Burton Holmes, the man who brought the world home
Excerpt from the book "Burton Holmes Travelogues"
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Accompanied by his entourage that included Oscar B. Depue, Holmes visited northern Arizona in 1898 and 1899. They made the first movies taken in Arizona of such subjects as the Hopi Snake Dance and Captain John Hance leading tourist groups into at the Grand Cañon. While visiting the Hopis, Holmes and Depue staged a chase scene where a young white woman from Denver, "Rattlesnake Jack," challenges the braves to catch her when she steals the Chief's horse.
Hopi Land, also known as Moki Land, in Arizona is the home of the strangest of our fellow-countrymen. Moki Land is unique; it is a changeless corner of our land of perpetual change. The Mokis are a pueblo people, differing from other tribes of the southwest in language, customs, and religion. They dwell in seven villages, each set like an acropolis upon a barren rock, high above the barren, boundless sands of the Arizona desert.
How long they have lived there in the sunshine, no man knows. The Spaniards found them there in 1541, living and praying and performing their religious ceremonies, just as they had lived and prayed and worshipped for uncounted centuries.
The name "Moki," which we now erroneously apply to this little nation, means literally "dead people," and was originally a term of derision given by the warlike Apaches and Navajos to these peaceful farmers and home-builders. Ask one of the boys whom we find playing in the Plaza of Walpi what he is, and he will say that he belongs to the "hop," or "good people," for Hopi is the original name by which these Pueblo-builders call themselves, although the term "Moki," once an insult, has almost lost its derisive meaning and is not seriously resented.
Subjects of conversation, by the way, are few in Hopi Land; but never-failing topics are the lack of water, the condition of the springs, and the possibility of a copious downpour in response to the invocations of the priests. The one thought uppermost in Hopi minds is how to bring the rains down from the passing clouds upon the thirsty fields and into their empty reservoirs and cisterns. The whole complicated symbolism of their religion illustrates this never absent aspiration. The ceremonies we are soon to witness, however vague their meaning may appear, are all performed by a believing people to the end that springs may flow abundantly, that copious rains may fall, and that bounteous crops of corn and beans and melons may grow up out of the desert sands.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Accompanied by his entourage that included Oscar B. Depue, Holmes visited northern Arizona in 1898 and 1899. They made the first movies taken in Arizona of such subjects as the Hopi Snake Dance and Captain John Hance leading tourist groups into at the Grand Cañon. While visiting the Hopis, Holmes and Depue staged a chase scene where a young white woman from Denver, "Rattlesnake Jack," challenges the braves to catch her when she steals the Chief's horse.
Hopi Land, also known as Moki Land, in Arizona is the home of the strangest of our fellow-countrymen. Moki Land is unique; it is a changeless corner of our land of perpetual change. The Mokis are a pueblo people, differing from other tribes of the southwest in language, customs, and religion. They dwell in seven villages, each set like an acropolis upon a barren rock, high above the barren, boundless sands of the Arizona desert.
How long they have lived there in the sunshine, no man knows. The Spaniards found them there in 1541, living and praying and performing their religious ceremonies, just as they had lived and prayed and worshipped for uncounted centuries.
The name "Moki," which we now erroneously apply to this little nation, means literally "dead people," and was originally a term of derision given by the warlike Apaches and Navajos to these peaceful farmers and home-builders. Ask one of the boys whom we find playing in the Plaza of Walpi what he is, and he will say that he belongs to the "hop," or "good people," for Hopi is the original name by which these Pueblo-builders call themselves, although the term "Moki," once an insult, has almost lost its derisive meaning and is not seriously resented.
Subjects of conversation, by the way, are few in Hopi Land; but never-failing topics are the lack of water, the condition of the springs, and the possibility of a copious downpour in response to the invocations of the priests. The one thought uppermost in Hopi minds is how to bring the rains down from the passing clouds upon the thirsty fields and into their empty reservoirs and cisterns. The whole complicated symbolism of their religion illustrates this never absent aspiration. The ceremonies we are soon to witness, however vague their meaning may appear, are all performed by a believing people to the end that springs may flow abundantly, that copious rains may fall, and that bounteous crops of corn and beans and melons may grow up out of the desert sands.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Burton Holmes Travelogues, The Greatest Traveler of His Time
Hardcover, 30.5 x 26 cm (12 x 10.2 in.), 368 pages
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Burton Holmes Onstage at the Central Music Hall, Chicago, 1937
Tourists at the Banff Spring Hotel, Banff, Canada, 1916