Signed Hopi Pueblo Native American Vase. Geometric and swirling shapes and patterns in dark shades all throughout. Signed "D.M. Adams" and "Hopi, Tewa" on underside. Dated '45 on underside. 

Size: 4 x 4 x 3 5/8 in. 

#4089 . 

The Hopi are Native Americans who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The 2010 U.S. census states that about 19,338 US citizens self-identify as being Hopi. Hopi organize themselves into matrilineal clans that extend across all villages, and children can be given over 40 names total, with a group consensus made to determine a common name. Agriculture is crucial to their way of life and economy, and they see themselves as custodians of the land. Many Hopi homes share traits of neighbor Pueblos, with communal structures, especially Pueblo Great Houses, include living rooms, storage rooms, and religious sanctuaries, called kivas. The Hopi encountered Spaniards in the 16th Century, at which time they were historically referred to as Pueblo people along with two dozen other tribes of Southwest North America. The Hopi are descended from the Ancestral Pueblo people who constructed large apartment-house complexes and had an advanced culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States. In the 17th Century they moved to the mesa tops for protection from the Utes, Apaches, and Spanish. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was the first time that diverse Pueblo groups had worked in unison to drive out the Spanish colonists. In the Burning of Awatovi, Spanish soldiers, local Catholic Church missionaries, friars, and priests were all put to death, and the churches and mission buildings were dismantled stone by stone. It took two decades for the Spanish to reassert their control over the Rio Grande Pueblos but the Catholic Inquisition never were able to subjugate the Hopi. Further encounters with United States soldiers, the encroaching Navajo, and Mormon settlers failed to exterminate their tribe either, and they gained a reputation for hardiness and respect both in and outside the Native American community. In 1882 President Chester A. Arthur passed an executive order creating an Indian reservation for the Hopi. It was smaller than the surrounding land that was annexed by the Navajo Reservation, the largest in the country, and as of today it is entirely surrounded by the Navajos. This is the result of land disputes from 1940 to 1970 when the two nations used to share the government designated Navajo-Hopi Joint Use Area before the Hopi ceded control entirely to the Navajo. On October 24, 1936 the Hopi Tribe ratified its constitution, creating a unicameral government where all powers are vested in a Tribal Council. The powers of the executive branch (chairman and vice chairman) and judicial branch are limited, modeled after the United States Constitution, while still preserving the traditional powers and authority of the individual Hopi Villages. This includes Old Oraibi, founded before 1100 AD and one of the oldest continuously inhabited villages within the territory of the United States. After fighting successfully to retain their ways and language and campaigning against government and religious interference in their schooling, they became world-renowned for the arts and crafts, particularly their pottery, as well as for mining and selling their natural resources, which has kept the tribe in better financial positions than many of the other surviving Native reservations. In the 21st Century, tourism is their primary industry, and collectors seek out their dolls, ceramics, rugs, and other cultural artifacts that celebrate the resilient Hopi way of life.