The Ant People — What the Hopi Wrote Down in 1905 Says Otherwise

Everyone repeats the same reason an ant is thin in the middle: the Ant People gave their food to starving survivors and carried the mark of it forever. It is a beautiful story. It is also not the story in the oldest published collection of Hopi traditions, which contains a tale titled, in those exact words, Why the Ants Are So Thin. Tonight we open that book, and eight more. Sources include Voth, The Traditions of the Hopi (Field Columbian Museum, 1905); Mindeleff, A Study of Pueblo Architecture (BAE, 1891); Fewkes on the Tusayan migrations (1901) and Hopi Katcinas (1903); the Handbook of American Indians (BAE Bulletin 30, 1907); Waters, Book of the Hopi (1963); the Arizona Gazette of April 1909; and statements of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office. All nine older works are public domain. This video reads historical documents and scholarly debate; interpretations are presented for educational purposes, and absence from a printed record is not a claim about what any Hopi person knows. Illustrations are AI generated reconstructions. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Thinnest Part of an Ant 2:42 The Missionary With the Notebook 5:23 Story Ninety Nine, Page 239 7:55 What Happened in That Kiva 9:56 Anu Was a Living Clan 12:26 Nine Books, One Search 15:01 The Story Runs the Other Way 18:06 The Book That Set the Shape 20:36 What a Book Cannot Hold 23:11 The 1909 Newspaper 24:54 When the Name Got Taken 26:45 What the Hopi Asked For 28:20 What We Are Left With #Hopi #NativeAmericanHistory #KeptRecord