Are the Maya and the Hopi 2 Branches
of the Same Ancestral Tree?
Before a house is built in Mayan Guatemala, before a new town is laid out or a new field is planted, a spiritual guide is called, and in an ancient ceremony the spiritual guide determines the corners of the property, and north, south, east and west. He walks to them, marks them, and after the ‘cornering’ is complete, he uses them to determine the center. At the center, the land is dedicated to its new purpose. In a home, for example, this center, or balance point, becomes the hearth, and the three hearth stones will be laid, the tenemastes, representing the triangle of stones laid down at creation to support the cosmos, and still seen as a triangle of stars in Orion.
When the Hopi first came to this continent at the beginning of this forth age, they were instructed to make four great pilgrimages before settling at the center, their permanent home. The clans walked south, west to the Pacific, East to the Atlantic and north to impenetrable ice, the world’s ‘back door,’ and then returned to settle the center, the mesas we now call Hopi land. They left swirling petroglyphs behind, the number of turns in the spirals representing the number of migrations completed. The first clan to complete the four prescribed pilgrimages, the Bear Clan, still holds the principal place in tribal leadership.
Harry James notes in his book 'Pages from Hopi History' that as late as the time of the Pueblo Rebellion in the 17th century, there were Hopi who still held out hope that the white Spanish were the ancestors of the feathered-serpent Quetzalcoatl, and again in the 19th century, some mistook the first Americans as the feathered-serpent's heirs. The blind brutality of both the Spanish and the Americans convinced them otherwise. The Spanish punishment for making a Kachina doll (an idol) was to douse the artist in terpentine and set him on fire. When a Hopi delegation visited Mormon Utah in the 1860's, they confided to Brigham Young that in the distant past the ancestors of the Hopi had a written language and made and used books. Indeed, Hopi pottery from the 16th and 17th centuries featured designs commonly found in Mayan codices (from Designs on Prehistoric Hopi Pottery, by Jesse Walter Fewkes).
I have just returned from Hopi land, and more and more I feel that the Maya and the Hopi are branches from the same tree. The Hopi are secretive. Like the Maya, they have suffered persecution at the hands of their federal government. In the not too distant past, parents were imprisoned for years, even in Alcatraz, for not allowing their children to be taken away to white boarding schools. It is against tribal law to even draw sketches of Hopi villages. People told me things, handed me writings and poems, always telling me it was for me alone. “Don’t share this with anyone.” I respect that, and none of these confidences are repeated here. The Hopi have shared an important possession with the world, their prophecies and instructions for the days to come. This they were asked to share by the Lord of this world.
People flocked to Hopi land prior to Y-2K, the millennial shift when people feared the collapse of computers, infrastructure, and perhaps civilization. The Hopi land has a reputation of being a sanctuary. For a small tribe living simply, a large influx of people is a real problem. The Lord of this world told them he would care for them if they lived simply, as he does, with few possessions. Másaw possessed a digging stick for planting, a water gourd and corn seed. Like the Christ, he had one set of clothes. Some villages still reject electricity, underground sewers and plumbing. It is not stubbornness, but religious faithfulness. Whatever makes them more white makes them less Hopi. And their survival depends on being Hopi.
They are not looking for converts. We whites, the Bahannas, do not survive by flocking to Hopi land. It is not a sanctuary for us. The Hopi freely shared their prophecy with us because it was given to them as a message for the world. They do not share their religion with us. We are not welcome in their kivas. We cannot join their clans and societies. There may be lessons from the Hopi, however, that will help us to survive in our own places. Our ‘sanctuary’ may be in their wisdom, not in their territory.
That is for another essay. This one is about the roots of the Hopi and Maya, and how they are branches from the same tree. This is not a new idea. The Hopi themselves have considered that the Maya may have been a clan that did not complete the migrations, and, seduced by the ‘easy’ tropical climate, may have declined because, in not completing the four migrations, they broke faith with the Lord of this world. Others have considered the Hopi a Mayan cult that migrated north from Central America. Their ancestral ‘Red City’ was in the south. It was in Red City where Kachina spirits, beings from the stars who in human form were called the Kachina Clan, gave them knowledge and prepared them for the migrations.
The Hopi legend is that we are living in the forth age, the forth creation of the world. At the beginning of this age they came in boats from the west, across a chain of islands, called ‘stepping stones,’ at least some of which submerged after the migration. The Maya also consider this the forth age, the forth creation of man. An ancient Kaqchikel Mayan manuscript, the Memorial de Sololá o Tecpán-Atitlán, states ‘from the west we came to Tulán, from the other side of the sea.’ Tulán, translated ‘seven-caves’ or ‘seven-ravines,’ is a legendary place of common ancestry for the Guatemalan Mayans. Both the ‘Memorial’ and the Popol Vuh speaks of the tribes crossing the sea to Tulán via ‘stepping stones.’
The Hopi New Fire Ceremony Kokostawis is part of the winter ceremony Wúwuchim, a celebration of creation and the beginning of life. In the cold dawn, a new fire is lit by members of the Two-Horn Society, those entrusted with knowledge of both this and the three previous ages of the world. At dawn the new fire is carried to light fires in the other kivas. Life begins with fire, as is reflected in the warmth of our bodies. In an ancient New Fire Ceremony performed by the Toltecs of Central Mexico as early as 400 AD, a new fire was kindled every 52-year calendar cycle when the Pleiades reached the sky’s zenith point, and the new fire was carried to light fires in other areas. John Major Jenkins has suggested that these 52-year astronomical observations over time lead to an understanding of the slow solar precession cycle.
During the Hopi New Fire Ceremony, colored sand is spread out in the four primary directions. Yellow sand is spread to the west, blue to the south, red to the east and white to the north. The Maya and the Hopi share these four directional colors, also the colors for the four corns, and the four races of man. Before Mayan ceremonies the colors are laid out in candles. For the Kaqchikel, they are white to the north and red to the east, and yellow to the south and black (the color of black, or blue corn) to the west. The Aztecs used blue to the south and red to the east, but yellow to the north and white to the west.
The Hopi are sometimes called ‘corn eaters’ by their Navajo and Apache neighbors. Corn is a sacred substance for them, a gift from the Lord of the world. The Two-Horn society has a sacred symbol called a mongko, a decorated wooden rod and supreme symbol of their authority and spiritual power. On the mongko, a perfect ear of corn represents man. The Mayans are the ‘people of corn,’ and believe that the first people of this creation were fashioned from a mixture of corn and water called atole. They use atole in their ceremonial life in a similar fashion to the ways the Hopi use dry corn meal. For the Maya, the four corns correspond to the four races of man. The Hopi Corn Clan has been growing the four types of corn for a thousand years so that they might live in harmony with the other races when, as prophesized, they met them.
There are other cultural similarities as well. The Hopi reservation, or ‘rez,’ is surrounded on all sides by the Navajo. The famous Navajo rugs are often woven by women, some quite famous for their artistry. In Hopi culture women can prepare the wool, but the men do the weaving. This is familiar from areas of Mayan Guatemala, where women make cotton tapestries on back-strap looms and clean and card wool, but woolen goods like blankets are woven by men.
Despite web-accounts of Hopi 2012 prophecies, none exist. Hopi prophecies are organized into a sequence of historical events that the elders have followed through history, some quite recent like the use of an atomic weapon and the establishment of the United Nations. They believe the age will end in conflict, perhaps a third great world war. There system uses no calendar system as we know it, but they are of course aware of the Maya, the people with ‘a date.’ More on these prophecies later…