results from decisions people make in pursuit of goals they establish in the contexts of their own cultural systems and traditions. We also believe that people have social-interactional constraints on their behavior. People belong to different social categories or groups within societies. Because of their social positions, people acquire beliefs and interests that can influence their intentional acts. People are sometimes constrained to behave in specific ways by the interpretations and responses of other members of their societies.

    In our view, because culture and society are interrelated, the processes of cultural and social persistence and change are also connected. Hence, such processes must be investigated together. Returning to the hypothetical case presented earlier, we might answer questions about persistence or change in the behavior of men who avoid their mothers-in-law by referring to the cultural system upon which such behavior is based. We might, for example, document historical stability in the avoidance behavior of men in our hypothetical society and suggest that such stability occurs because the beliefs and values underlying the behavior persist. In this argument, the behavior persists because group members continue to believe certain things, and because they have an enduring tendency to act according to these beliefs. This approach assumes that forces leading to persistence of beliefs and values also lead to stability in associated behavior. Conversely, we might document behavioral innovation among the men who avoid their mothers-in-law and suggest that the patterned avoidance behavior changed because the original cultural system changed. That is, forces leading to the transformation of cultural systems are assumed to lead to changes in associated behavior. Through time, the men in our hypothetical society might learn new ways of interacting with their mothers-in-law. Within the context of such innovative behavioral options, they might attach a different meaning to avoidance. The original cultural system might therefore change. Hence, behavioral patterns associated with the original beliefs and values might also change. Why and how the men come to know and possibly prefer new ways of interacting with their mothers-in-law is, of course, a different question, requiring a different answer. We argue later in this book that six categories of variables and processes affect the persistence and change of any sociocultural system. These variables and processes are demography, environment, culture contact, social structure, culture, and human agency and action.

    As stated, our general purpose in this book is to identify and characterize the answers to questions about sociocultural persistence and change raised in the preceding paragraphs. We are interested in anthropological views of the determinants and processes of persistence and change in both cultural (conceptual) and social (behavioral) systems. We are also interested, however, in the relationship between conceptual and behavioral systems. Our ultimate subject matter, then, is the variables and processes of sociocultural persistence and change as these are defined, analyzed, and employed in different types of anthropological explanations.2 We are specifically concerned with the explanatory issues addressed (the why questions asked and answered) and the forms of argumentation that researchers from different anthropological schools of thought employ. In our discussions, we are especially interested in the critical variables that anthropologists incorporate (regardless of their subdisciplinary affiliation) in explanations of sociocultural persistence and change. Some anthropologists, for example, have considered selected demographic variables (pertaining to the size and density of human populations and changes in these conditions over time) crucial in their studies of sociocultural persistence and change. Our intention is to define the role of demographic (and other) variables in various explanations and to generalize about their significance in anthropological argumentation.

    One useful way to organize a presentation of approaches to sociocultural persistence and change is by referring to various theoretical frameworks that have been significant in the history of anthropology (e.g., Bee 1974). Were we to employ this organization strategy, we might write chapters about unilineal evolutionism, historical particularism, British structural functionalism, French structuralism, acculturation theory, cultural ecology, Marxist anthropology, and practice theory. These are commonly identified schools of thought in the history of anthropology, and researchers from each of them have had important comments to make about sociocultural persistence and change. In each hypothetical chapter we would characterize one of the relevant historical schools according to its specific subject matter, explanatory goals, research methods, and standards of explanatory adequacy. We would illustrate our points using empirical studies that scholars working within the framework under consideration have undertaken. In a chapter about acculturation theory, for example, we would focus on what anthropologists from this school of thought have said about the significance of culture contact for sociocultural change (e.g., Herskovits 1938; Linton 1940; Barnett et al. 1954). In the discussion, we would review typologies of culture contact or contact situations, classifications of the possible results of culture contact, measurements of individual and group acculturation, and the way these have been employed in explanations of sociocultural persistence and change. We would illustrate our points using examples taken from different groups throughout the world.

    Another effective way to organize a review of approaches to sociocultural persistence and change is to focus on the logical structure of explanatory arguments (e.g., Boudon 1986:9-22). Were we to employ this scheme, we would include, for example, chapters dealing with theories about universal trends and stages, conditional laws, social structures and functions, and the internal and external causes of change. In each of these chapters we would compare and contrast the claims that anthropologists from different scholarly traditions have made. In a hypothetical chapter on theories about universal trends and stages, for example, we would include discussions of classic unilinear evolutionism (Morgan 1877; White 1949, 1959) and more recent cross-cultural studies of societal types and evolutionary stages, such as those of Elman Service (1962) and Morton Fried (1967). A theme that unites these approaches is their concern for explaining the presence of certain sociocultural traits or the operation of particular sociocultural processes in a given stage of cultural evolution (Upham 1990). We would conclude this chapter by discussing the usefulness of such concepts in explanations of sociocultural persistence and change. We would confirm the similarities and differences in logical form among various explanatory models and illustrate our discussion using materials from many different societies. Our concluding chapter would include an evaluation of the approaches.

    In this book, however, we proceed in a different manner. We construct our discussion of sociocultural persistence and change on the foundation of a historically ordered series of case studies taken from a single sociocultural system. We approach our subject matter in this way for three separate but related reasons. First, since anthropological explanations of sociocultural persistence and change are intended to account for observed facts about real cultures and societies, such explanations must be evaluated empirically. Case studies provide a useful means of relating explanatory arguments to the real world. In case studies, it is convenient to: (1) indicate precisely which features of a selected sociocultural system persisted and which changed over time, (2) consider different explanations for this persistence and change, and (3) evaluate the adequacy of the explanations. From the empirical foundation established by case studies, it is possible to move to a more theoretical level of analysis and discourse.

    Second, we focus on a single sociocultural system because this approach allows for a more complete understanding of the multiplicity of processes that affect any sociocultural system through time. All cultures and societies are the products of many different events and processes. By looking at several of the events and processes that historically have shaped a specific sociocultural system, we can more clearly understand how and why that group came to possess its actual cultural and social characteristics. We can more clearly understand the conjunctive nature of the events and processes of sociocultural persistence and change. The form of any sociocultural system in the 1990s is the result not only of events and processes that have occurred during the twentieth century, but also of events and processes that occurred much earlier.3 By focusing on a single group and discussing pivotal events over a long period, it is possible to describe more clearly the extent of sociocultural persistence and change in the system and determine the forces that operated to produce it. Had we opted to provide case studies from several different sociocultural systems, from different times, and from different parts of the world, such facts and understanding would be lost.

    Third, there are not only theoretical reasons, but also archaeological and ethnographic motivations for concentrating on a single group. By doing so, our book about anthropological approaches to sociocultural persistence and change can simultaneously provide substantial information about a people outside the experience of most of its readers. For us, there is intrinsic merit in acquiring detailed knowledge about the history, culture, and society of any group. We believe that anthropologists inform not only by cross-cultural comparisons of broad similarities and differences among groups, but also by providing thick descriptions of individual sociocultural systems (Geertz 1973).

    The Hopis of Northern Arizona

    In this book, we concentrate on the culture and society of the Hopi Indians of northeastern Arizona, one of the best-known and most intensively studied groups in the American Southwest. The Hopis are Puebloan Indians. The majority of Hopis reside in different villages located on or near the Hopi Mesas, the southern extension of the Colorado Plateau’s Black Mesa. The fingers of this extension are known as First, Second, and Third Mesa, respectively. The contemporary villages of Sichomovi, Walpi, Tewa Village (Hano), and Polacca are found at First Mesa. Second Mesa villages include Shongopavi, Shipaulovi, and Mishingnovi. The pueblos of Oraibi, Hotevilla, Bacavi, and Kykotsmovi (New Oraibi) are located at Third Mesa. Another Hopi village, Moenkopi, is located approximately forty miles northwest of the three Mesas, adjacent to the town of Tuba City, Arizona. Moenkopi originated in the 1870s as an Oraibi farming colony, is now split into Upper and Lower Moenkopi, and is, according to Hopi conceptions, part of Third Mesa. The location of contemporary Hopi villages is shown in Figure 1.

    Other Puebloan peoples of Arizona and New Mexico include (1) the Zunis; (2) the Keres-speaking peoples of Acoma, Laguna, Cochiti, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, Santa Ana, and Zia; and (3) the Rio Grande Valley Tanoan-speaking peoples of Taos, Picuris, Sandia, Isleta, Santa Clara, San Juan, San Ildefonso, Nambe, Tesuque, Pojoaque, and Jemez. These peoples have been sedentary agriculturalists living in compact communities for many hundreds of years. The location of Puebloan peoples in Arizona and New Mexico is shown in Figure 2.

    The Hopi language belongs to the Uto-Aztecan linguistic family, which also includes such diverse languages as Nahuatl (spoken by the Aztecs and their descendants in the Valley of Mexico), Pima and Papago (spoken by peoples from southern Arizona), and Shoshoni (spoken by Native Americans of the Great Basin) (Hale and Harris 1979; Steele 1979). These related, though separate and mutually unintelligible languages, share features of sound, structure, and meaning because they descended from a common parent language. At some distant point in time, the ancestors of today’s speakers of the Uto-Aztecan languages belonged to a single speech community and spoke a common language (or set of closely related dialects). Through geographical and social separation over time, this common language diverged into today’s Uto-Aztecan languages.

    Figure 1. Northeastern Arizona and the Hopi Reservation

    Figure 2. Puebloan Peoples of the American Southwest

    Other language families represented among the Puebloan Indians include Zuni, Keresan, and Tanoan. While the Hopi language is related to other Uto-Aztecan languages, Zuni and Keresan (which are unrelated to each other) have no apparent close relatives (Davis 1979). The former might, however, be remotely related to languages of the Penutian language family, which are spoken in California and Oregon (Newman 1964). Tanoan languages of the Rio Grande Valley (which are divided into three branches or subsets of related but mutually unintelligible languages: Tiwa, Tewa, and Towa) are distantly related to Kiowa. The latter language is spoken by the Plains tribe of the same name. The distribution of Uto-Aztecan and other Puebloan language families in Native North America is shown in Figure 3.

    Hopi Social History

    In this book, we characterize Hopi culture and society in different eras, beginning in prehistory and ending in contemporary times. We do not provide a complete history of the Hopi people, although we discuss several significant events and processes that affected the Hopis through the last five hundred years. Nor do we produce singularly comprehensive accounts of specific eras and events. Rather, we focus on a few important events and processes (which we describe using archaeological, historical, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic information) that have contributed to continuity and change in the Hopi sociocultural system. We thus use the Hopi case studies to begin our inquiry into anthropological explanations of sociocultural persistence and change. We then move to more theoretically oriented discussions later in the book.

    We present our partial reconstruction of Hopi culture and society in Part Two. Part Two is organized into one introductory chapter (Chap. 2) and five case studies (Chaps. 3 through 7) extracted from different periods in Hopi prehistory and history. Chapter 2 provides archaeological and anthropological background information about Hopi prehistory, history, culture, and society. This background is necessary to understand the more detailed case studies. In Chapter 2, we introduce the term Western Pueblo and use it to discuss the prehistoric period in northern Arizona and central-western New Mexico. This term designates the ancestors of contemporary Hopi people, but also the ancestors of Zuni and Acoma peoples (Eggan 1950). Also in Chapter 2, we describe Hopi culture and society from the ethnographic present, the period of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

    Figure 3. Native American languages of Αrizοnα and New Mexico

    Following this introductory chapter, Upham presents our first case study (Chap. 3). It deals with Western Pueblo abandonments from A.D. 1450 to 1539. One of the first important observations that sixteenth-century Spanish explorers made about what is now Arizona and New Mexico pertained to the many abandoned villages and to regions that were seemingly devoid of population. These empty regions, or despoblados (as the Spanish referred to them), conjured up the mystery of lost civilizations and vanished peoples. Spanish narratives of this period reflect wonderment about an enigmatic history. Since that time, Pueblo abandonment has been a common topic in writings about Southwestern prehistory. More recently, the theme of abandonment has figured prominently in culture histories that archaeologists (especially those concerned with the prehistory of the Four Corners region and the San Juan Basin) have written. Archaeologists’ explanations of regional abandonments have focused on drought-induced migrations, depopulation due to disease, raiding by predatory nomads, and a variety of other factors. In the first case study, Upham explores these issues and explanations. He then offers a different interpretation and explanation of Southwestern abandonments. Portions of this case study are based on Upham’s paper Adaptive Diversity and Southwestern Abandonments (1984).

    The second case study (Chap. 4) is also authored by Upham. It focuses on colonial contact, disease, and population decline in the Western Pueblo region from A.D. 1539 to 1680. One of the unintended consequences of European colonization of the Americas was the introduction of infectious diseases to which Native American populations had no immunity. The most devastating of these new diseases were the crowd infections, smallpox, measles, and influenza. The rapid spread of these pathogens following Spanish contact caused dramatic population loss in the Americas (Dobyns 1966). In areas were the Spanish kept accurate records, such as the Valley of Mexico, census documents and other chronicles show that population declined by as much as 90 percent of precontact levels. In areas where records are poor or nonexistent, however, anthropologists and historical demographers have no way to assess the magnitude of population decline or the consequences of population loss on native sociocultural systems. The American Southwest is just such an area. In the second case study, Upham explores this issue and offers a new methodology for dealing with population loss due to disease. He then examines the efficacy of the method for explaining the demographic structure of the Western Pueblo region between A.D. 1539 and 1680. Aspects of this case study are drawn from Upham (1986).

    Our third case study (Chap. 5) is written by Rushforth. It pertains to Hopi history from A.D. 1680 to 1880, during which time two major events occurred that affected Hopi culture and society. These events are the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and the destruction of the Hopi pueblo of Awatovi by Hopi warriors from other pueblos between 1700 and 1701. The Pueblo Revolt refers to the overthrow of Spanish colonial tyranny by Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, including the Hopis. Acting in concert under Northern Tewa leadership, Puebloan peoples successfully fought and expelled the Spanish from their territory. The destruction of Awatovi was a response by Hopi religious leaders to the reacceptance of Spanish priests after 1692 by the people of Awatovi. To ensure religious integrity, Hopis from other villages burned Awatovi, killed some of its people, and resettled the rest among the other Hopi pueblos. These two incidents were part of widespread Hopi resistance to foreign influence and domination during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According to previous anthropological interpretations, this resistance contributed to Hopi sociocultural stability and persistence during that period.

    The fourth case study (Chap. 6) is also written by Rushforth. It deals with the years 1880 to 1909 and focuses on an event in Hopi history that has received much anthropological attention. On the evening of September 7, 1906, 485 residents of Old Oraibi, a Hopi village of Third Mesa, either abandoned or were expelled from their homes and were forced to leave the pueblo. This event represented the disintegration of a village that had persisted for hundreds of years. The disintegration of Oraibi led directly to the establishment of three new and separate communities on Third Mesa. Subsequently, Hopi culture and society have persisted differentially in these villages. Our fourth case study explores the Oraibi split and examines different anthropological explanations for this event.

    Our final case study (Chap. 7) is authored by Rushforth and focuses on events from 1910 to 1989. Among the important Hopi sociocultural changes discussed in Chapter 7 are: (1) an increase in population accompanied by shifts in residence patterns; (2) a shift in economic organization from subsistence agriculture to wage labor; (3) the widespread adoption of modern material culture; (4) a decline in relevance of some traditional features of social organization; (5) a decline in the significance of traditional religious institutions; and (6) a secularization of political organization. In Chapter 7, we attend to these changes and relate each to the overwhelming importance of the modern incorporation of Hopi culture and society into the American and world political economies.

    A Digression Concerning Archaeological and Ethnographic Evidence

    As noted, we structure our case studies around both prehistoric and historic events because detailed descriptions and analyses of such events and situations lend special insight into explanations of sociocultural persistence and change. Since case studies are central to our discussion, we must address two issues concerning the documentation, presentation, and interpretation of prehistoric and historic materials. The first issue concerns the data we employ in Chapters 3 through 7. The second pertains to the use of ethnographic analogy in the interpretation of both archaeological and historical materials.

    First, because our case studies concern both prehistoric and historic periods, we document events and situations using different types of data. We support the prehistoric case studies primarily through archaeological data compiled during years of regional research and analysis. We also support these case studies (and the earliest historical case study) using obliquely recorded Spanish chronicles of conquest, as well as native oral traditions recorded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We document later case studies by employing professional anthropological descriptions that trained ethnographers wrote after the turn of the twentieth century. We substantiate other case studies using the cold, hard numbers of the census taker.

    The different data types we employ vary in their precision. In case studies about the prehistoric Western Pueblo, we rely on imprecise archaeological, early historical, and ethnohistorical data. Archaeological data are, by definition, imprecise because they are measures based on extinct, not living, sociocultural systems. Spanish historic records, too, are inexact because they often were written as administrative records of

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