Thoughtless Theft Almost Killed The Hopi Tribe's Religion

SHUNGOPAVI, Ariz. - Jimmy Lee Hinton and Randy Morris will never forget that warm summer night 15 years ago when they pulled four strange-looking idols out of a cave on the side of a Hopi mesa and changed hundreds of lives forever.

Hinton, a lanky ranch hand from Safford, is 36 now, and wiser. He says he has retired from pot-hunting.

He is eager to apologize. A curse, he says, stalks him and his friends.

Ever since Hinton and his partner, Morris - hoping to make a killing in the art market - yanked four taalawtumsi wooden figures from their bed of feathers, a generation of Hopi youths has grown up robbed of their manhood. Without the taalawtumsi - regarded as living deities - the most important Hopi religious ceremony could not be held.

Hinton and Morris later discovered that, in their haste, the smallest of the four taalawtumsi, Corn Maiden's child, had been left behind under a bush. The other three apparently are gone forever.

Former Payson rancher Eugene "Jinx" Pyle - who bought the figures from Hinton - says he used an ax to dismember the deities, carved centuries ago from cottonwood roots, and fed the pieces to his wood-burning stove.

He destroyed the idols, he said, in late 1980 or early 1981, because he feared the FBI was closing in. Ironically, that was not the case. He now says he didn't know the significance of the idols when he burned them.

Some Hopis, eager to get on with life, believe him. Many others do not, however. They say the spirits of the taalawtumsi (pronounced tah-LAO-toom-see) still speak to those who long for their return.

"Come and rescue us. Come and get us," Hopi artist and silversmith Roy Talahaftewa says the taalawtumsi cry. "They are out there waiting for us. They are still with us."

The Hopis explained that the presence of the taalawtumsi is a requirement at the secret rite of Astotokya, in which young men become adults in the Night of the Washing of the Hair. The rite, staged every four years, had been held the winter before the gnarled idols vanished.

Without the taalawtumsi, there would be no more new Hopis.

It would be as if Jewish boys were told their bar mitzvahs were canceled because someone had stolen a sacred copy of the Talmud. Or that, because an important Christian symbol was missing, all baptisms and Communions were canceled - maybe forever.

Uninitiated Hopis are unable to participate in ceremonies geared to the planting of corn and the arrival of rain. Without initiated Hopi men, their religion, the core of their identity, would die.

Even Hinton does not believe they are gone. He says he is haunted by the taalawtumsi.

"I fall asleep, and at 2 a.m. I hear little wind chimes," he said. "Kachinas (Hopi masked gods) appear in my dreams. The taalawtumsi are out there, somewhere."

In their despair, the Hopis turned to the FBI and Bureau of Indian Affairs in January 1979, looking for help from the same society that had callously chipped away at the Hopi world for more than a century. The case posed unique challenges for both Hopis and investigators before the FBI closed the book in 1991 on its 13-year investigation without sending anyone to jail.

FBI agents, working under U.S. laws that treat the taalawtumsi the same as a stolen television set, were forced to deal with the two societies' conflicting values. Federal prosecutors learned that the white man's laws do not adequately cover something many Hopis regarded as a homicide. "The Hopis let me know what the idols meant to them, and it was from the heart," said Steve Lund, the FBI agent on the case for many years. "The taalawtumsi were more than just objects. I needed to understand (the idols') hurt, they feel, they share human emotions.

"It was more like a violent crime against a person. It was like a kidnapping, or murder. That's the way the Hopis considered the idols in terms of an investigation. I had to weigh that against the fact that, for me, these were objects that could end up in a court of law."

It was a crushing disappointment, Lund said, when he and Hopi detective Alfonso Sakeva confronted Pyle in 1990 near Eugene, Ore., and he told them he had burned the taalawtumsi.

Under the terms of an agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix, Pyle went to Shungopavi in 1991 and swore to an emotional gathering of Hopis that he was telling the truth.

Newsweek magazine mentioned the case in a 1983 story about Indian-artifact thefts, quoting FBI agents who speculated that the taalawtumsi had been sold out of state for possibly as much as $200,000.

Pyle's name finally reached the FBI in the spring of 1990, during an unrelated investigation.

Before he was confronted, a number of meetings were held with U.S. Attorney Linda Akers and Assistant U.S. Attorney Rosyln Moore-Silver to determine what, if anything, Pyle could be charged with if he had the idols.

The agents did not expect Pyle to be forthcoming. But then he dropped the bombshell. "I felt devastated when I learned they had been destroyed," recalled Moore-Silver. "Linda and I sat silently for a long time as the enormity sank in."

Akers said, "Under our laws we were dealing with a theft, but to the Hopi it was tantamount to murder."

Lund said that when he explained the importance of the objects, Pyle seemed genuinely sorry.

Moore-Silver said they talked to the Hopis before deciding how to proceed against Pyle. The meeting was painful.

"When we talked to the religious leaders, they insisted the taalawtumsi were not gone - they could still hear them crying out there," Akers recalled. "That doesn't translate well into a search warrant."

"It would have been a difficult case," Moore-Silver said. "Could we have convicted him? No way. Would a court dismiss based on statute of limitations? Probably."

Nevertheless, they decided to hold prosecution over Pyle's head. They told him they would not prosecute if he cooperated in the investigation, submitted to a Justice Department-administered polygraph and agreed to tell his story in Shungopavi so the Hopis could "achieve spiritual reconciliation." Pyle's attorney, Art Lloyd, recommended to his client that he accept the "cooperation agreement." He signed it on Feb. 12, 1991.

Lloyd remembers that March 21, 1991, was cold, cloudy and windy atop Second Mesa.

They went to the Shungopavi meeting hall, built from the tawny rock of Second Mesa. The room was full of adult males who had been waiting to call themselves men.

Pyle rose and spoke. He was remorseful. He said he had no idea at the time of the importance of the taalawtumsi. If he had, he never would have burned them.

"At first I didn't understand why the FBI wanted me to meet with them," Pyle said later. "But (the Hopis) obviously needed to hear it from me to believe it."

A young Hopi dressed in a white shirt and tie got up and engaged Pyle.

"Do you go to church?" he asked.

"Yes," Pyle replied.

"Do you believe in God?"

"Yes."

"Well, have you told the people in your church that you have destroyed our religion?"

Eight months later, Morris, accompanied by Lund, traveled to Shungopavi, to apologize. Unlike Pyle, Morris was not under threat of prosecution.

"I just told them everything I knew," said Morris. "I told them I didn't find out until later they were so precious. They weren't hostile at me or anything."

At Shungopavi last November, after much anguished discussion, the decision was made to resume the initiations despite the absence of three of the four idols. Many parents were eager to have their sons initiated into manhood. Others were against it, saying all the taalawtumsi should be there.

In making the decision, the priests were driven by the possibility that if the ceremony were delayed any longer, knowledge of how to conduct it would be lost forever. The key priest was already 95.

"In that ceremony you have the whole purpose of being Hopi given to you," said Ronald Wadsworth, Shungopavi village administrator. "It is like a book is opened up." Wadsworth was initiated in 1977.

Sixty-three men, some in their 30s, finally could call themselves Hopis and use adult names. An equal number are still waiting to be initiated.

"It was a very joyous occasion," said Wadsworth, who attended. "Women who prepared food for us cried because they were happy for their sons."

Talahaftewa, the Hopi artisan whose father, the late Herbert Talahaftewa, had conducted the 1977 ceremony, was there, too. "I spoke to my brother-in-law and my nephew, and I asked if they felt the presence of the taalawtumsi in the kiva like I did.

"They said yes, which made sense, because for us it was such a happy time." ------------------- WHERE THEY ARE NOW -------------------

No one was ever prosecuted for the theft and destruction of the Hopi taalawtumsi idols. But does that mean this crime has gone unpunished?

-- James L. "Jimmy Lee" Hinton, 36, said his health began failing in 1978, a few months after he and Randy Morris stole the idols. He served three prison terms between 1981 and 1988 on drug and burglary charges. Hinton said he is trying to purge himself of the curse he is convinced is plaguing his life.

-- Randall Doyle Morris, 35, was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident shortly after the theft. He then was arrested for digging in an Indian ruin, but the charges were dismissed. Morris appeared before the Hopis in 1991 to apologize for the theft.

-- Eugene "Jinx" Pyle, 44, of Oakland, Ore., bought the taalawtumsi but says he destroyed them after he was told the FBI was on his trail. Pyle scoffs at the idea that there is more than coincidence to the string of misfortunes. "Supernatural powers are the work of the devil. I believe in God and I go to church every Sunday. I don't see God endorsing these things."