Their life was along the foot hills of well-watered and timbered mountains rising from plains, where with the flesh of game and seeds and roots of plants they could supply their semi-savage wants. Long perhaps they roved thus as hunters until they drifted to the land of promise--the semi-desert where agriculture of grain plants was born and there they received "mother corn." Henceforward all the former sources of food wrested from a niggard Nature became as nothing to this food of foods, but even to this day the Hopi have not forgotten their old-time intimate knowledge of the resources in fields not sown by human hands. With corn, which possesses a high food value and is easily raised, stored, and preserved, the Hopi and their Pueblo brethren spread without fear throughout the semi-arid lands.
It has been pointed out that a constant diet of corn produces disagreeable physiological effects, and this is suggested for the use of chile and other condiments, the mixture of corn food with meat and vegetable substances, and, in fact, for the multifarious ways of preparing and cooking corn. This necessity for variety also gives an explanation of the resourcefulness of the Hopi housewife and has acted as a spur to her invention of palatable dishes.
The vocabulary of corn in the Hopi language is extensive and contains words descriptive even of the parts of the plant that are lacking to most civilized people. The importance of corn is also reflected in the numerous words describing the kinds of meal, the dishes made from corn or in which corn enters, and of the various ways in which it is prepared by fire for the consumption of the ever-hungry Hopi. To give an incomplete census of corn foods, there are fifteen kinds of _piki_ or paper bread, three kinds of mush; five of short-cake; eleven of boiled corn; four kinds baked or roasted in the coals; two cooked by frying; four stewed and eight of cooked shelled corn, making fifty-two varieties.
After the paper bread, perhaps the most popular food is _pigame_, or sweet corn mush, wrapped in corn-husk and baked in an underground oven. Another standby is shelled corn soaked and boiled till each grain swells to several times the normal size. The Hopi like their food well-cooked and know the art of making each starch grain expand to the limit. A book of Hopi cookery would be bulky, but how interesting to the housewife who would know how to make plain food appetizing without milk or eggs, and who would learn new and strange combinations! There are cakes made from dried fruits, chopped meat, and straw, put on the roof to dry; dumplings formed around old hammerstones, corn dodgers, pats of corn-meal mush wrapped in corn husk and boiled or baked, and many other styles of food that would seem strange to other than a Hopi epicure.