{"id":1753,"date":"2023-02-11T15:59:14","date_gmt":"2023-02-11T15:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/straightarrow.org\/stories\/?p=1753"},"modified":"2023-02-11T15:59:15","modified_gmt":"2023-02-11T15:59:15","slug":"a-katcina-race-contest-between-the-walpi-and-the-oraibi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/straightarrow.org\/stories\/indigenous-stories\/hopi\/a-katcina-race-contest-between-the-walpi-and-the-oraibi\/","title":{"rendered":"A Katcina Race Contest Between The Walpi And The Oraibi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hal\u00edksai! In W\u00e1lpi the people were living, but at the place where the old village stood before the people had moved on the mesa. And in Ora\u00edbi the people were also living. The W\u00e1lpi always had races west of the village in the valley for practice. When they had become strong, they said: Let us go<\/em> to Ora\u00edbi and race there, because they are not strong and nimble.” One time they had a Katcina race in W\u00e1lpi again, as they used to have frequently. One of the Ora\u00edbi youths who had a friend in W\u00e1lpi went to visit his friend on that day, though he had not heard about there being a race there. As the Katcinas were coming towards evening his friend said to the Ora\u00edbi youth, that he should stay all night and see the Katcinas, and then go home in the morning. So the Ora\u00edbi youth remained for the Katcina race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They did not come until towards evening. When they had arrived on the plaza the K\u00f3yemsis challenged the young men of the village to come and race with the Katcinas. The Ora\u00edbi youth enjoyed seeing the race, but he was somewhat timid and afraid to participate in the race. When the race was over the young men of the village had long races yet down in the valley, but they said to one another, that no one should tell the Ora\u00edbi youth that they intended to go there and race with the Ora\u00edbi. In the evening, however, the friend of this young man told him that the W\u00e1lpi had been practicing and that they intended to come to Ora\u00edbi and race with the Ora\u00edbi youths. He added that they should also practice in Ora\u00edbi for this coming contest, and said that these W\u00e1lpi were braggarts and not so strong as they said they were. When he had told him this they retired for the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early the next morning, before he had eaten a morning meal, the Ora\u00edbi youth returned to his village, running very fast. When he arrived there he told the crier to make an announcement. The latter announced that the youths of the village should assemble on the plaza, as a certain youth had something to communicate to them. Hereupon the young men assembled on the plaza and asked the young man what he had to tell them. He said that he had been in W\u00e1lpi, that they had Katcina races there and practiced running, and that they were going to come over here to race with them, so they should now go and practice running and thus become strong. “Let us race here north of the village,” he added. “They were going to come here without informing us, but my friend there told me about it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So they assembled at Hoh\u00f3yahki, north of the village, and there had two races. “Let us stop now,” they said to each other; “if we race too long one gets tired and does not recover from his fatigue.” Thus they practiced for four days. On the fifth day the W\u00e1lpi came. They did not know, however, that the Ora\u00edbi had heard about their coming. When the W\u00e1lpi arrived at the spring K’eq\u00f6’chmovi, east of Ora\u00edbi, where there were then no houses, they dressed up at that spring so that the Ora\u00edbi should not find out so soon, but the Ora\u00edbi had noticed them. When they had dressed up they ran towards the village, following a trail straight up towards the Katc\u00ednkihu Kuw\u00e1waima. Here they gathered and Stopped for a little while and then ran towards the village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The people of the village, though they had known of their coming, acted as if they had not seen them. Two of the Katcinas were K\u00f3yemsis who carried gifts in the form of com\u00edviki, roasted sweet corn ears, etc. When they had arrived at the plaza one of the older Ora\u00edbi went to them and asked: “Have you come? Have you arrived?” “Yes,” the K\u00f3yemsis replied. “On what account did you come?” they were asked. “Yes,” the K\u00f3yemsis said, “we have come to contend with your young men in a race.” Hereupon the old man asked the Ora\u00edbi youths to descend from the houses and race with these Katcinas. Immediately a large number of the young men came down, laid off their clothes, and raced with the Katcinas. As so many entered the race the Katcinas were soon tired. They did not capture one Ora\u00edbi racer, did not even get near enough to strike him with their yucca leaf whips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When they were through racing they had not caught a single Ora\u00edbi youth, and the Ora\u00edbi had won from them all the presents. The Katcinas were very tired. The man who had received them on the plaza gave them at least some prayer-meal, whereupon they returned to the Katcina house south of the village, where they laid off their costumes. They then again met the Ora\u00edbi men to race with them west of the village. “You have beaten us,” they said to the Ora\u00edbi, “if we do not win in this race then we shall indeed be very much dejected.” They then descended from the village on the west side, ran towards M\u00fbm\u00fb’shvavi, from there south-westward, then south around the mesa point, and ascended the mesa from the east side, thus describing a very large circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The W\u00e1lpi again could not overtake the Ora\u00edbi and when they got to K’eq\u00f6’chmovi, the W\u00e1lpi were very tired and gave up the race. The two K\u00f3yemsis who were a little older than the others and were not quite so tired went up to the Katcina house and got the costumes of the W\u00e1lpi, whereupon the W\u00e1lpi all returned, very much in despair. They went very slowly and were very quiet. “The Ora\u00edbi,” they said among themselves, “are very strong.” It was early in the morning when one after the other arrived at W\u00e1lpi, some of them being so tired that they had fallen far behind. They agreed that they should not go and race with the Ora\u00edbi again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Go Back To:\u00a0Hopi Nation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hal\u00edksai! In W\u00e1lpi the people were living, but at the place where the old village stood before the people had moved on the mesa. And in Ora\u00edbi the people were also living. The W\u00e1lpi always had races west of the village in the valley for practice. When they had become strong, they said: Let us go to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[375,376],"tags":[234],"class_list":["post-1753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hopi","category-hopi-stories","tag-hopi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/straightarrow.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/straightarrow.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/straightarrow.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/straightarrow.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/straightarrow.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/straightarrow.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1754,"href":"https:\/\/straightarrow.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753\/revisions\/1754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/straightarrow.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/straightarrow.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/straightarrow.org\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}