Page 261 - TheHopiIndians

MESA FOLK OP HOPILAND 253
For this reason, all the present villages have re
ceived swarms from other hives and have sent out in
turn swarms from the home village, during their slow
migrations around the compass. The habits of the
ancient people thus led to a constant flux and reflux
in the currents of life in the Southwest and in spite
of their substantial houses and works costly of labor
the Pueblo Indians were as migratory as the tent-
dwellers of the Plains, though they moved more slow
ly. Their many-celled villages on mesas or on the
banks of streams, in the cliffs of the profound can
yons, dug in the soft rocks or built in the lava caves,
were but camps of the wanderers, to be abandoned
sooner or later, leaving the dead to the ministrations
of the drifting sand.
Nor with the coming of the white people did the
wandering cease. There were Seven Cities of Cibola
ing the subsequent stretch of time, these seven towns
were fused into the Pueblo of Zuni and again came a
dispersal and from this great pueblo formed the small
summer villages of Nutria, Pescado, and Ojo Caliente.
A human swarm built Laguna two centuries ago to
swarm again other times. Acoma is mistress of Aco-
mita: Isleta has a namesake on an island in the Rio
Grande near El Paso, and in Tusayan the farming
pueblo of Moenkapi Hotavila and Ushtioki in the
plains in front of Walpi. are late additions. Thus, in
times of peace, these hamlets spring up, each having
the possibilities of becoming large settlements, and in