I run. And I weep. My tears may come from the fact that its
6 a.m., or perhaps from the burning in legs and lungs as I try to
hold the pace of the leaders. But Im pretty sure my sobs come
from a deep joy inspired by the way the rising sun lights up the ancient
buildings of Old Oraibi on a mesa distant, and the way it does so
at the very moment that gravel road gives way to a narrow rain-dampened
trail. This trail, I imagine, has been trod for centuries by runners
vying against one another, or heading off to distant farms to tend
to the corn. My 97 fellow runners and I, it seems, have transcended
time.
Its early September, and this is the 40th annual Louis
Tewanima 10 kilometer footrace, which takes place in and around
the Hopi village of Shungopavi in northern Arizona. The race is
named after a Hopi who was yanked as a young man from his home in
Shungopavi in 1907 and shipped off to boarding school in Carlisle,
Penn. There, the cross-country coach noticed the youngsters
talent, and Tewanima began running competitively. He finished 9th
in the 1908 Olympic Marathon, and won the silver medal in the 1912
Olympic 10,000 meter run, setting an American record that held until
Billy Mills, a Sioux, broke it in 1964.
Todays
race, organized by Tewanimas kin, celebrates the Olympians
legacy with a 10k, 5k, two-mile and one-mile run, and is a continuation
of a tradition of running that dates back hundreds of years. It
draws a total of some 300 runners from Indian Country and beyond,
giving participants a glimpse of a Hopi that they might not otherwise
see.
The Hopi culture is as deeply embedded as any in the canyons
and mesas of the Southwest. Their ancestors are the Ancestral Puebloans,
neé Anasazi, who once inhabited much of the Four Corners
Region, and built the pueblos of Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde and Hovenweep.
Over time the Puebloans packed up and moved, as people sometimes
do, migrating to other parts of the region, and various branches
of their descendants now live in the pueblos along the Rio Grande,
Zuni and in the 12 Hopi villages on and around three mesas that
extend into the high desert like fingers from Black Mesa in northern
Arizona. Here the Hopi endured and then, in a well-coordinated Pueblo
uprising in 1680, cast off Spanish colonists. And theyve continued
to successfully keep much of their culture and traditions intact,
despite intrusions from the outside.
One of those traditions is the art of arid farming. There is
no rich, loamy Iowa soil here, or huge sprinkler systems or, for
that matter, a ditch. One can find corn growing, seemingly impossibly,
in little sandy plots among brush and desert grass. Another tradition
that endures is running, which was connected to farming, among other
things, writes Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert in his paper, Marathoner
Louis Tewanima and the Continuity of Hopi Running:
According to Hopi belief, men ran footraces to unify the villages,
gain information from other clans, and prepare them for lifes
challenges. Up until the early 1900s, government officials, Christian
missionaries, and ethnographers hired Hopi runners to carry messages
to various parts of present-day northern Arizona. The Hopi considered
running a trustworthy method of transportation, and the people
ran as an expression of their identity. ... At the village of
Orayvi, Albert Yava recalled that young men often ran to their
fields fifty miles away at Moencopi, then ran back to the village
later that same day. Covering distances that exceeded American
marathons, these Hopi farmers depended on their ability to run
to care for their agriculture. Most importantly, they ran to bring
rain and moisture to their dry and arid fields.
These days, Hopi farmers probably drive, not run, to their distant
fields. But they still run for both ceremonial and competitive purposes.
The Hopi
High School cross-country team has won every state championship
in its division since 1989, and the Tuba
City team, with both Navajo and Hopi runners, vies with Chinle
for dominance of its division. Several runs
are hosted by Hopi villages
in late summer, including the Tewanima footrace.
The Hopi are very welcoming people, says Sampson
Taylor, Tewanimas great-nephew and president of the committee
that organizes the run. Indeed, the racers, be they Hopi, Navajo,
Zuni or WASP, are all warmly received in a way that puts most such
events to shame. The number pickup the night before the race is
as much social event as anything, where a group of local women pile
plates high with pasta, green chiles and more. Nearby, a group of
volunteers works to drain the baseball field/starting line of a
huge puddle brought by that days deluge. The Hopi
Cultural Center hotel, the only lodging establishment nearby,
is teeming with runners from all over, and is chock full for the
night.
Though its still officially summer, a chill, and a light
fog, hang over the mesa as runners congregate at the starting line.
A good-sized crowd of spectators is not deterred, though, and gathers
around to lend encouragement and cheers. Runners gather haphazardly
on the line and in the still-sunless dawn, Nikki Qumyintewa, this
years Miss Hopi, gives the starting order via megaphone.
A
lead pack, moving at a blistering pace, soon establishes itself.
In it are a group of aerobic torpedoes like the pony-tailed, teen-aged
Masayesva
twins, built as lithely as Tewanima himself who, at 54
is reputed to have weighed in at 115 pounds. Alvin Begay, last years
champ, is there, along with Janet
Bawcom and her gazelle-like legs, 12th in last years Olympic
10k and this years U.S. national 10k champion.
Bawcom mixing it up with the men doesnt seem to enflame
any machismo resistance. In fact, theres a famous story, recounted
by Harold Courlander in The
Fourth World of the Hopis, about a running race between the
old villages of Payupki and Tikuvi. The fastest runner from Payupki
is a young woman who can run circles around her brother and, to
his astonishment, still grind corn afterwards. Her Tikuvi rival,
a boy, is transformed into a dove at one point during the race,
and takes the lead. But the Payupki runner has Spider Grandmother
on her side (sitting in her ear whispering instructions). The woman
wins.
To
my middle-aged legs, it seems as if Bawcom, Begay and the others
are also relying on magic as they float gracefully through the village.
After about a half mile, I abandon my futile quest to keep them
in sight and enter into a more age-appropriate rhythm, and for a
while, I have the trail to myself. About two miles into the run,
however, Im caught and then passed. In his fifties, with a
thin black braid laced with silver, my new nemesis runs lightly
on thin calves and ankles. His posture is almost rigid, his head
and shoulders not bobbing at all. To the volunteers along the way,
offering water and a soft-spoken askwali or kwahkway,
I imagine I must look like a flailing, slow beast behind this guy.
But thats okay, because this isnt just some weekend
runner, its Hoffman Shorty, who crushed the competition in
this race back in the late 1970s and early 1980s and was immortalized
in Ed Abbeys story, Footrace in the Desert, about
the 1980 Tewanima run. Abbey actually started the race that year,
less than a decade before he died. But he dropped out after the
first mile to concentrate on his journalistic duties,
and wrote about Shorty, a Navajo, taking an early lead and then
pouncing the mostly Hopi field by a quarter of a mile or more. This
year, I dig deep to keep Shorty in sight, figuring my relative youth
might enable me to pass him on the final climb. I am wrong.
Begay
wins the years race in just 40 minutes and 13 seconds, a dozen
seconds faster than the record he set the year before. Anthony Masayesva
is just thirteen seconds behind, nipping his brother Brian at the
line. Trent Taylor another relative of Tewanima is
in fourth, with Bawcom rounding out the top five. By the time I
finish, far behind Begay and company and a good half-minute behind
Shorty, most of the village has gathered at the finish line to cheer
the runners on and sell them breakfast: A burrito with eggs, sausage,
potatoes and, in some cases, Spam; or a yogurt and fresh fruit parfait.
As we watch the one- and two-mile racers many of them
young children, some running in skirts a local spectator
and I start talking. The last mile of the race includes a brutally
steep climb up to the mesa top, much of it on steps carved from
sandstone. On my climb I also noticed a parallel trail of hand and
footholds so-called moqui steps next to the main path.
I ask the man if he knows about the trail, how old it is, and what
its used for. The local smiles and tells me a long, wandering
story about running out into the desert and hunting rabbits with
throwing sticks and the farms at Moencopi. He bemoans the changes
that have occurred the old stone houses replaced by trailers,
the power lines transecting the blue sky. He tactfully avoids my
questions about the steps.
I read somewhere that the Hopi consider trails to be the veins
and arteries of every village, and that running on them keeps the
village vital. If its true, Im happy to have done my
part.
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