e of
the Aztecs in Mexico.[4]

[Footnote 4: Colton, H.S., Days in the Painted Desert: Museum Press,
Flagstaff, 1932, p. 17.]

According to their traditions the various Hopi clans arrived in Hopiland
at different times and from different directions, but they were all a
kindred people having the same tongue and the same fundamental
traditions.

They did not at first build on the tops of the mesas, but at their feet,
where their corn fields now are, and it was not from fear of the
war-like and aggressive tribes of neighboring Apaches and Navajos that
they later took to the mesas, as we once supposed. A closer acquaintance
with these people brings out the fact that it was not till the Spaniards
had come to them and established Catholic Missions in the late
Seventeenth Century that the Hopi decided to move to the more easily
defended mesa tops for fear of a punitive expedition from the Spaniards
whose priests they had destroyed.

We are told that these desert-dwellers, whose very lives have always
depended upon their little corn fields along the sandy washes that
caught and held summer rains, always challenged new-coming clans to
prove their value as additions to the community, especially as to their
magic for rain-making, for life here was a hardy struggle for existence,
with water as a scarce and precious essential. Among the first
inhabitants was the Snake Clan with its wonderful ceremonies for rain
bringing, as well as other sacred rites. Willingly they accepted the
rituals and various religious ceremonials of new-comers when they showed
their ability to help out with the eternal problem of propitiating the
gods that they conceived to have control over rain, seed germination,
and the fertility and well-being of the race.

In exactly the same spirit they welcomed the friars. Perhaps these
priests had "good medicine" that would help out. Maybe this new kind of
altar, image, and ceremony would bring rain and corn and health; they
were quite willing to try them. But imagine their consternation when
these Catholic priests after a while, unlike any people who had ever
before been taken into their community, began to insist that the new
religion be the only one, and that all other ceremonies be stopped. How
could the Hopi, who had depended upon their old ceremonies for
centuries, dare to stop them? Their revered traditions told them of
clans that had suffered famine and sickness and war as punishment for
having dropped o