Kiev, USSR;
1960

Local papers are full of anecdotes about a party of Ukrainian-born Canadian farmers now revisiting villages where they grew up. Crowds follow them, for they are objects of great curiosity, Rip van Winkles from another age, largely unchanged in speech, manner, even dress, from the time they left here nearly fifty years ago.

Some years ago the Swiss art historian Sigfried Giedion asked me to inquire of the Hopi of Arizona what meaning they attached to "life-lines." Life-line is the term used to describe a picture of an animal with a line drawn from its mouth to its lungs or heart. The Hopi occasionally paint such designs on pots & weave them into baskets, though they do so less frequently than the neighboring Zuni.

I was staying at Oraibi at the time & one morning I noticed that my hostess was making just such a basket. Her only explanation, however, was that this was how she had been taught. Others overheard the question, but no one volunteered anything, so I let the matter drop.

Later that day I set out across range country with an elderly artist who, though he had traveled widely, remained all Hopi. In his youth, his talents as a traditional Hopi artist led to a scholarship at an eastern art school. But still-life painting didn't interest him & "life classes" embarrassed him. When he returned to Oraibi, fifty years later, the old Hopi art remained within him, largely unchanged. He was more traditional than artists who had never left the reservation.

We climbed a steep mesa, noted for its ancient rock carvings (which women periodically renew by tracing with mud), and sat at the top, looking out over the desert. I knew him well & and spent much time in his company, but this particular conversation, above all others, remains in my memory.

After a long silence, he said, "You asked about the line that goes to the heart. It leads to the spirit which resides in all things - the spirit of life & hope. When we show respect for the spirits around us, they respect us. From this comes good. We show respect in prayer & ceremony - in all things. We demonstrate this by showing that all animals, even snakes, possess souls."