In exactly the same spirit they welcomed the friars. Perhaps these
priests had "good medicine" that would help out. Maybe this new kind of
altar, image, and ceremony would bring rain and corn and health; they
were quite willing to try them. But imagine their consternation when
these Catholic priests after a while, unlike any people who had ever
before been taken into their community, began to insist that the new
religion be the only one, and that all other ceremonies be stopped. How
could the Hopi, who had depended upon their old ceremonies for
centuries, dare to stop them? Their revered traditions told them of
clans that had suffered famine and sickness and war as punishment for
having dropped or even neglected their religious dances and ceremonies,
and of their ultimate salvation when they returned to their faithful
performance.

The Hopi objected to the slavish labor of bringing timbers by hand from
the distant mountains for the building of missions and, according to
Hopi tradition, to the priests taking some of their daughters as
concubines, but the breaking point was the demand of the friars that all
their old religious ceremonies be stopped; this they dared not do.

So the "long gowns" were thrown over the cliff, and that was that.
Certain dissentions and troubles had come upon them, and some crop
failures, so they attributed their misfortunes to the anger of the old
gods and decided to stamp out this new and dangerous religion. It had
taken a strong hold on one of their villages, Awatobi, even to the
extent of replacing some of the old ceremonies with the new singing and
chanting and praying. And so Awatobi was destroyed by representatives
from all the other villages. Entering the sleeping village just before
dawn, they pulled up the ladders from the underground kivas where all
the men of the village were known to be sleeping because of a ceremony