Hopis

            Hopis are a group of the Pueblo, formerly called Moki, or Moqui. They speak the Hopi language at all their pueblos except Hano. They occupy several mesa villages in NE Arizona and numbered 6,624 in 1988. In 1540, they were visited by some of Francisco Coronado's men under Pedro de Tovar, but because of their geographical isolation they remained more independent of European influence than other Pueblo groups. The Spanish began to establish missions in 1629 at the pueblos of Awatobi, Oraibi, and Shongopovi. These missions were destroyed in the revolt of 1680 and when the residents of Awatobi invited the missionaries to return, the other Hopi destroyed their village. After the revolt, pueblos in the foothills were abandoned and the Spanish built new villages on the mesas for defense against possible attack. During the 18th and 19th cent., the Hopi were subjected to frequent raids by the neighboring Navaho. The region was pacified by the U.S. Army in the late 19th cent. and a Hopi reservation was established in 1882.
             Beginning in about 1 C.E. a culture developed over the next 700 years. The Hopi call these people Hisatsinom (People of Long Ago) although the public and archaeologists refer to them as Anasazi or San Juan Basketmakers. By about 500 C.E. the Hisatsinom had learned to make pottery and developed elaborate pit houses of increasing size. By 700 C.E. they were cultivating corn, beans and cotton and settling down to a more sedentary life in small settlements of two to five pit houses. At about 700 C.E. the first substantial presence in the Hopi mesa area was established on Antelope Mesa, east of now Keams Canyon. Masonry walls came into use and aboveground dwellings replaced pit houses. From 900 C.E. to 1100 C.E many small masonry villages appeared in the area but a subsequent drying of the climate over the next 200 years saw a clustering of the area's population into larger villages, such as Oraibi, Awatovi, Wupatki, Betatakin and the villages in Canyon De Chelly.