ABSTRACT
Material conditions provided the context for the Oraibi Split; History set up the pro- and anti-American political ideology; and culture translated it into Hopi social organization. Culture is the system of shared meanings, symbols, behavior patterns, values, attitudes, and material items that give a group of people an identity, both to themselves and to others. Culture becomes politicized in certain contexts when competing interest groups interpret the same cultural ideology in seemingly contradictory fashions. Political describes the ways in which people organize to maintain social control internally and relationships between themselves and others, externally. In 1892, troops had even been called out to investigate fatal conflicts between Navajos and Mormons and also complaints by Hopis that Mormons had dispossessed them. Oraibi's split was indeed a serious of deliberate acts for political and economic reasons. The Hostiles developed their stance within the context of Oraibi's uneasy political and economic alliance with the Mormons.
