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Road Trip |
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I
bought some jewelry from a Navajo woman named Louisa. At
our hotel in nearby Kayenta, the wind was blowing fine red sand into
drifts in the parking lot. Kayenta
seems to be a reservation town that is prospering.
There are many new houses, several nice motels and news of new
businesses coming soon. In
the morning, we headed south to Tuba City and bought fried chicken for
our picnic lunch since we were heading into the Hopi Reservation where
restaurants and stores were unlikely.
The Hopi are a conservative tribe, probable descendents of the
Anasazi, who still live in the old way.
Signs warn that you are not to go off road and that you may not
take pictures of anything. Hardly
any people are to be seen. In spite of that, we found the few people we
engaged in conversation to be warm and welcoming.
After driving sixty miles into the central part of the
reservation, we stopped at Old Oraibi, one of the oldest pueblos.
We were allowed to walk through the town as long as we were
careful to stay a respectable distance from the kivas, the underground
structures that are still the center of ceremonial life.
At a small trading post, we bought a beautiful small pot and an
elegant silver pendant from a woman who explained that their elders did
not allow electricity or phone lines, but that they were allowed to have
small generators or solar cells. Water
is hauled from three miles away. They live on the mesas, but farm the
low lands. They do dry
farming (no irrigation), which explains why there are so many water
symbols in their art.
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