Chapter 6
Life at Hard Labor—The Hopi
July, 1947 – 1949
(Phoenix – San Francisco)
I met Chester Mote, my Hopi conscientious objector friend, in Winslow on the third of July of 1947. I had looked for work on farms but could not find any; likewise in Flagstaff. I had just enough money left to get to a suburb of Phoenix, Glendale, with a penny left in my pocket.
Chester told me of an old Catholic priest who had spent many hours talking to his father years ago. He was a good man but Chester cared for no other missionaries. The Hopi believe in God just as the white man does he said, but their God does not tell them to go to war. The Hopi are not sun worshippers. When they look at the sun they think of God, just as the Christians are supposed to look at the Cross and think of God, (but they think of money, Chester thought.)
All tradition is handed down, not written. When Chester was a child, he was told that the white man had gone across the water to war twice and that the next war would be when other white men would come across the water to the white man and give him what he had handed out. When this war was finished there would be but one man and one woman left in the world. This was not meant literally. There would be many, here and there, but each couple would think that they were the only ones left.
Chester had 400 sheep and the government wanted him to reduce the flock to 40. He would not do so and was put in the jail in Keams Canyon for three months. They killed all of his sheep and gave him a check in payment but he refused to accept this blood money. It hurt their bookkeeping minds. Later when the Hopi were drafted for war, they were told that if they registered they would be deferred as CO's. The Hopi did not believe the white men but decided to try them out. So all of them who were radicals decided to refuse to register
83
