The Oraibi Split
The split of the Third Mesa pueblo, Oraibi, occurred on September 7, 1906. The split immediately changed the lives of roughly 800 inhabitants of Oraibi who represented nearly half of the Hopi population. Those who left Oraibi were forced to start their lives over in a new location. From a long-term perspective, the split is consequential because it led to the establishment of other villages (e.g., Bacavi, Hotevilla, and Kykotsmovi) of Third Mesa that did not exist before the division (Waters 1977: 113). This eventually resulted in different versions of Hopi history and the Oraibi split from each village. Anthropologists have offered many different explanations of the Oraibi fissioning. These various proposals have caused the interpretation and understanding of the division of Oraibi to be very complex. This essay evaluates explanations of four different anthropologists: Mischa Titiev, Richard Bradfield, Richard Clemmer, and Peter Whiteley. Titiev provides the first explanation to consider. Taking all of Titiev's arguments together, he suggests that internal social structure pressures and instabilities led to the disintegration of the Oraibi pueblo (Titiev 1992: 48). Titiev's analys
Hopi territory is dominated by the geological contrast between the high mesas on which pueblos are built and the lower valleys divided by watercourses along which agricultural fields are planted. The third significant feature of Hopi social structure describes Hopi's political organization as "amorphous". He rejects all forms of single-cause determinism (e. is of Oraibi disintegration is based on his view of Hopi social structure and social integration. He suggests that the best agricultural lands available to the people of Oraibi were the fields on the flood plain below the village and that the original clan lands of Oraibi were the roughly 1,800 acres in the lower two-thirds of the valley (Waters 1977: 41). Bradfield presents his explanation in a series of steps. The Oraibi split enters Clemmer's analysis as historical background for the Traditionalist movement. For Titiev, "a Hopi pueblo is like an object with a thin outer shell which holds together a number of firm, distinct segments- should the shell be cracked, the segments would fall apart" (Titiev 1992: 69). Whiteley's analysis of the split is based on the contemporary ethnosociological explanation that his Hopi consultants proviode (Page 1994: 57). Bradfield suggests that the Oraibi split was the most significant result of the erosion of Oraibi Wash below the pueblo. As indicated by Whiteley, Oraibi leaders felt it was necessary to take drastic steps in ending the corruption by destroying the cause of it. Thus, according to Titiev's explanation, the causes of the Oraibi split were largely sociological and internal. The first set of controlling factors of ak-chin agriculture that Bradfield discusses are snowfall, frost, and summer rain. At the turn of the century, approximately 2,400 acres were available to support a population of roughly 880 people (Waters 1977: 43).
Common topics in this essay:
July August,
Taking Titiev's,
Whiteley Oraibi,
Oraibi Wash,
Hopi Traditionalist,
Oraibi Valley,
Third Mesa,
Oraibi Split,
Bradfield Clemmer,
Clemmer Whiteley's,
oraibi split,
titiev 1992,
disintegration pueblo,
waters 1977,
loftin 1991,
social structure,
controlling factors,
clemmer 1995,
traditionalist movement,
hopi social,
hopi social structure,
resulted disintegration pueblo,
whiteley oraibi leaders,
controlling factors hopi,
wong 1988 87,
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Acceptance Essays
