The Orayvi Split

Book excerpt: The split of Orayvi, the largest Hopi town, in 1906, continues to resonate as a profound event in Puebloan cultural history, exemplary for anthropological explanations of fission in small-scale, kin-based human societies. Multiple hypotheses have been offered (sociological, materialist, ideological, and agential), each pointing to alternative, often mutually exclusive, causes. But effective analysis of the split crucially depends upon accurate data and apposite conceptual tools. The received picture of Orayvi, both empirically and analytically, is seriously flawed, notably owing to neglect of the archival record. With particular attention to demography, social forms, and material conditions, this monograph seeks to redress those flaws, both structurally and historically. A new assessment of social structure focuses on the interplay of matrilineal kinship with Orayvi's 'houses' and ritual sodalities. An examination of material conditions, especially in Oraibi Wash farmlands, draws on unconsidered survey and allotment records. The exact population of Orayvi in 1906 is reconstructed from an array of census sources (presented in detail), and correlated by houses, kinship groups, and ritual sodalities. An extended appendix (Part II) presents a series of unpublished documents. The work's principal aim is to produce a comprehensive picture of the Orayvi split's sociology, economy, demography, and history. As a 'total social fact, ' the Orayvi split resists reductive explanation to just one set of factors, and requires detailed attention to contexts both structural and historical, material and cognitive.