BREATH OF LIFE
The Concept of Hikwsi in Traditional Hopi Philosophy
By Maria D. Glowacka
American Indian Culture and Research Journal
23:2 (1999) 137-143
Scholarly efforts to understand the Hopi concept of hikwsi were rather unilateral and led to the oversimplified conclusion that hikwsi is a Hopi linguistic equivalent for the soul. This article attempts to shed some light on this important philosophical concept in a Hopi language perspective, particularly as applied in an explanation of human structure and behavior.
In the Hopi belief, death does not end a person's presence in the physical world, but marks a transition from one state of being to another or, in other words, from one form of experience to another. On the fourth day after death, a person's breath (hikwsi) leaves the body and goes to a place which represents the other realm of existence, not separated from the world of the living, but different in that this realm is unmanifested, unseen, and not accessible to the senses. In ethnographic and anthropological literature this symbolic place has been described as the Underworld, Lower World, Third World, or the World of the Dead (maski; mas-ki, "corpse-home"). According to Emory Sekaquaptewa, this concept can be expressed by a Hopi word, atkya, which literary means "down below."(1) The word atkya can refer not only to an area at the bottom of the Grand Canyon (Ongtupqa) called Sipaapuni, from which the Hopi came out of the Underworld, but also to an area seen from the tops of Hopi mesas in the southwestern direction. This area is marked with kiikiqo (literally, "ruins"; metaphorically, "footprints"), places inhabited once by Hopi ancestors (Hisatsinom) before they arrived at Hopi present settlements, such as, for instance, Homol'ovi, Wupatki, Tsor'ovi (Tuzigoot), and others. hikwsi of the dead is believed to have the ability to return to the Hopi mesas in visible forms of clouds, rain (or katsinam) and act as an animating force in the sensuous world of the living.(2)
Many researchers of Hopi culture considered the term hikwsi as the Hopi name for the soul which was said to live forever after the body dies. As Fewkes notes: "The modern Hopi recognize in man a double nature, corresponding to body and soul, and to the latter they… give the expressive name breath-body [hik'si]… It is the breath-body or shade of man which passes at death through sipapuh, or gateway, to the underworld…"(3) The Underworld is perceived not only as "the ultimate home to which the soul of the dead person must go,"(4) but also as "the place of its [the soul's] genesis before it was embodied."(5)
Titiev's interpretation of the life and death cycle indicates that death in the present world, or the Upper World is followed by birth in the Lower World, and ultimately the souls of the dead are reembodied in babies born on earth. At the same time, he emphasizes that the cycle is completely generalized among the Hopi and should never be interpreted as a belief in a personal reincarnation. He also points out that individual variations or deficiencies in an individual's experiences during life affect the disposition of his soul after death.(6) Thus, the soul of a child who died prior to initiation into Powamuya/Katsin Society cannot return alone to the Underworld but must wait on earth to be reborn in its mother's next child or - in the case she fails to bear another child - to accompany her hikwsi to the home of the dead after she dies.(7) These statements are confirmed by Brandt: "Adults are supposed to reach the spirit world after death (perhaps after some punishment). The souls of uninitiated children, however, hover about the village until they enter the body of a newborn child."(8) According to Titiev, unmarried girls or women who married illegally cannot travel to the Underworld because they lack the wedding garments; the souls of men who have never passed through the initiation return to the general underworld, whereas the spirits of the initiated have special homes reserved for them.(9) The journey to the Underworld is particularly painful slow, and difficult for the souls of "witches."(10) At the end of this journey they are consumed in "big ovens from which they emerge as beetles.(11)
The motive of the soul journey after death, as well as the concept of the hell or purgatory, are alien to traditional Hopi culture and were taken by early ethnographers from a Christian philosophical tradition.(12) Early ethnographers explored a changing Hopi culture. Christian missionaries have been active in Hopi country from the sixteenth century, and even though they were not very successful in converting the Hopi people to their system of belief, they introduced some non-Hopi elements into Hopi tradition.(13) As a result, much ethnographic data was affected by a Christian tradition (in Hopi: Tsiisastuptsiwni). The detailed descriptions of the soul's journey to the Underworld after a person's death presented by Fewkes, Voth, Titiev provide examples of this influence.(14)
Scholarly efforts to understand the concept of hikwsi were rather unilateral and led to the overly simplified conclusion that hikwsi is a Hopi linguistic equivalent for the soul. Like so many terms in the anthropological study of religion, the soul that can be considered a potentially distorting term carries an enormous amount of baggage, like both deity and spirit.(15) Some researchers have pointed out that the attempt to increase our understanding of native categories by consciously and deliberately comparing and contrasting studies of Hopi culture often lead only to limited, ethnocentric insights. Moreover, many ethnographic and anthropological observations would have been much more useful and accurate if they had been recorded in the Hopi language and/or interpreted from a Hopi linguistic perspective.(17)
At this point would like to present briefly the Hopi view on the structure of human beings in the light of the Hopi language. Some of the examples presented here hopefully will contribute towards reinterpreting the concept of hikwsi. To the Hopi, human beings can be equated metaphorically with corn plants.(18) Structural analogies between humans and corn plants are evident when parts of their bodies and stages of their developmental cycles are analyzed. The human body without hikwsi, which signifies breath (of life), vital force, vivifying power is called qutungwu. Illustrative examples from the Hopi dictionary, Hopiikwa Lavaytutuveni, state:
Hakiy hikwsi'at qatungwuyat ang yamakngwu
Your breath passes from your body.
Pay itam put qatungwuyat.sa amya
We buried only his body (qatungwu).(19)
Qatungwu means a corpse or lifeless body. This term refers also to a corn plant body after the ears were harvested. Qatungwu is considered to be without soona, the substance of life.(2) The term soona has several meanings: kernel; the nutriment of a plant as contrasted with its form, qatungwu; the sustaining or nurturing part; the living part of a whole; life which makes the body viable. Soona also signifies sustenance, like in the following sentence: I' qaa'o Hopituy soona'am (The corn is sustenance of the Hopi). As Black points out, the dichotomy qatungwu versus soona can be explained by another dichotomy: form versus substance.(21)
The hikwsi of corn plants and human beings is considered to aniwti, which means to mature, become perfected, or continue to be perfected after death, after leaving the physical body. The corn plant achieves the "state of perfection" when in the form of hooma, or ceremonial cornmeal, which has the ability to retain and carry wishes that were "breathed" on it:
"Katsinmuy na'am hoomay aw hikwsut pu' akw katsinmuy homnangwu."
The father of the katsinam breathes the essence of his wish / prayer on the ceremonial cornmeal, then sprinkles the katsinam with the cornmeal.
Hooma is also used to "purify" a pathway, on which the katsinam enter and leave the village. When a Hopi woman rinds corn she is aware that she touches the perfect element of life. Therefore, grinding corn is a ritual duty that should be performed with "pure heart," symbolizing the state of being morally pure, without negative, disturbing thoughts and feelings.
As we can see, in ritual context human hikwsi is used for carrying the person's wishes by means of hooma. The other ritual tool which serves the same purpose is hikwsunpi, prayer feathers wrapped in corn husks carried by Wuwtsimt members (hikwsi'ynumyaqam) from house to house during the Soyalangw (Soyal ceremony):
Soyalngwuy ep hikwsunprit aw haim hikwsuyangwu.
At the Soyal ceremony people breathe wishes / prayers on the prayer feathers.
The Hopi verb hikwsuntima means literally: go along, causing people to breathe on hikwsunpi (prayer feathers). Metaphorically, the world also means to be encouraging, going along (as through life), serving as a source of inspiration or assurance to others.
Pay katsinam piw yep itawuy taawiy akw hikwsuntiwisa.
The katsinam go along (through time) inspiring (encouraging) us also by means of their songs.(22)
The human hikwsi comes to the "state of perfection" when manifested in a form of rain-bringing clouds. This thought is reflected in a speech following the Wuwtsimt ceremony cited by Kennard, Loftin, Black.(23) Presented here are only the last five statements of his speech.
Pangso hak ahoy nimangwu, I'hakiy qatungwu'ata
When one goes back home (after death) this (body) is stalk.
Pamsa pipay nukwsiwtingwu.
Only it becomes worn out, spent.
Niqw aapiynipa hikwsi aniwtiqa
That which continues (to live) is the breath that is perfected.
Pam hapi sutsep qatungwu.
That is what always lives.
Put um hapi uuqatsiniqata aw na'saslawu.
That is what will be your life, and is what you are preparing for.
These statements reveal clearly that hikwsi of human beings is believed to become perfected (aniwti) after releasing from the physical body, at death. The hikwsi of the dead returns to the world of the living and manifests in visible forms as clouds, rain, katsinam.(24) A Hopi verb katsinaniwti means to change into katsina, to become katsina (after death). Katsina represents the perfect state of being, which is difficult to achieve by human beings in their lives because of imperfections of their physical dimension represented by qatungwu.(25)
Linguistic examples given above indicate that hikwsi is endowed with power that is not acknowledged in Western culture. This power gives life and in a ritual context can influence events in the world.
By the concept of hikwsi human beings are linked to the immanent force of the world. The human hikwsi is a "portion" of the life-giving force that enfolds the entire world and invests all elements, manifesting in them differently. In the Hopi perception all things, even the sun, the moon, the wind, the stars and the clouds, are alive and related. The Hopi language reflects this view.(26) Animate nouns include not only real or folkloric beings, but also items in nature and objects that are perceived as involving an animating force, such as certain ritual tools.(27)
The human individual force of life represented by hikwsi is an invisible but tangible power, a part of the physical, sensible world. hikwsi provides the body (qatungwu) with thoughts, feelings, desires, intentions, speech, and other properties which Western philosophical tradition assigned to an interior individual human mind. That which is described by the English concept of mind (in its old and current meaning)(28) can be considered as the manifestation of hikwsi, and hikwsi is a property of the surrounding world in which human beings, like all other beings, participate.
Without hikwsi the human body is only a form - qatungwu - yet with hikwsi the human body is a breathing, sensing, active and open entity, having the world inside and communicating with the world outside.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Emory Sekaquaptew from the University of Arizona for his invaluable help, comments, and suggestions.
NOTES
1. Emory Sekaquaptewa, personal communication, 1998.
2. Some authors (Ernest and Pearl Beaglehole, Hopi of the Second Mesa
[Menasha, Wisconsin: American Anthropological Association, 1935]
Maitland R. Bradfield, An Interpretation of the Hopi Culture [Derby, UK;
privately printed, 1995]) point out that hikwsi leaves the body
in dreams. "In this sense both sleeping and dreaming and
unconsciousness brought about by injury, are thought of as being
equivalent to death, since in both states the 'breath' has left the
body" (Bradfield, 39).
3. Jessie W. Fewkes, "The Prehistoric Culture of Tusayan," American
Anthropologist 9:5 (1896): 161-162; Mischa Titiev, Old Oraibi: A Study
of the Hopi Indians of Third Mesa (Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of
American Archeology and Ethnology, 1944), 171.
4. Titiev, 176.
5. Fewkes, 162; Titiev, 176
6. Titiev, 176, 177
7. Titiev, 177; Henry R. Voth, Brief Miscellaneous Hopi Papers
(Chicago: Field Columbian Museum, 1912), 103
8. Richard B. Brandt, Hopi Ethics: A Theoretical Analysis (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1954), 31.
9. Voth, 103.
10. The English translation of the Hopi word powaqa as witch or sorcerer
is inaccurate. The term powaqa refers to any individual who has
ingenious skills and uses his knowledge for negative purposes.
11. Elsie C. Parsons, Hopi Journal of Alexander M. Stephen (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1936); Titiev, 177.
12. However, Geertz states that the Hopi do have a hell for most
recalcitrant witches and sorcerers. He also suggests that this place
is not cosmographically linked to the Sfipaapuni axis but rather to
the mountain. Armin W. Geertz, "A Reed Pierced the Sky: Hopi Indian
Cosmography on Third Mesa, Arizona," Numen 31 (1984): 237; Emory
Sekaquaptewa (personal communication) did not confirm this view.
13. For instance, R.H. Voth himself was a Mennonite missionary.
14. As Vine Deloria notes: "In general we could say that afterlife
was not of overwhelming concern to people of the tribal religions…
No highly articulated or developed theories of the afterlife were ever
necessary and certainly none projected a life radically different than
that experienced on Earth." Deloria, God Is Red: A Native View of
Religion (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1994), 179.
15. Klass Morton, Ordered Universes: Approaches to the Anthropology of
Religion (Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview Press, 1995), 99.
16. Kenneth Morrison, "Beyond the Supernatural: Language and Religion
Action," Religion 22 (1992): 201-205; Benson Saler, "Supernatural as a
Western Category," Ethos 1:5 (1977): 31-53.
17. Emory Sekaquaptewa, personal communication.
18. This thought is expressed in one of the most universal metaphors
used in the Hopi language "Um hap qaa'o aniwti," which means, "You
really have become corn." Mary Black, "Maidens and Mothers: An
Analysis of Hopi Corn Metaphors," Ethnology 23 (1984): 279-88;
280.
19. Hopi Dictionary Project & Bureau of Applied Research in
Anthropology, Hopi Dictionary/Hopiikwa Lavaytutuveni, A Hopi -
English Dictionary of the Third Mesa Dialect (Tucson: The University
of Arizona Press, 1998).
20. Emory Sekaquaptewa, personal communication, 1998.
21. Black, 280.
22. As Geertz points out, ceremonial songs are called pootavi, "road
prayer feather," meaning that, like this ritual, object songs provide
the people with a symbolic road to travel upon. Armin W. Geertz, "A
Typology of Hopi Indian Ritual," Temenos 22 (1986): 52.
23. Black, 280; Edward A. Kennard, "Metaphor and Magic: Key Concepts
in Hopi Culture," Studies In Linguistics in Honor of George L. Trager,
ed. M.E. Smith (The Hague: Mouton, 1972)468-473, 471; John D. Loftin,
Religion and Hopi Life in the Twentieth Century (Bloomington,
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991), 31.
24. Fewkes's observation indicates that in Hopi belief, the
hikwsi of the dead can manifest as katsinam and clouds, thus,
the deceased Hopis were regarded as rain bringers (Fewkes, 107-108).
He has noted: "…it is believed that the breath-body, freed from its
material double by death has a supernatural influence…" (Fewkes, 162).
25. Through the katsina ceremonies, the Hopi transcend themselves
symbolically into perfect beings, but at the same time they are aware
of their distance from the ideal. During these ceremonies, the Hopi
also perform clown (tsuku) ceremonies in which they portray negative
human characteristics. Thus, human beings embody both katsina (perfect)
and tsuku (imperfect) nature, and the latter can be overcome only by
death.
26. As Hallowell points out in regard to Ojibwa people: "Whereas we
should never expect a stone to manifest animate properties of any kind
under any circumstances, the Ojibwa recognize a priori, potentialities
for animation in certain classes of objects under certain circumstances." Irving A. Hallowell, "Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior and World," in Teachings from the American World, ed. Barbara and Dennis Tedlock (New York: Liveright, 1975), 148.
27. For a description of ritual objects considered to be alive, see
Geertz, 1986.
28. According to Wierzbicka, the English concept of mind is specific to
Anglo-Saxon culture and has no exact equivalents in other European
languages, let alone in other geographically and culturally more
distant languages of the world. Moreover, the older English word
mind appears to have meant something rather different from what it
means in present-day English. It was clearly linked with emotions
and values, whereas the modern English word mind focuses on the
intellect. Anna Wierzbicka, "Soul and Mind: Linguistic Evidence for
Ethnopsychology and Cultural History," American Anthropologist 91
1989): 48-49.
