Hopi

The Hopi are a Pueblo people of the mesas of northeastern Arizona, descended from the Ancestral Pueblo peoples of the Four Corners. Their name means peaceful people of the Hopi way, and their society rests on matrilineal clans. Old Oraibi, founded before 1100, is among the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the United States; maize, beans and squash sustained stone towns with underground kivas.

Spaniards reached them in 1540, when Coronado's men entered Awatovi, and Espejo counted five Hopi villages in 1582. Mission work began in 1629, but the Hopi joined the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, burning the Awatovi church and killing its friars.

In the winter of 1700 to 1701 the other villages destroyed Awatovi for readmitting the Spanish, and no mission was rebuilt in Hopi country. Through the rest of the eighteenth century the mesa villages kept their kachina ceremonies, including the Snake Dance, and remained effectively beyond Spanish control.