Back

[So, there are references to Atlantis in this piece. When I asked a Hopi friend about this, he told me that "Atlantis" is being used as a stand-in for previous eras where people became two-hearted and selfish -- and were destroyed because they failed to respect Mother Earth...]

Hopi History

The word "Hopi" means "peaceful people". They did not resist strongly against the Pahana (Whites) in the "Indian Wars," and many of the Hopi have been jailed for draft resistance. They number less than 10,000 and live in the Four Corners area, which is where the borders of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah meet, 100 miles from the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert.

According to carbon-dated prehistoric rock drawings, Hopi culture dates back 22,000 years. Their oral history deals with even older times, describing three other worlds prior to the present one, which is the fourth world. In the first world, humans turned away from spiritual principles and misused their powers for selfish purposes. This world was destroyed by major earthquakes, and only a handful of people survived.

The people of the second world repeated the same mistakes again, and the world was destroyed by freezing (the Ice Age).

The third world lasted a long time, and was the time of the Atlanteans, whose destruction was brought about by those Atlanteans who had become "two-hearted people." A two-hearted person is someone who listens only to their right side, considered by the Hopi to be evil because it is clever but lacks conscience. The left side, though awkward, is wise, and is predominant in a "one-hearted person."

Among the survivors of Atlantis was a great chief who had two sons. When the chief had passed on, the younger son went west to a new land, while the elder one traveled east where he was to remain unless the younger brother's way of life was threatened.

The descendants of Younger Brother, the Hopi, made a covenant with the Great Spirit 1,100 years ago to keep the world's balance, and if their tradition was lost, it would be catastrophic for all humanity.