It seems that soon after they emerged from the underworld the son of
their chief died, and the distressed father, believing that an evil one
had come out of the sipapu with them and caused this death, tossed up a
ball of meal and declared that the unlucky person upon whose head it
descended should be thus discovered to be the guilty party and thrown
back down into the underworld. The person thus discovered begged the
father not to do this but to take a look down through the sipapu into
the old realm and see there his son, quite alive and well. This he did,
and so it was.

Do the Hopi believe this now? Yes, so they tell you. And Mr. Emery
Koptu, sculptor, who lived among them only a few years ago and enjoyed a
rare measure of their affection and good will, recently told the writer
of a case in point:

On July 4, 1928, occurred the death of Supela, last of the Sun priests.
Mr. Koptu, who had done some studies of this fine Hopi head, was in
Supela's home town, Walpi, at the time of the old priest's passing.

The people were suffering from a prolonged drouth, and since old Supela
was soon to go through the sipapu to the underworld, where live the
spirits who control rain and germination, he promised that he would
without delay explain the situation to the gods and intercede for his
people and that they might expect results immediately after his arrival
there. Since his life had been duly religious and acceptable to the
gods, it was the belief of both Supela and his friends that he would
make the journey in four days, which is record time for the trip, when
one has no obstacles in the way of atonements or punishments to work off
en-route. Supela promised this, and the people looked for its
fulfillment. Four days after Supela's death the long drouth was broken