Okolona Messenger

INDIANS CALLED MOQUIS.

How the Hopi People Came to Be Designated by Objectionable Name.

To those few in the outer world who ever heard of them at all they are mostly known as Moquis—this through the publicity gained by their annual Snake Dance, says the Craftsman. But Moqui or Moki' is a misnomer. Hopi is how they would have us know them—because it is right, and because it means something to them and is justly symbolic of their racial characteristics. Peaceful-gentle is its significance—and the worst word they know to apply to an offender is ka-hopi—the negative of Hopi—or pas-ka-hopi, the superlative of this; and anyone as bad as this is hopeless. Moki in their language means dead, and the accepted theory of its first application to them as a tribal name is that the Navajo, their long-time enemy in a spirit of derision so called them on account of their distaste for warfare, and love of a quiet-stay-at-home life. According to the Navajo code they were "dead ones." From the Navajo, whose country entirely surrounds the Hopi, the early traders and settlers acquired the word Moki before ever seeing the Hopi; and from the trader it easily passed without question to the government representatives, so it now stands as the official appellation in the Indian department. But ask a Hopi if he is a Moqui—his quick resentment will be convincing enough.