Transcript My life as a Hopi Indian

About Me
My name is Catori, which means spirit.
I am a Hopi Indian and I am apart of
the Hopi tribe.
I live with my family in the Southwest
Region.
This is my story…
Today, I'm waking up to go pick crops. I hate that
I live on a mesa and have to climb down.
Whenever I have to pick crops, I don’t feel like
walking. The house I have to climb out of is called
a pueblo. It sort of looks like a modern apartment,
that you probably live in. I wish I lived in
those.Anyway,the hill that my house sits on is
called a mesa. When my mother, Pocahontas
and I leave to go pick crops, she is always the one
up first. Can't you see why I don’t I don’t want to
wake up? It is fun having a house made up of clay
where you can just pull it off the wall and play with
it, but sometimes it is sort of boring.
When my mother and I go to honor the
gods once a week, we go in our most
traditional clothing. I don't like it much
because it is so itchy and I wear it for three
hours. We go once a week with my cousin,
Yahoo, who is 11,and she is the daughter of
Powhatan,the chief. My traditional clothing is
a dress with flowers and a feather band I put
on my head. Some of my mother’s traditional
clothes are made out of plant fiber and
animal hair and hides. Her clothes are
beautiful. She wears her hair out because it’s
so long and dark brown. I wish my hair was
like that. My hair is short and light brown and
gets itchy a lot.
I am so hungry I could eat a boar. I like to eat
and the food we Hopi Indians eat is delicious.
When my mother and I pick crops in the
morning, we pick corn,melons,and beans. We
also have a farm where we raise sheep and
hunt rabbits and bison who try to eat our crops.
My father used to do all the hunting but he died
a couple of months ago in a hunting accident.
Now my mom has to scare them away with her
gun. Farming in the summer is hard because we
have little rainfall, so we use dry farming, and
studied how the water flowed after a rainstorm.
If we do get water, we get some from the river,
or the water we have to clean from the cacti.
When we get cacti water, it is brownish.
Our tribe is very unique. We do things that
other tribes don’t do. When my dad was still
alive, he and the other men from the tribe
would hunt and my dad would help my mom
and I harvest crops. My dad was a skilled
hunter and was the leader of a secret
society, and they met in these underground
rooms called kivas.Only the most important
tribal men were there. There were only a
couple of societies. Now the women, they
did something a little different. When your
parents got married did your dad make your
mom’s dress,robe,belt,and her shoes? Well
that’s what my dad and Powhatan did when
my parents got married. I was only 2,and I am
11 now, so I don’t remember much, but I
hear stories that my mom looked beautiful.
When my dad was still alive, my parents
would get all mushy when they told the story.
Oh my goodness, It is sooooo hot here in Arizona.
There are so many deserts, I can’t even go to the
beach.See,you’re lucky. You have water, and
water animals, and surfers. Do you know what I
have? Coyotes and cacti!!!There is no sight of
water miles from here. Tons of trees, though.
WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH
TREES???!!!!!THEY DO NOTHING!!!!!!!!NO
THING!!!!!!!!Sorry I got mad. It just angers me how
we have little to any water. Water is fun. You can
do tons of thing with it. Plateaus are useless as
much as trees. What do you do, roll down them?
I mean that's an idea but its boring. Sometimes I
watch the common animals like the sheep and
the tortoises. When I want to go into nature, I go
into the open land in the back of our pueblo
and try to find lizards and snakes, but they're
easy to find. Don't you just love nature? There are
flowers like white ball acacias,fernbushes,and
catlaw acacias.
YYYAAAWWWNNN!!!It’s so hot here it will
make you tired, like me. It is bone dry with the
only water that comes is from the cacti and
the little rainfall we get. The days are so long
but then the weather wants to be mid
temperature at night! I mean I go to bed early
and do not have time to go outside. Because
my mom is so old fashioned, she won’t let us
get a fan like the other families in the tribe. We
have a stupid hole in our rooms that lets in the
air, but it’s hot air. When I go outside with
Yahoo we take our knives and drink water
from the cacti.Hey,it’s water. When there is no
water found, we have to drink the blood we
get from the animals we hunted, or we
squeeze our fruits and make fruit juices. It is
sometimes hard to do because when we are
gone, animals like to eat our crops, especially
our fruit.
Well, this is my story. I hope you liked it. In my future I see Yahoo and I
becoming pretty popular girls in the tribe. We are going to share our
smart ways to find water and food resources. Once we share, we’ll be
appreciated in the tribe. My mother always says that I need to be
myself to make real friends, and not become somebody else to fit in. It
was great advice to use, and I think it will work.
In the next couple of years or so, and my mom and I will still try to
keep the animals away, as much as we can. Since my dad died, the
men haven’t been doing much hunting. Yahoo told me that
Powhatan will take over hunting, even though he knows that he is not
as good as my dad was. My mom and I aren’t the only ones missing
my dad.
I think that the project went well but I think I could’ve gotten
more information about characteristics of my tribe and got just
gender roles. I think that I could’ve gotten more research on
the government, if there is one, and added it in. What I
enjoyed was that I could be a character and talk as a person.
First-person reports are more interesting and can be more
interesting than regular reports. What I didn’t enjoy was that I
was sometimes behind on what I was supposed to be on and
had to do more work than other people. Because of that, I
had to work twice as hard as other people to be finished. I
would give myself a 95 out of 100 because even though I had
a good presentation, I could’ve had more information in some
areas. It is something that I will focus on in the future.
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