The Hopis are the westernmost of the Pueblo Indian tribes. Their reservation is located in an arid and rather isolated section of north-eastern Arizona. Here their villages are distributed among the southern spurs of the great Black Mesa, a tableland stretching many miles to the north. The eleven villages on the reservation form three clusters. Moving from east to west, these groups of villages are known as First Mesa, Second Mesa, and Third Mesa.

The old village of Oraibi, on Third Mesa, was first settled in the thirteenth century and is thus the oldest continuously occupied site in the United States. In the first decade of this century Oraibi was the scene of a political struggle between a progressive faction wishing to adopt certain of the white man's ways and a conservative group who opposed this path. In the Hopi language the word Hopi signifies “the peaceful people.”