The Hopi Emergence and Destruction of Worlds

Record summary

Mid-century accounts of Hopi cosmology, especially Frank Waters’s Book of the Hopi (1963) and earlier ethnographic discussions, described successive worlds, their destruction and human emergence into a new world. Some popular presentations characterize one destruction as a flood, making the tradition a frequent comparative example. The lead matters for studying publication, translation and the formation of pan-Indigenous myth categories. Uncertainty is substantial because published versions may combine interviews, author synthesis and material from different Hopi communities without transparent provenance.