The Hopi Indians are a group of native Americans living on a reservation in northern Arizona. The word “Hopi” means “Peaceful”. This extraordinary group of ‘Indians’ (native Americans) have resisted all pressures to conform to the White mans way. Their traditions and legends are very colorful and detailed, especially the story of their emergence upon the surface of the earth… Long ago, they say, their ancestors lived in an underground world. After millennia’s of such living conditions and after migrating through four different underground countries, they decided to come to the surface of the earth to live. The following is an account from pages 205 and 214 of Harold Courlander‘s book “THE FOURTH WORLD OF THE HOPI’S”:
“More Hopi’s then not accept the version in this collection, and most agree that the location of the Sipapuni (place of emergence) has long been forgotten.
However, some of the Third Mesa clans place the Sipapuni in the Grand Canyon near the confluence of the Colorado and little Colorado rivers, and they stop at this sight ceremonially in the course of salt-collecting expeditions…”
The legend primarily belongs to the Third Mesa villages – Oraibi, Hotevilla and Bakavi (Bacobt) – and to Moencopi, an offspring of Oraibi…”
As Titiev paraphrases the description given by Don Talayesva: “It was not long now before the expedition found itself approaching the Kiva, the original Sipapu through which mankind emerged from the underworld. Its outlines are indicated by soft, damp earth and an outer circle of bushes called pilakko…. Pushing their way through the fringe of vegetation, the party stepped into the inner ring within which the kiva is located. The Sipapu is full to the brim with yellowish water, of about the same coloring of the surrounding earth, which serves as a ‘lid’ so that ordinary humans may not see the wonderful things going on beneath the surface.'”
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