Hopi Indian Witchcraft and Healing: On Good, Evil, and Gossip

One of the abiding problems in the study of American Indians is that it is plagued by stereotyping and romanticism. In the history of ideas in Europe and the United States, negative as well as positive stereotyping has been called "primitivism." Much of my own work has been an attempt to get beyond primitivism in order to get to know real human beings, whether in the field or in the history books (Geertz 2004a). I have called for a "deconstruction of the Exotic" in the sense, as anthropologist Clifford Geertz once argued, that we study the mundane worlds of various peoples in order to understand our own. I suggest that in that process we come to understand human beings and their worlds. Thus, the deconstruction process is followed by a reconstruction process. I have elsewhere called that process a "reconstruction of the Exotic," but I think a better phrase is a "reconstruction of the Human." By this I mean generalized insights gained on the basis of "accurate ethnography, authentic familiarization with the worldviews and scriptures of the world's religions, and no-nonsense knowledge of how believers actually behave" (Geertz 1994, 19).

Perhaps nowhere is there more of a need of this sobering process than in the study of Hopi Indian religion and culture. For reasons sometimes clear but often opaque, the Hopis have been singled out by Europeans and Americans as a most special people indeed. Despite concerted efforts against this attitude by both scholars and Hopis, the stereotyping continues unabated. Today it is the New Age with its New Shamans and Plastic Medicine Men, but I fear that it will only be replaced by something else tomorrow. As I reluctantly concluded in a paper on moving beyond primitivism:

Despite the urgent necessity to move beyond primitivism, I do not think that this is something we are capable of accomplishing. It would require more than Western and non-Western scholars are prepared to offer, and it would involve struggling against massive tides of general cultural values and historical contingencies around the globe. . . . Moving beyond primitivism today, however, would primarily mean moving beyond primitivism in the positive sense, in other words, in the sense that promotes the romantic idea of indigenous cultures, which I have argued here keeps real indigenous peoples out of the picture just as effectively as the scientific racism of the nineteenth century! . . . I suggest that a way to move beyond primitivism is not along the path of intuitive empathy, creative hermeneutics, the misunderstood interplay of mutually absolute discourses, or misanthropic ecological ideologies, but rather through a radical revitalization of the Enlightenment project.

(Geertz 2004a, 61-62)

Following along the lines of a recent contribution on deconstructing primitivism in the study of Hopi Indian religion (Geertz 2008b), the present essay will explore evil in Hopi thought. The Hopis are, of course, no more evil than other people, but they have often been portrayed as being exceedingly harmonious and good by people who don't know any better. It is therefore instructive to see how Hopis deal with the problem of evil, and, hopefully, along the way we will gain insight into real human beings.

Basic Principles

Hopi Indian religious thought is based on a vision of suyanisqatsi, a "harmonious and tranquil life." The crucial element in this vision is the concept of the heart, unangwa. The ideal person embodies all of the qualities of what it means to be Hopi, in other words, a well-behaved person who is humble, good-humored, diligent, and so on. Such a person is called pam loma'unangway'ta, "he/she has a good heart." This good and pure-hearted person is also essential to the proper performance of ritual activities. Ultimately, the ritual activities of good-hearted people maintain the causal cycle that brings rain, which nourishes the crops and feeds the people so that they can live and grow and become well-integrated members of the clan and society.

Ritual persons have been initiated into clan and secret society knowledge and are thus able to "work for life" (pam...