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Hopi Reservation
Mesa-top villages among the oldest communities in North America
The Hopi Reservation occupies about 2,500 square miles of northeastern Arizona, entirely surrounded by the Navajo Nation. Its twelve villages sit on and below three long fingers of rock known as First, Second and Third Mesa, with two more at Moenkopi to the west. Old Oraibi on Third Mesa, settled around 1150, is widely counted among the oldest continuously inhabited communities in North America, and the Hopi have farmed corn, beans and squash in this dry country for centuries with little more than rain and careful planting.
President Chester A. Arthur set the reservation aside by executive order in 1882, and the Hopi adopted a tribal constitution in 1936. Overlapping claims with the Navajo led to the Navajo–Hopi Land Settlement Act of 1974, which partitioned a shared area and forced the relocation of thousands of people, mostly Navajo, a history still painful on both sides. The closure of the Navajo Generating Station and Kayenta coal mine in 2019 cost the tribe most of its operating revenue. Hopi ceremonies are private, and photographing or recording in the villages is prohibited.