The Hopi Indians Notebook of Andre Breton, a Look at this Historic Collection 1945
On Collecting Kachina Dolls, Part 2 (of a seven part series)
Robert Cafazzo
Two Graces, Taos
“I greet you from the foot of the ladder that leads into the great mystery of the Hopi Kiva, into the subterranean and sacred space, this August 22, 1945 in Mishongnovi at the hour in which the snakes, last in a tangle, indicate that they are ready to complete the union with the human mouth” André Breton (1896-1966)
In 1924 the Surrealist Manifesto was written by Andre Breton using a term created by Guillaume Apollinaire, in it was stated: “…pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.”
Surrealist Members included, André Breton (1896–1966) Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Wifredo Lam (1902–1982) Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) Paul Nash (1889–1946) Joan Miró (1893–1983) René Magritte (1898-1967) Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) Andre Masson (1896-1987) Georgio de Chirico (1888-1978) Meret Oppenheim (1913-1985) Jean Arp (1886-1966) Man Ray (1890-1976) Max Ernst (1891-1976) Yves Tanguy (1900-1955) Paul Eluard (1895-1952)
Man Ray, Jacques Baron, Raymond Queneau, Pierre Naville, André Breton, Simone Breton, Jacques-André Boiffard, Max Morise, Giorgio de Chirico, Mick Soupault, Roger Vitrac, Paul Eluard, Philippe Soupault, Robert Desnos, Louis Aragon at the Bureau for Surrealist Research, 1924
Photo: Collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne/Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
“They are the most beautiful things in the world…” (1927)
Paul Éluard describing kachina dolls in “Letters to Gala”
*Gala (Elena Ivanovna Diakonova b.1894-d.1982) at the time was the wife of Eluard who later left him to marry Salvador Dali.
Whether you were a surrealist, had an awareness of the writings of Sigmund Freud & Carl Jung, or an abstract expressionist, writers and artists began looking at and creating artwork inspired by the carvings of Kachina Dolls which were being exhibited in Museums across the USA and Europe beginning in the early 1920’s. Kachina carvings and other material collected by anthropologists began to appear to a broad range of people who otherwise would not have had an opportunity to see works by Native Americans especially in the remote region of the desert southwest. Eventually visitors to the southwest began arriving out of sheer curiosity (and marketing) seeking to acquire items for themselves, especially kachina dolls which were so unique in their interpretation and embodiment of a spiritual world that the European or Anglo world had seemed to have forgotten.
Private collections began to grow, those of Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Andre Malraux in Europe were also enhanced with collections of carvings from Africa and Oceana. The ‘Wunderkammer’ or Cabinet of Curiosity (a chamber or display case for displaying artworks) began to explode as more and more material was acquired. They collected the best of the best, at the time, much of the best was available for purchase. Today, collections of this time frame (pre-1945) are sold off privately or may be locked away from public view in museums that don’t quite understand their importance.
During a recent trip to Paris, we tracked down a room at the Pompidou Centre which displayed a significant portion of the collection of Andre Breton as if itself were its very own Cabinet of Curiosities. Unfortunately his collection of Kachina Dolls were not included, (I believe they had been sold off, not verified). There is however a Tesuque Pueblo Rain God and a Native American Dance Shield included in the room set, along with many items of world cultures.
More of how Breton displayed his kachina doll collection, properly hanging on the wall
The Manuscript presented here was originally written in French, the translation and editing is my own. It is a pure document of a trip to Hopiland in 1945 written from Breton’s own viewpoints and observations. The writing tells no secrets nor of sacred knowledge. To some it may offend (at first glance), to others it is truly a remarkable document with much to teach and learn from.
[Andre Breton's Manuscripts] Notebook Indians Hopi 1945
Northeast Arizona Museum.
Photos of a Hopi woman with her hair:
a) before marriage, in butterflies (Hairstyle) at the edge of the plateau [drawing].
b) after, carrying water [drawing]
About 7,000 Hopi in all, about 1,100 on this reservation around Oraibi.
[Drawing: a Hopi woman in profile with her hair tied back in a ponytail with a strip of white wool.]
Navajos in Flagstaff. Bracelets, necklaces and earrings of turquoise (very blue, the only one they like).
The women wear black velvet blouses with silver buttons and long skirts of black velvet (23 meters of black velvet at $4 per meter in the Navajo skirt) or silk that are reminiscent of those of the gypsies in color and fullness.
Boots. Blue turquoise. The Navajos consider the Hopi to be cowards.
Tuesday morning, August 7 or 8, 1945
Wake up in Hotevilla, 6 kilometers Oraibi on a sandy path under an apricot tree. Road lined with apricot, peach and apple trees. Dappled sky.
The previous evening, arrival at Hotevilla — houses all made of sandstone (adobe) high village like a blond crystal among these structures of rocks by horizontal tables whose large eroded masses give the impression of a superposition [drawing] and raise bird figures. Children who group together in increasing numbers to follow us but run away as soon as we look at them to gather again, laughing. Dressed in European style.
Old woman with white hair, very witchy type, stirring completely black corn (blue corn).
Katchinas in the houses we enter, hung on the walls or placed.
Blue Ohote found in Moenkopi near Tuba City.
Indian inscriptions = petroglyphs (look for this word).
The evening of this arrival in H. while we are setting up the tents, the owner of the trees, a Hopi named Pumasati, passes by. I tell him about the interest that is shown in Europe for Katchinas — Hopi art is considered very great. "It's not too early," he says. Quite defiant and ironic towards the Navajos who pillage his apricot trees as they pass by (he lets us taste their fruit).
The day before, we arrived by a rather difficult path. Desert but so different from that of Nevada. Sand. We pass the car of a Navajo service employee who gets off, very obligingly gives us some information (half-Navajo half-American). There are no more gila monsters at this height. Snakes, yes.
On the road strange horn trophy (photo) at the foot of which some quartz.
In Hotevilla the Hopi dinner: all on the ground sitting side-saddle (both legs on the same side). Meal around a goat skin (?): a sort of double pancake and watermelons whose black seeds then litter the ground at the edge of the skin.
Tuesday.
Purchase four dolls + a feather and a Hotevilla ribbon. No authorization to photograph. Ask the chief.
Indians: curiosity followed by distrust (as if automatically followed). Regular lunacy in this sense (only).
Impossible to buy the three very beautiful Katchinas with crenellations almost matched the night before ($4).
Main flower among the sage and the tomato-red shrubs: "Indian paint-brush".
Little girls from 6 to 8 years old lipstick
Hotevilla. Child 6 to 7, tattooed red and black, destined to become the medicine-man of the tribe (?).
We hear singing in a house (Oraibi). It is an Indian who is training for the Snake Dance of August 22. On this occasion the Hopi go in search of traces of reptiles. It is necessary to capture rattlesnakes of a certain size (very large). They are sometimes bitten but are not bothered. At the time of the dances they absorb for about ten days a very powerful antidote whose composition is one of the greatest Hopi secrets. At other times use this antidote in case of bite (certain curative effect).
Hotevilla. Complete refusal to cooperate with America, especially in the war. Thirty young men imprisoned for refusing service, they are released after a few months of incarceration in the hope that they will submit but they remain steadfast, they are imprisoned again, and this has been going on for four years.
Two photos of Elisa.
Old Oraibi. A young girl who was initially smiling when she got out of the car, then wary (she would never leave us, hostility increasing until the end of the walk). The chief introduced himself and opened his house to us (shields on the wall). He made us spell and pronounce his name on the door. He became chief of the village when his uncle died. Can we take photographs? — No, people don’t like that. He is very old and miserable with an empty eye (trachoma, like so many Indians). The children in great numbers have skin diseases (face, scalp).
Old Oraibi, the last point of Hopi resistance: the town was never abandoned afterwards and its inhabitants are very proud of it.
Even after the appeasement at Oraibi, resistance continued at Hotevilla and then at Moenkopi. The Revolution took place in 1906: it was predicted for that date; some Hopi were for conciliation with the American government; others against; the dispute was settled along a line drawn along which both parties pushed with all their strength. The former won, the latter were those who then withdrew to Hotevilla. This anecdote illustrates the pacifism of the Hopi. At school, Hopi children hit by Navajo children limited themselves to protecting their faces with their arms (told by the young ethnologist).
Devil Clan / Bear Clan [schematic drawing of the meeting].
“Push of war"
1906 Youkeyouma (name of the chief)
Engraved in stone with the drawing: Well it has to be this way now that when you pass me over this line it will be done. This inscription in English because the Hopi only know how to write in English.
The devil's clan has lost. So the chief turns on his heels and retreats with all his followers to Hotevilla (although the season is most unfavorable).
The chief presents us with a small prescription in poor condition which we take note of (irritation-hostility?)
Mesa = table. Pueblo = village.
At Mr. Powers' we are in the Second Mesa (mesa is the name given to each of the rocky levels and groups that make up the Hopi reservation). There are three of them, the first corresponding to Polacca, the second to Shungopovi, Mishongnovi and Shipaulovi, the third to Oraibi. To these three divisions correspond variations of detail in the decoration of the Katchinas. Thus for one of the mesas [drawing of an ornament] can become [drawing of a slightly different ornament] in another (the young ethnologist Mr. Smith). There are also individual variations—according to the artist.
The Hopi is monogamous, but quite frivolous. This frivolity of morals does not harm his reputation and does not affect his qualification on the religious level. Matriarchy. The child is from the mother's clan, father's clan. It is the maternal uncle who gives him Katchinas (to check). If a child is naughty, his mother tells him that he is kohopi (that he is not hopi).
Thursday.
Shungopovi — Mr. Powers, schoolteacher at Second Mesa.
Shungopovi, village at the top of the rock that we climb on foot. Return in the evening. Along the way, small graves decorated with gray-blue or turquoise sticks and feathers, like fallen parade arrows.
Better welcome than at Oraibi. Let's buy seven dolls that are quite modern in design. The little Indian girls are very enterprising, beautiful with a starry beauty. One walks with Elisa, holding her tightly in her arms around the waist: "Take me with you," then she and two others try to drag her towards the houses! They also dream of leaving by car. A falcon tied to the roof by one leg at the edge of the precipice in front of the setting sun. We return the next morning. Photographs of me, of Jeanne, of the place where the dancers retire (underground) after the ceremonies. No one else is ever allowed to go down there. This place made of stone and from the hole of which a ladder protrudes is called a kiva.
Afternoon.
Mishongnovi (another pirate or eagle nest village), same region as the previous one (with Mr. and Mrs. Powers): it is recommended not to try to take pictures: the Indians could shoot and kill (exaggerated, see the following: Hopi pacifism).
Two large rocks (photos) = the two bases of the Hopi civilization (there were three, one fell fifty years ago, earthquake). Legend has it that if they collapse, civilization disappears. (They dominate the cemetery.) The set of two rocks constitutes the Corn Rock. Children must not approach it (Corn Rock).
Shipaulovi — Purchase of three dolls: Ohote, [?] and Deer.
The Hopi are recognized as the best farmers in the world on dry land. Extraordinary brilliance of the corn plants (black-eared corn?) in the valley.
Mr. Smith — The missionaries are still in the region but their enterprise is unsuccessful. At the end of the 19th century the American government invited the Hopi chiefs to Washington and presented them with the choice of entrusting the education of their sons to the care of the Americans in Washington or allowing certain teaching missionaries (Methodists, Catholics) to enter and stay on their territory. In desperation they signed in the second sense so that the presence of the religious is tolerated but that is all (full respect for the given word is one of the characteristic Indian traits.
Masks and katchinas
Blue: azurite
Green: malachite
Red: hematite
White: kaolin
Yellow: limonite
Black: obsidian
They are first prepared with gypsum (white) + galena (lead ore used in shiny powder).
On Thursday evening, dinner with Mr. Smith, a very friendly ethnographer in his twenties. He usually lives on the Apache reservation but spends his holidays in Mishongnovi where he lives with the Indian, sharing his life and meals (he was a shepherd among the Hopi as he is a medicine man for the Apaches). Meals always based on corn and mutton. He had the opportunity to buy Hopi masks but he always carefully guarded himself against them so as not to lose Hopi friendship forever. The Zuni, for their part, could kill if they found a white man in possession of their masks, the hostility of the Hopi on this subject, to express it in a less violent manner, would be no less assured. The Apaches do not attach the same importance to the dispersion of their ceremonial masks and Mr. Smith owns several.
At the origin of Hopi mythology:
Apaches: Dr. Byron Cummings
Kinishba ruins — 9 miles Whiteriver
Zuni: cf. Zuni Capital
Katchinas are carved from the root of cottonwood coming from the river (Colorado River).
This wood is dried for a year (buried in the sand). Large dolls are no longer made due to the increasing scarcity of this wood.
The eagle is considered by the Hopi to be an intermediate link between earth and sky: hence the importance of the eagle feather.
The eagle feather (held in the dance or not?) is the vehicle of prayer to heaven.
Friday: Walpi the "pueblo of the Clouds" [drawing] like a gigantic warship carved out of the rock.
At Taiwa near Walpi (doll and butterfly)
Keams Canyon (night of Friday to Saturday, August 11)
Purple doll.
Search Smithson Institute 1901 - 1902
23d Report and 19d Report (Mishongnovi)
Feathers particularly appreciated by the Hopi: parrot, toucan, eagle.
Indians of the Enchanted Dessert By Leo Crane, Boston 1929 (Little, Brown & C°)
Sunday, August 12 near Fort Apache.
Entrance to the Apache area
Pines, pine-covered mountains, road lined with white poppies, bouillon-blanc, yuccas, smell of skunk, cactus, tents made of dried yuccas. Elisa takes a photo of Apache tents (Whiteriver region).
Photo Kinishba, ruins (fragments of prehistoric pottery) date back 600 years, already built on ruins.
The Apaches were considered prisoners of war until 1920 (twenty years of armed resistance in the forests).
Sleeping on Sunday in Saint-John — 55 miles Zuni
Monday 13th morning.
Zuni reservation. The town — Methodist missionaries established in one of the ugliest buildings in the world.
Hopi and Zuni are of the same origin: some went east, others west.
Zuni dolls not to be found. We see one at the schoolteacher Mrs. Gonzalez's, not very important but intact (feather necklace).
Drawings at school by Indians aged 13 to 15.
The dolls are not found in the houses as with the Hopi but inside the kivas (women are not allowed to see them) and the owner of the Trading Post from whom we buy turquoise earrings does not seem to hear when we ask him to inquire about such dolls from the Indians.
The women and girls wear large Spanish shawls.
Evening Gallup.
Hopi.— Hopi houses are built so that one must enter through the ceiling. One climbed up by ladders that were removed at night as a measure of protection against enemies.
Search for snakes: in the four directions: one day towards the North, second towards the West, third [towards] the South, fourth [towards] the East. Before leaving for this search, they spend several days praying and singing in the kiva (prayers to the Serpent).
When a serpent is discovered the Hopi surround it and one of them spreads food on it and then takes the serpent in his right hand.
See in the Gallup Independent the article on Zuni philosophy where it is said that the Zuni venerate animals and things all the more the further they are from man (dog, serpent). Cf. surrealist position.
August 15 — Acoma:
On the Gallup - Acoma road, trading post and zoos (rattle snakes and gila monster). Photos Elisa and large dolls.
Old Acoma in the most beautiful and strangest site: Rocks in a huddle of bears and night birds. Superb labyrinthine staircase, carved into the rock (Acoma, the Sky City). Old Acoma is now inhabited only by the two war chiefs and a family who take turns each year. Heavy church in the approximate (!) style of the village. Torrid temperature. But a cellar where the wind blows freezes the water at -3°. Two Acoma women watch for visitors and invite them from the top of the rock (poor pottery, book signings, payment $1 per person).
August 17 — Gallup — Opening of the ceremony in the pouring rain. Six fires lined up on the track exalt the red of the costumes of the Indian spectators. When the dances end the dancers gather around the six fires. Extraordinary spectacle: the background formed by the Indian cars with half-cylindrical roofs [drawing] in the glow of the fires in the rain the bright colors of the shirts and skirts are reminiscent of the war paintings of Watteau and Goya. The Indians around the six fires: this draws six opal almonds, an opal which turns and exalts its red fires. In broad daylight, the next day under the sun, it is on the contrary the blues which play to the maximum (men's shirts).
August 18 — Sand painting by two men and two women under the direction of the medicine man. They paint with two fingers as if one were salting. Birth of a leaf with its veins as if one were watching it in fast motion.
Photos, August 18:
1. Hopi welcome dance
2. (The same)
3. Oklahoma squat dance (planting dance)
4. (The same)
5. San Juan deer dance (New Mexico)
6. Mountain goat dance (Cochiti New Mexico Indians)
7. Cheyenne dance (Wyoming)
8. Navajo sand painting
9. (The same)
10. Very beautiful Midnight dance
11-12. Santa Ana Indians (New Mexico) with hair spread over their faces (night of the 17th)
Return to Second Mesa on August 21.
Shungopovi: three dolls (including two Katchinas with long hair).
Antelope Dance at Mishongnovi August 21.
Two groups of dancers, the first of which enters the stage first, composed of twelve mostly elderly men (gray or white hair). Bare-chested red-brown painted, white lightning tattoos. Red on the cheekbones. Black chin strap. Red carpet-style belt. Right Katchina turquoise necklaces. They wear the skirt of the corn dance and the sachet (?), the counterpart of the Zuni rain dance [added later:] No, this ornament is Hopi. In the hands on the right the rattle, in the left a pinch of sacred food
(Record = Victor 20043 disc). [Drawing of a dancer's painted face with his feather headdress.]
First group — bare foot painted white, braided wool anklet, black white and red drawing (all different drawings).
Fire feathers in hair: kind of feathers from the tail of the Rhode Island rooster. One (the third) has a crown of leaves. They hold the white rattle, attached to the back belt fox skin or other beast (gray or red fox or). In each hand, flat rattle containing corn.
Second group: eleven men and two children — shell necklaces, or shells and turquoise — Orange and black feathers — Red on cheekbones. Straight shell bracelet. Archer's bracelet like Urban's (Hopi archer's bracelet not Navajo) on the other arm. Sound turtle at the height of the right calf. White tattoos in the form of oblong spots except one tattoo in the form of a "bra". Bracelet above the elbow in leather with white inlays. All boots in red leather.
[Drawing representing the village square, the stone and the small hut of branches.]
The dancers describe circles of decreasing and increasing size on the square so as to strike the ground with their feet (a board hidden under the ground) at the entrance to the hut (when withdrawing they describe a space in a crescent four times the planned journey) and to spread on the stone alternately water, contained in a wicker bowl covered with lacquer, and corn powder.
[Drawings showing the spirals described by the dancers. Plan of the festival: the kisi 10 feet high by 6 in diameter, closed by a piece of cloth forming a door (shelter made of fir planks where snakes or offerings are placed) and location of the spectators.]
[Two drawings showing the movements of the dancers entering and exiting:]
Entry. Four times? They have six cardinal points N W S E, Zenith and Nadir.
Oven not lit. On the third turn they throw corn powder on the oven.
Exit (four times). Analogy with the symbol of the Greek, labyrinth (bracelets) which also designates the Hopi village.
Very difficult to remember two hours later what the hut is for, its role (hiding place, conjuring), what it contains (the corn stick is taken out), how many times and on what occasions the two dancers enter and leave it. It is very well masked (as if by dense grass) at its lower part.
[Drawing of the hut with a sheaf of cottonwood branches, "capital object" (kisi), cloth holder.]
Face to face the dancers of the first and second groups. Those of the first begin by shaking the rattles then prolonged chorus alternating with a murmur (a sort of prayer during which they take steps forward and backward) while two dancers, one young, the other old, the old holding the young by the shoulder and supporting with his left hand the corn that the young holds in his mouth, move between the two lines while singing:
[Diagram representing the movements of the two groups with two officiants in front of the kisi.]
Atmosphere of initiation. Very solemn, very serious, the participants paying no attention to their surroundings. Dance step — always starting with the right foot, very light, not solemn but prolonged.
"First dancer masked in white (officiant) comes from the second line, second comes from the first.
" Urban testifies that: [unfinished sentence].
" The dancers of the second group represent the Serpent clan, those of the first the Antelope clan. This ceremony takes place today at the invitation of the Antelope clan, tomorrow at the invitation of the Serpent clan.
At the beginning, they walk vigorously four laps, hastily (it is as if they had already walked for a very long time and were eager to arrive although tired (intervals between them unequal, each giving their measure of energy without concern for the whole: very impressive). The hidden board on which the dancers stamp their feet covers a hole called the sipapu and represents the entrance to the underworld. The call of the foot is a message to the spirit of the Great Plumed Water Serpent which is at the origin of the Hopi myth. Each time the dancers pass in front of the altar (the hut), they drop a pinch of sacred food.
Second group (snakes), leather skirts, red feathers, in the right hand a pot decorated with feathers. Turn four times.
Very soft singing accompanied by swinging bodies.
The Antelope dance on August 21, 45 in Mishongnovi begins at 7 o'clock. We have been sitting for almost three hours on the square (bench in front of the house). Scorching heat. About twenty white spectators who are more or less badly behaving (groups of young American girls entering successively into all the houses: "Do you have katchinas?" and jostling each other, another woman swinging her doll carelessly at the end of the string, guys joking heavily). I have barely taken this notebook and written two lines of notes on the costumes when a voice behind me (someone touched my shoulder): "Give me your book." He takes it and remains standing behind me the whole time of the dance. They then explain to him that I don't speak English, that I've only written two lines, he has them pointed out and tears up the page that he takes away folded. If I do it again I'll be chased out of the village (an American painter was asked to leave Oraibi the day before after a vote by the inhabitants, was taking sketches). The policeman: Indian police, "deputy" badge, very "angry". We fear that we won't be admitted to the Snake Dance tomorrow. I explain to Jeanne that I don't regret anything, that if I admire Hopi art, I don't consider myself obliged to respect the Hopi religion more than any other and to observe its prescriptions (fanaticism, anarchy). We can't figure out if the objection is religious or commercial.
" A terrible problem: the Hopi are considered to be the best farmers on dry land. However, the government is considering irrigating their land. We can see what aesthetically harmful results this can have. Should we irrigate under these conditions? I would irrigate (in spite of myself), but I would irrigate. Distress of these populations. It is she who passes into their ceremonies and gives them this unique gravity, no doubt.
The Snake Dance is the public display that concludes the nine-day secret ceremony in the kivas of the Antelope and Snake clans.
Julia M. Buttree, author of The Rhythm of the Red-man (A. S. Barnes & Co., 1930, New York) who witnessed the Snake Dance at Miishongnovi on August 21, 1927 notes that the Snake priests are led by an albino. This is not the case this time (note the large proportion of albinos among the Hopi: encountered at least five).
The date of the Snake Dance is never known more than ten days in advance. It is said to be when the sun casts the shadow of a certain rock in a certain way. However always between the middle and the end of August.
The dance is a prayer for rain. Snakes are emissaries of the rain powers.
Beginning: a very soft and dull song accompanied by movements of the body from side to side, accompanied by the movement of their feathered crook. They tapped the crook in the air rapidly twice to the left twice to the right, nine times in succession (eighteen in all), this repeated five times. From time to time three beats instead of two and returned to the movement of two. They were evidently singing a song, the rhythm of which they gave without their voices always being audible. The rhythm seemed to be 1 - 2 - 3
rest; 1 - 2 - 3 - rest, that is to say loud - soft on the left light and rest on the right, in the rhythm of the song (after J. M. Buttree, work cited).
August 22: Snake-dance, Mishongnovi.
Waiting from 4 to 6 o'clock approximately. More than a hundred cars. Sun then storm rain. Clear clouds. Heavy rain under the sun. Entrance of the antelope priests (eleven Indians among whom the corn dancer from the day before).
The priests of the Snake, thirteen including two children (8 to 9 years old). Painted face, red forehead and the rest black — white band around the neck. Brown-black body.
On the right arm of the antelope priests, held by a bracelet, they carry a poplar branch. Brown moccasins.
Kisi: same arrangement as the day before.
After about three minutes of singing, abrupt stop. One of them leaves the ranks and turns around as if looking for someone in particular. Conciliabule between the priests of the Snake (apparently disoriented). Finally he designates one of the Indian policemen (this would be part of the initiation for him and he could later, after other tests, be admitted into the Serpent clan). According to John (Hopi Indian) this policeman converted to the Christian religion (Baptist sect) as well as his wife, but the chief keeps power over him (if he refused he would immediately lose his function).
" What I note above is according to J. M. Buttree. It is up to the individual thus chosen to hand the dancers snakes which are in the kisi behind the cloth.
The S [Serpent] priests then form a group of three: No. 2 puts his left arm around the neck of No. 1. No. 1 puts his right arm around the waist of No. 2. No. 3 walks alone behind them, No. 4 like No. 1, No. 5 like No. 2. No. 6 like No. 3, etc.
They begin another louder song, describing a circle and raising the right foot higher than the left. At intervals the right foot remains suspended in the air for two measures. On the second round the new initiate begins to hold out the snake, which is taken by No. 1 in his mouth about four inches from the snake's head, the tail winding over the left arm.
No. 2 continued to wave the feather wand in front of the snake's head. The same thing with Nos. 4 and 5.
In the meantime No. 3 and No. 6 walk behind each of the couples.
This continues until Nos. 1 and No. 4 throw the snakes to the ground. At this point No. 3 and No. 6 begin to maneuver the snakes, turning them away from the spectators and picking them up. On the next round a new snake is handed to each of the leaders and the same procedure continues. (Today about twenty to twenty-five snakes, including four rattlesnakes and several bullsnakes.) At the end of the dance, No. 3 and No. 6 have their hands full of snakes. It often looks as if one of the dancers has been bitten. Often one of the snakes crawls up around the face towards the eye region.
" When the priests have begun to dance, three women appear on one side and nine on the other, wrapped in shawls. When all the snakes have been used up, the dancers throw them all to the ground after the first priest has drawn a circle of corn and traced the six directions (snakes within this circle from which they more or less escape). At this point the dancers pick up as many snakes as possible and set off in the four directions where they found them nine days earlier. After an hour they return, enter the kiva and come out wearing only a quarter of a loincloth and go to bathe. Then they absorb a quarter of a very thick greenish and brown liquid that two women bring them (emetic).
" The dancers spend nine days in the kiva without eating (?) bathing and handling the snakes (Buttree).
Today: the women spread some sacred food as the dancers pass by and cover the snakes with this food while they are in the circle.
Six rattlesnakes. The others, bullsnakes.
Antelope priests: the third crowned with leaves holds a bowl of water.
The child who closes the march of the Serpent priests carries a kind of bow from which hang the red feathers that we saw earlier on the kiva.
We watch from afar as we return to the dancers' bath in the distance while the child with the bow runs back up the rocks. This child was noted during the first two rounds by the anxiety he felt when his feathers fell on his face. He only regained confidence when he was able to stop and secure his headdress at the beginning of the song.
According to Bill Smith, Hopi children are not afraid of snakes. However, when he puts the snake down, it seems to show some concern.
August 23.
At Mr. Powers's, an Indian of about fifty, Peter, who comes to bring a basket of peaches. We talk to him about yesterday's dance (people who passed by the school during the day judged it mediocre, having previously attended several Snake Dances). Very handsome face of this Indian, great spirituality and sometimes a very fine and very mysterious smile. Yes, this festival is beautiful and moving, he says, for those who see its background. However, he deplores that the presence of the Whites has taken away much of its solemnity and that the priests no longer spend themselves in the same way. In my grandfather's time, he says, I remember, it was something else. But how do you want it to be otherwise if during the ceremony people are all moving around on the roofs of houses emptying Coca-Colas?
"The mounds that can be seen in the fields were built, he says, around the places where a snake was discovered so that the priests could come and take it there.
Peter has a ranch nearby, two hundred and forty sheep. A few years ago the American government reduced the number of cattle allowed to the Indians (because of insufficient pasture). The number of livestock is proportionate to the size of the family (Peter has ten children). On the other hand, certain equivalences come into play: one horse = twenty sheep; one cow = five, etc.
"In the village of Shungopovi, eighteen Indians receive poverty relief.
"Each year the planting program is established jointly by the men and gives rise to long deliberations between them lasting several days. The women meet during this same time and prepare the meal together. There is constant mutual aid: if a family kills a cow, another family that does not have sheep benefits from it, etc. If a particular year for a particular family the corn harvest has been bad, the other families divert part of the harvest in its favor, etc.
"The Hopi children are extremely docile at school. The teacher can keep everything in order and the task accomplished. They never fight among themselves, at most they sometimes exchange sharp words.
" Peter is asked about the exact meaning of the word Bohanas that the Indians apply to the Whites. He answers with great firmness and eloquence. Bo-ha-na designates the White (he does not answer when asked if the term is pejorative). But Bohana has another meaning, which his grandfather transmitted to him. He taught him long ago that their lands had been taken from the Indians but that one day the Boha-na would come and give them back to them. (He speaks at this point with great conviction and inner light. The word Bo-a-na which often comes at the beginning of the sentence as if it were defining it learnedly is magnificently placed by the voice.) He withdraws after this explanation. He is a man who cultivates corn and beans (very little education, third degree equivalent to eight or nine years). Extraordinary nobility.
"A doctor comes every eight days. Hospital not far away. Trachoma specialist. Hygiene lessons at school.
Friday, August 24 — Ruins of Awatovy (non-Hopi) or Talahogan (non-Navajo), with Powers and John.
Pottery. E. [Elisa] finds a fragment similar to the Indian Art "flea" pottery I was just talking about. — Azurite — two or three arrows (near Keams Canyon). On the difficult road, iron formations, hematites which we at first take for meteorites.
Saturday, August 25.
Cow-dance (Cow dance) at Vieil Oraibi. It begins at noon, Hopi time. About thirty dancers, same red belt with falling facing. Masks with horns, with a wide collar of tamarisk-type foliage, crossed shell necklaces passing under the arm, necklaces. [Drawing showing the torso with these adornments.]
The group is made up of about twenty-five cows, a bull (more realistic mask), a wolf (fur mask), a shepherd (mask like Robert Lebel's little ones with a pipe nose, + a drum. He alone has a turquoise-colored rattle, the others have natural-colored rattles.
Two men spread corn powder at the level of each dancer.
After the meal that closes this dance and which takes place at a certain distance from the square (women bringing provisions from all sides across the rocks), this dance is repeated and this time admits the participation of four clowns (blue panties in poor condition, face and torso painted black and white, necklaces of green peppers, large woolen belt) who will be joined later at the third by a character with a black and white mask with three pipes whose head is topped with a sort of flat bundle placed on one side to which the others will set fire, costume moreover black worker's cut. [Drawing of the mask.]
There are few variations in the Cow Dance. The clowns sometimes break up the line of dancers, imitate the shepherd who very often pretends to draw a bow and stands out of the line. They also imitate the corn sprinklers. When the dancers have retired, women bring them countless provisions (bread of all shapes, watermelons, oranges, hard-boiled eggs, orangeade and gray sweets in the shape of rolls of paper called pikis). They break the watermelons by dropping them from a height and pelt each other with the pieces from time to time. The women who brought the presents of food withdraw after being the object of petty jokes and some untie the pepper necklaces they are carrying. They pretend to build a miniature "toilet" with a shrub, after having debated at length about its location. Each of the four clowns went in one direction, one brought back a broken box, another an old magazine (paper) on the pages of which one could glimpse fashion engravings. A third took off a European-style doll from his belt that was hanging from his back and sat it down in front of the shrub, to which necklaces had also been attached, etc.
" Women brought food and gifts to the dancers who then distributed them to the Indian audience (watermelons, bread, eggs colored some red, others olive green, corn, orange). A Navajo who was in the front row (recognizable by his large hat with a turquoise ribbon) received as a gift, no doubt ironically, three pieces of a decorated bowl (broken).
(According to Mrs. Powers) the clown in the Hopi dance represents the elementary, uncontrolled spirit. They tend to impress children, to provoke their disapproval by acting like them at the paroxysm. Hence their gesticulation and their continual cackling, hence their eating like monkeys (digging in turns with their hand in the watermelon, drinking all from the same bottle, spilling the orangeade they offer to the doll). They attack (already noted) the drum character, pull his caps from his head, insert into his eyes the two ears or horns that he wears hanging down: the drum continues to play imperturbably. [Drawing of the head of the drum character.]
" At a Katchina dance a few months later, clowns disguised as cats appear by bursting onto the roofs. They mime all the nocturnal behavior of cats. Various obscenities. They simulate the act of love by taking the usual positions of animals, pursue women to pretend to force them to copulate with them, etc.
Drum: magnificent aspect of this character with a burnt Siena mask and a rigorously colored painted body [one illegible word]. See what it represents exactly (great aspect of the first man, element of eternity and animality at the same time, outfit of the Baphomet of the Templars), it is the mudhead.
The church of Old Oraibi away from the houses, without a roof. It was destroyed by lightning! No need was felt to rebuild it. The Hopi (so pacifist) carried out a careful massacre of the priests around 1880 and they have not been represented since then.
Emphasize the very great sobriety of the dances, as devoid of contortions as possible, the elbows of the cow dancers remain constantly stuck to the body. This does not go, in the long run, without monotony. Very elaborate masks, big black eyes, red bottoms of the ears, faces often sky blue with big white dots. The whole is much more worthy of Seurat's brush than of an animal painter.
Hopi landscape — Blonde extended with silvery green — Often the prairie like the rough sea — The skies — Small squares of corn, beans — Importance of peaches, apricot.
We learn that the dancers (cow-dance of Oraibi) came from Tuba City. Could they be Navajos? Powers supposes so on the pretext that the Hopi do not have cows. This is no reason (since they do not have antelopes either): there are antelopes on the territory of the Navajo reservation.
Sunday, August 26th
Snake-dance at Walpi. A thousand spectators perched on the landings of the most beautiful amphitheater I have seen. The roofs thus decorated have the effect of balconies on three floors or two floors or one floor. Many spectators on the square itself, others on all the stairs leading to the roofs of the houses. In front of us, on the right, the tall stone (somewhat anthropomorphic), on the left, the kisi in poplar leaves. Light stormy sky. A little rain. We had to climb on foot the height of about twenty floors by sand and rocks. Around 6 o'clock the antelope-priests enter, a group composed of four old men and two children, their arms decorated on the outside with poplar branches. They are distributed on each side of the kisi. Then the snake-priests enter by the path behind the large stone, them too. This entrance is dramatic as some observers have already noted. They run rather than walk: face, forehead natural color; below, from eyebrows to mouth, shiny black paint, tar color; white chin. Variations with Mishognovi: they carry folded behind their heads a bundle of white feathers, earth-colored skirts crisscrossed with a black zigzag with white designs [diagram].
" There are fourteen of them, all men, some of them elderly (old men). The song is much less beautiful and more muted than in Mishognovi. The spiral described by the dancers on their arrival is less observable because of the extreme crampedness of the place. When the song ends, the priests rush towards the entrance of the kisi, blocking the view by leaning over all at once. Then the couples of dancers organize themselves. At the head of the left side walks an old man whose expression of anguish will become more pronounced with each turn. Yet at the first turn we are very surprised not to see a snake in his mouth. The turn completed, arriving again in front of the kisi, he literally spits out a small snake. These snakes are of very unequal dimensions: at the next turn from the mouth of the same old man only the head of a snake as small as the previous one comes out. Another holds a snake four feet or more long: Mr. Powers was telling yesterday that a 20-foot rattlesnake (bought by a circus, a rarity) had recently been found in the region. One of the dancers passes with the snake literally wrapped around his lips: one would think it was a make-up. These snakes are extremely active and the dancer who advances associated with the one holding the snake does not relax his surveillance for an instant, his feather wand never ceasing, so to speak, to be in contact with the head or the upper part of the body of the animal, which they sometimes push away very sharply. Expression of total ecstasy of the third dancer, a man of about twenty-five years old; who keeps his head raised and his eyes closed even though he has to go up and down two steps at the level of the large stone. He generally holds large snakes that let themselves flow along his body. These snakes are extremely numerous: about fifty. At the end of the dance, each of those responsible for picking them up after having moved them away from the rows of spectators when they are on the ground holds a handful. Two nuns from the audience, as annoying as possible. Two dancers have been bitten on the face. Same ceremony of the return of eight dancers in the four directions, there are six left who perform the final dance. Women have come as in Mishongnovi to spread corn powder as the dancers pass (one of them is even somewhat blinded by it in the process) and inside the circle in which the snakes are going to be placed. [Here drawing of a circle with rays.]
The lines correspond to the rays drawn by the priest. Not diameters. The line breaks at the center and starts again from the circumference.
We leave the Hopi territory around 7 o'clock. The road slips and runs away under the bridge of a double rainbow. Towards Gallup where we arrive at 1 o'clock in the morning, by a road that the rain has made clay in places.
Overall this dance of Walpi is wilder but less solemn than that of Mishongnovi. Attitude of the public even more tactless (chatter and laughter).
Snake-dance Walpi. While the dancers take the snake in the kisi, the other dancers lift the fox skin of the first and caress it with their feather sticks.
Gallup, August 27.
Purchase of eight Zuni drawings.
Gallup-Albuquerque (arrival in the evening).
(Walpi) Insist on the value of this very deep communication with the land which here makes up for everything, its total, incontestable authenticity.
The Oraibi Dance: In Gallup we see the drawing of the costumes of the Cow Dance by a Zuni (regarding the constant exchanges between these three tribes).
[On a sheet slipped into the notebook:]
Great purity very sad hovers and plunges
great pure sadness
very detached
mountain almost not earthly, already belongs to the sky
aspires towards space
aerial element
they do not smile, are detached from everything
The Indian looks beyond himself
Stellar continent.
[© André Breton, sale catalogue, 2003]
Simulation of Delirium of Interpretation, Paul Eluard
“The shower’s dazzling colors speak parrot language.
They hatch the wind that emerges from its shell with seeds in its eyes.
The sun’s double eyelid rises and falls on life.
The birds’ feet on the windowpane of the sky are what I used to call the stars.”
“Feather summer is not yet over.
The trapdoors have been opened, and the harvest of down is being thrust inside. The weather is molting.”
“The phoenixes come, bringing me my ration of glowworms, and their wings which they constantly dip in the gold of the earth are the sea and the sky which glow only on stormy days and which hide their lightning-tufted heads in their feathers when they fall asleep on the air’s one foot.”
(Translated by John Ashbery)
From ‘The Immaculate Conception’ 1930 in collaboration with Andre Breton
I gratefully thank the Andre Breton Foundation Archives and the Centre Pompidou, Paris for preservIng this material. This blog and this material is not for monetary purposes, it is strictly for sharing knowledge and ideas.
