Great is a ripe sunflower, and great was the sun above my corn-fields. His fingers lifted up the corn-ears, his hands fashioned my melons, and set my beans full in the pods. Therefore my heart is happy, and I will lay many blue prayer sticks at the shrine of Ta-wa.  Over two thousand years ago the Hopi began interweaving their lives with the stories of the qatsina. I don't know if Tiponi has been telling them that long, but someone has. Repetition and return are central motifs in Hopi cosmology. The return of seasons, of harvests, of the qatsinas; the repetition of dances, rituals, and tasks - all are emphasized in the Hopi stories of creation, death, and the spaces in between. Unlike the ghost child that I have been visiting, I cannot stay in the desert. The harvest has come again and the pueblo hums in its activity. No one has time for my surveys and questions, myself included. The only one who has any time it seems is Tiponi. Hers must be another kind of time, like mountains. The smallest, smoothest hills are the most ancient rock formations; she's ancient, like the earth and its spirits. I like to believe she is. I changed my walks in the desert to spend more time in the fields. Hopi agriculture, devised according to centuries of commonsensical observations of the region's harsh, erratic weather, astounded me. It was ghostly in itself how stalks of corn and beans and watermelon vines emerged from the sand. The crops were an apparition themselves.  "Look!" I jumped at hearing the unexpected voice, but knew who it was. I turned somewhat reluctantly and there she stood, with a hint of triumph and a disconcerting grin. "Look at what?" I said, attempting to sound casual rather than haunted, as I felt. "Corn soot. I hate it!" I imagined the skeleton of the thin, outstretched hand that pointed to a spot in the stalks. Where was it lying? Underground? Dissolved back into sand? I stopped myself, and composed a response. "What 'corn soot'? I've never heard of such a thing." "You haven't heard of many things, have you?" Again, her smile destabilized me. She was not in the same mood as normal. Something in her was belligerent, but as customary, she promptly answered. "Corn soot is a fungus that grows in the kernels of the corn. White kernels swollen up with black powder pop through the husk. See?" I glanced through the sta  lks, and as she had described, several ears seemed to be contaminated by alien life. It looked like corn mushrooms, but long and sacklike. "We eat it," she said simply. Then silence; she was fishing for my ignorance. "You, who?" I accidentally snapped. "The Hopi," she growled. "We fry it. It's called huitlacoche. It's a delicacy. Before, everyone threw it out, but Corn Soot Woman qatsina told them better." I couldn't stand another growl, and kept quiet, inspecting the bulging growths on the infected ears of corn. Silence never stopped her. She continued. "It was harvest time, like now, and the women in the pueblo organized themselves to grind the corn. Every woman husked her ears and placed the ears with corn soot apart from the golden ears. At the end of the day all of the women went home, except three women who slept with the corn at night so that they could begin work before sunrise." "Sunrise passed and the girls and women of the pueblo came back in groups to continue grinding. Every woman said to the others, 'Don't put the corn soot ears in with the good corn' and each followed this advice. As they ground the corn, they sang."   "One of the women lifted her head, 'Listen,' she asked, 'do you hear someone crying?' As the room went silent, the door opened and Corn Soot Woman entered, sobbing terribly. 'No one likes me! No one wants me to be with the corn they're grinding! Everyone throws me out! Everyone thinks I am worthless because I am fat!'" "The head of the Corn Grinding Society stepped forward and asked the qatsina woman quietly, 'Why are you sobbing like that?'" "'It's because the women set me apart from the golden ears. I am not rotten!'" "'The head of the corn grinding society listened to Corn Soot Woman's tears, then looked at the other women and said, 'From now on we will never set Corn Soot Woman apart from the rest of the corn. She is fat. That is how she is; that is why she is as she is. She is the mother of all corn soot and now we will always keep her with the rest of the corn so that it will be fat too.'" "The women of the corn grinding society took Corn Soot Woman amidst them and they renamed her Ioashkanake, which means "to shuck." They also renamed the corn soot, calling it wesa.'" The clean, thick smell of the corn weighed on me in the heat. When I first heard the singing I thought it was the corn smell. It wasn't. Women from the pueblo were trailing down towards the field singing. Tiponi studied me for a moment, watching as I registered and arranged the information from my senses. Then she started moderately, the words of a corn grinding song, "Ioashka has a baby, that Is.....Wesa, Wesa. He Ioashka, Ioashka, He. Wesa, Wesa." By the time the women had spread out in the field I sang in rhythm with the disconcerting smile whose mischief began to dawn on me. Wesa, wesa. He, Ioashka...we dissolved into the voices and the other women in the corn field.  Author's Note: The original story "The Women's Corn Grinding Society" contains a fascinating dialogue between Corn Soot Woman and the Head Woman of the Society. I kept as close to the content and mode of expression of the original dialogue as possible in this story. The folk tale, however, contains none of the information pertaining to the corn soot fungus, or its appearance. I added this information because it seemed crucial for an audience who had no experience with anything of the kind (much like the narrator of the retelling!). The narrator of the original tale assumes the audience is familiar with desert farming and corn crops. This element gives the original story an almost mysterious quality. The Corn Soot Woman is an absolutely faceless character for a modern audience. The cryptic response of the Head of the Society also adds gravity and mystery to the original tale. Again, I attempted to recreate these statements in a style that mimicked the original. The original story did not contain the song that is included in this retelling, but beneath the tale Ruth Benedict transcribed a few variations of the lyrics. I combined elements of two of these variations for the song that appears at the end of the story. Bibliography: BENEDICT, Ruth. Tales of the Cochiti Indians, "The Women's Corn Grinding Society." Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 98. 1932. Accessed online at Sacred Texts, the 30 March 2009. Last updated: Unknown. COWEN, Rob. "Amaiz-ing Gastronomy: Corn Smut as Food." Society of Ethnobiology Conference 2004. Article accessed online through BNET the 30 March, 2009. Last updated: 2009. Image Information: Hopi Children, Names of the Moons. Corn Fields, Desert Garden Corn Songs. Multiple Tumors of Corn Smut. Ottawa Foodies. Hopi Woman Grinding Corn. Arizona, 1911. Four Women Grinding Corn. Edward Curtis. Hopi Women and Adobe, 1906. Edward Curtis. |