The finely ground meal is piled and patted into conical heaps on the flat basket trays, making quite an exhibition of which the Hopi women are very proud, much meal indicating diligence as well as a bountiful supply of the staff of life. Grinding is back-breaking work, and one humanely wishes that the Hopi women, and especially the immature girls, could be relieved of this too heavy task.
While corn-meal enters into all Hopi cooking as the chief ingredient, most of it is made into "paper bread," called _piki_, resembling more than anything else the material of a hornet's nest. This bread is made from batter, colored gray with wood ashes, dexterously spread very thinly with the hand over a heated slab of stone. _Piki_ bakes quickly, coming free from the slab and is directly folded up into convenient compass and so crisp is it that it crackles like paper. Sometimes it is tinted with attractive colors for festal occasions, such as the Kachina ceremonies.
Before a dance the women busily prepare food and the girls go about speechless, with mouths full of meal, "chewing yeast" for the corn pudding. This and other ins and outs of the kitchen make the knowing traveler rather shy of the otherwise attractive-looking Hopi food.
Surely corn is the "mother" of the Hopi. All the powers of nature are invoked to grant a good crop by giving rain and fertility, and the desire for corn is the central motive of the numerous ceremonies of the villagers of Tusayan. If the prayers of the Hopi could be formulated like the "_Om mane padme hum_" of the Hindus, it would be in the smaller compass of these words, "Grant us corn!" Nor are these simple villagers ungrateful for such blessings. Kopeli used to stand looking over his thriving cornfield and say with fervor, "_Kwa kwi, Kwa kwi_," "thanks, thanks," and it was evident that the utterance was made with true thankfulness and a spirit of devotion.
It is difficult to imagine the ancient people without corn; but very long ago, as the legends tell, they did not know this cereal. Certain it is they were not then pueblo dwellers and had not spread far in the Southwest. They lived in the places where there was game, and for the same reason that the important food animals lived in such places,--the presence of vegetation that would sustain life.