Identity as history hopi clans and the curation of oral tradition

Hopi clan migration traditions appear to hold valuable knowledge about precontact Puebloan life. Some scholars, however, question the historical veracity of these migration stories, noting that small, unilineal, exogamous groups cannot move independently, nor are they likely to have persisted for the hundreds of years necessary to maintain the knowledge attributed to them. Reexamination of the units and mechanisms of information curation underlying Hopi traditions provides new insights into the nature of Hopi clans and the manner of their reproduction. Rather than kinship units organized by a dogma of unilineal descent, Hopi clans are shown to operate as local groups-Lévi- Straussian "houses "-organized by the control of ceremonies and the ritual objects that authenticate them. Heritage is traced not through a genealogy of lineal ancestors, but through a topogeny of places where the proprietary ceremony has been performed by a succession of custodial house-groups. Implications for the persistence of descent groups and their associated traditions in the Southwest and beyond are discussed.