T THE PRESENT-DAY SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE HOPI IS THE
OUTGROWTH OF THEIR UNWRITTEN LITERATURE

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GENERAL STATEMENT

By a brief survey of present day Hopi culture and an examination into
the myths and traditions constituting the unwritten literature of this
people, this bulletin proposes to show that an intimate connection
exists between their ritual acts, their moral standards, their social
organization, even their practical activities of today, and their myths
and tales--the still unwritten legendary lore.

The myths and legends of primitive peoples have always interested the
painter, the poet, the thinker; and we are coming to realize more and
more that they constitute a treasure-trove for the archaeologist, and
especially the anthropologist, for these sources tell us of the
struggles, the triumphs, the wanderings of a people, of their
aspirations, their ideals and beliefs; in short, they give us a twilight
history of the race.

As the geologist traces in the rocks the clear record of the early
beginnings of life on our planet, those first steps that have led
through the succession of ever-developing forms of animal and plant life
at last culminating in man and the world as we now see them, so does the
anthropologist discover in the myths and legends of a people the dim
traces of their origin and development till these come out in the
stronger light of historical time. And it is at this point that the
ethnologist, trying to understand a race as he finds them today, must
look earnestly back into the "realm of beginnings," through this window
of so-called legendary lore, in order to account for much that he finds
in the culture of the present day.

=The Challenge: Need of Research on Basic Beliefs Underlying Ceremonies=

Wissler says:[2] "It is still an open question in primitive social
psychology whether we are justified in assuming that beliefs of a basic
character do motivate ceremonies. It seems to us that such must be the
case, because we recognize a close similarity in numerous practices and
because we are accustomed to believe in the unity of the world and life.
So it may still be our safest procedure to secure better records of
tribal traditional beliefs and to deal with objective procedures as far
as possible. No one has ventured to correlate specific beliefs and
ceremonial procedures, but it is through this approach that the
motivating power of beliefs will