Pueblos

The Hopi built the walls of their pueblos with stones set in mud, then plastered the surface with more mud. Trees were rare in their homeland, so tribal members traveled far to find pine and juniper trees for beams. The men provided the building materials, but the women shaped them into houses. They stretched the beams from one wall to another, forming a flat roof, which was filled in with poles, branches, leaves, and grass, then packed with plaster. The walls had no doors or windows. Family members entered through an opening in the roof, climbing down a notched log. Just as in an apartment building, the walls of one dwelling were connected to the walls of others. When a family wanted another room, they might have to build upward. Pueblos were sometimes four or five stories high.

The Hopi usually dug kivas, underground rooms with stone walls, in the village plazas. Hopi men used them for chapels as well as for clubhouses. In most kivas, a sipapu, a stone-lined hole in the floor, represented the entrance to the cave world from where the Hopi ancestors supposedly came. Women were not permitted in kivas unless men invited them for a special purpose, such as taking part in a council. Yet Hopi women owned their houses.

Of plant matter. Hopi men wove cotton to make blankets and clothing. Women dyed the threads with orange, yellow, red, green, and black dyes made from plants. The Hopi used leather for moccasins and rabbit skins for robes. Young, unmarried Hopi women, in a style unique to their tribe, wore their hair protruding from both sides in the shape of a squash blossom.