Earth Fire: A Hopi Legend of the Sunset Crater Eruption by Ekkehart Malotki and Michael Lomatuway’ma

Abstract

Reviews 281 The result, if predictable in its Christian, anglophile and literary signals (one wallows, for instance, in typical epigraphs from Kipling, Service, and Roberts), is an informative and buoyant record. Closely observing the terrain, local flora and fauna, the various northern outposts, and the behaviour of both Indians and Inuits (especially the women), Cameron provides an enduring record, both in words and photographs, of a vanishing frontier. That her pres­ entation is often plagued by unresolved contradiction—between, for instance, the appeals of nature and those of progress or the strengths of paganism and the promises of Christianity—in no sense undermines her account. Her values make the record what it is, the testimony of a venturesome, confident Canadian woman fully attuned to the legacy and mythology of the British Empire and “the arm of British justice.” She may ride roughshod over contradiction, but she does so with the certainty of one who inherits and incarnates the best of establishment values. MICHAEL PETERMAN Trent University Earth Fire: A Hopi Legend of the Sunset Crater Eruption. By Ekkehart Malotki with Michael Lomatuway’ma. (Flagstaff, Arizona: Northland Press, 1987. 193 pages, $11.95.) Earth Fire is an attractive conjunction of the tangible historic and scien­ tific phenomena of Sunset Crater with the intangible mystique of the Hopi legend explaining the crater’s origin. The author states that the legend pre­ sented in this book constitutes the first folklore account of the prehistoric erup­ tion that formed the crater. This account features many of the motifs typical of Hopi oral traditions: gods and mortals, marriage and magic, evil forces and good, betrayal and revenge, the mystic and the real. According to the legend, a Hopi maiden rides on the rainbow with her betrothed (actually a kachina) to his mysterious home, where she is forced to grind ice even when her weeping eyes are sealed shut by frozen tears. Severely tested, she is saved more than once by the magic of Old Spider Woman, who sits on the girl’s ear. Back in her homeland, the bride is violated by envious sor­ cerers, and to frighten these wicked men, the bridegroom starts a fire. When his fire burns downward and joins the fire of the god Maasaw, the burning hill erupts, spewing tons of molten embers in every direction. And thus the crater was formed. Two informative sections follow the legend: an archaeologist’s discussion of the ancient people of Sunset Crater and a section by two geologists entitled “Erosion, Mesas, Volcanoes. . . These discussions link the legend with history and science and give the book an interdisciplinary flavor. A significant section entitled “The Hopi Alphabet” records functional Hopi sounds from dialect habits of speakers from Third Mesa communities. In its preservation of Hopi language, this section complements the author’s 282 Western American Literature bilingual (English and Hopi) account of the legend and the last division of the book, in which the author explains the cultural significance of terms such as Spider Woman, the prayer stick, and the number four. These varied sections of the book, followed by a useful bibliography, constitute a unified volume designed to be both studied and enjoyed. Its aesthe­ tic appeal is enhanced by attractive photographs—many of them full-page color prints, which amplify the moods and patterns of Hopi culture that form the book’sessential core. This localized study is a significant addition to more exten­ sive studies of Hopi ritual such as Frank Waters’s famous Book of the Hopi. MARY McBRIDE Texas Tech University Thunder in the Dust: Classic Images of Western Movies. Photographs by John R. Hamilton; Text by John Calvin Batchelor. (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1987. 160 pages, $29.95.) Films dealing with romantic facets of the American West have certainly produced some classic images: Gary Cooper in High Noon, John Wayne in Stagecoach, and a host of others. Many of these images are recalled in a collec­ tion of color photographs by John R. Hamilton, whose work has appeared in such publications as Life, Look, and Time. Hamilton’s artistic talent is obvious, for this is anything but the high school annual sort of collection. This rich array of one hundred...