Page 24 - TheHopiIndians

16 MESA FOLK OF HOPILAXD
hard-muscled, and agile, since he depended on his own
feet for going anywhere and on his arms for work be
fore the day of the burro and the horse. Black,
straight hair worn long, brownish skin, the smooth
and expressive face in the young men, intensifying as
they grow older, bringing out the high cheek-bones, the
nose, the large mouth and accenting them with
wrinkles, but never developing a sullen, ferocious cast
of countenance, always preserving the lines of worth
and dignity and the pleasing curves of humor and
good-fellowship to the end of life, — these are the
salient characters of the Hopi.
The same remarks apply to the other sex, who from
childhood to old age run the course in milder degree.
Many of the maidens are pretty and the matrons are
comely and wholesome to behold. The old, wrinkled
and bowed go their way with quiet mien and busy
themselves with the light duties in which their experi
ence counts for much.
In spite of the luxuriant hair that adorns the heads
of this people, one may notice the difference of head
shape which distinguishes them from the tribes of the
plains. The cradle-board is partly responsible for
this, since, from infancy, the children are bound to the
cradle and obliged to lie on the back for longer or
shorter intervals, and thus begins the flattening of the
back of the skull. But the heads of the women are
rarely flattened, probably because the girls are not so
well cared for as the bovs.