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Hopi “Flying Shields” Over ArizonaGary A. DavidCopyright © 2008-2014 Gary A. David

Ever since pilot Kenneth Arnold sighted nine flat disks erratically skipping across the skynear Mount Rainer in 1947, flying saucers have been firmly fixed in modern consciousness.From the small silver spacecraft in “The Day the Earth Stood Still” to the mother ship in“Independence Day,” the round aerial machine has become one of the primary icons of our age.Flying vehicles could conceivably come in many varieties but the most common seem to be disk-shaped.

This phenomenon is, of course, not restricted to the present. Shortly after the Arnold reportand the infamous Roswell UFO crash, the spring 1948 issue of Fate magazine carried an articleby a Navajo named Oga-Make.

“Most of you who read this are probably white men of a blood only a century ortwo out of Europe. You speak in your papers of the Flying Saucers or MysteryShips as something new, and strangely typical of the twentieth century. Howcould you but think otherwise? Yet if you had red skin, and were of a blood whichhad been born and bred of the land for untold thousands of years, you wouldknow this is not true. You would know that your ancestors living in thesemountains and upon these prairies for numberless generations, had seen theseships before, and had passed down the story in the legends which are theunwritten history of your people.”1

Legends from the ancient Hopi Indians also abound with what they call magical flyingshields. Although this northern Arizona tribe has traditionally been known as the People ofPeace, the warrior shield could be an apt analogy because in Hopi culture the concept of war isinexplicably connected to the stars.

The traditional term used for flying saucer is paatuwvota. Since the Hopi word paa meanswater, paatuwvota possibly refers to the expanding concentric rings in a lake or pool. This mightbe a metaphorical description for the way the strange airborne device appears to operate. For adesert people like the Hopi, water is synonymous with wonder—perhaps the type evoked bywitnessing these spacecraft.

Many flying shields are piloted by entities commonly called kachinas. (The more correctspelling of the Hopi term is katsinam, plural of katsina.) Like angels, these beneficent creaturesare spirit messengers that act as intermediaries for gods and humans. Although their multicoloredmasks come in endless varieties, some resemble space helmets.

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Aholi Kachina doll, which wears a cloak of many colors representing flowers,the brightness of summer, and germination.

One handsome kachina named Pavayoykyasi is known to sprinkle the plants with life-givingmorning dew. His name, in fact, literally means “moisture tablet.” (Again, in the desert, moisturealways means amazement.) This finely dressed figure wears an embroidered kilt, a colorful sash,and eagle down feathers in his hair. He also carries a wand in his hand and some sort ofbackpack.

He refers to his aircraft as “…his pet, a magic flying shield. The shield has two parts, withthe lower one spinning and the upper one remaining still. Climbing aboard, Pavayoykyasi roseup into the air and flew off.”2 Because it automatically knew the way to his house, the craft eithermay have been partially sentient or it employed an ancient version of GPS technology. The useof the term “pet” also implies some sort of flying animal. On the other hand, the description ofthe lower part spinning and the upper part stationary suggests a machine. Perhaps it was a hybridof organic and manufactured, similar to Philip Corso’s account of the saucers in The Day AfterRoswell.

A very common motif in Hopi legends is one where a kachina mates with a maiden. Thisechoes the Watchers, the biblical fallen angels who had sexual intercourse with human women inorder to produce the giants known as the Nephilim. “There were giants in the earth in those days;and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they barechildren to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”3

Giants, incidentally, also play a large part in Hopi culture and frequently show up at kachinadances. At one dance I witnessed at the Third Mesa village of Oraibi, for instance, a Hu Kachina,or Ogre, walked within a few feet of me into the plaza, carrying a rusty, foot-long butcher knife.

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His bulging eyes and fierce teeth even today present a terrifying reminder of the persistent role ofgiants in the Hopi world.

Hu Kachina doll

Hu is the name of the Hopi whipper kachina that comes to bring rain to the desert.This ogre has a black mask, goggle eyes, fangs and lolling tongue. It carries ayucca whip in each hand. Sometimes it holds a knife in one hand and a whip in theother.

Hu is also one of the names for the Sphinx at Giza. It acts as guardian of thehorizon in the same way that its Hopi namesake is guardian of the kachina dance.Hu is additionally known as the Egyptian god of Taste, springing from the blood ofRa's phallus. Hu literally means bad or wicked, and naked, as well as to grieve, tobeat, to crush, and to slay. Huhu is the primeval watery mass whence cameeverything. In Egyptian, Hu can also mean rain.

In their classic book Hamlet’s Mill, Giorgio De Santillana and Hertha von Dechendstate that Humeri is an antiquated Latin word for the constellation Orion, which theHebrews call Gibbor, or Giant. Humeri is also the plural of humerus, the long bonebetween the shoulder and the elbow.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships off the shoulder ofOrion…” –Roy Batty, a “replicant” in the movie Blade Runner

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One example of the unusual union of spirit messenger and Hopi mortal involves an unnamedkachina who took a young woman from Oraibi to the Land of the Cloud People. The girl’s fatherhad recently died, causing a hardship for the family. The Cloud People had apparently beenwatching her and her mother and decided that the kachina should marry her. One day the girl wasin the fields picking squash blossoms when “…she heard a roaring sound, a hissing noise likewind coming through a small place, and she wondered what it was.” This implies some sort ofmechanism rather than either an organic or a metaphysical means of transport. Then she saw theapproaching kachina, who, like the previous one mentioned, was good looking with a beautifulkilt and sash and a brightly painted body. He said he wished to marry her and told her he wouldtake her to his home tomorrow. The next morning he returned to the same field.

“He took her by the hand and walked with her over the hill, and she saw there wassomething there, something round, and they went straight for the thing and gotinto it. And when they did that, he did something and there was a big roar andsoon they were off the ground. The thing they were in seemed to be spinning, andit streaked off. After a while he said, ‘We are here.’ They were down on theground again and the roaring and hissing sound stopped. He took her up to hisvillage, to his home. When they got to his house his mother and father were veryhappy that he had found the girl they had spoken of.”4

Another kind of aerial device is called a tawiya, or “gourd,” which consists of two halves.After climbing aboard the rider closes the upper half and installs a tightly stretched sinewbetween the bottom of the gourd and the stem button. The rider then twists the sinew between hispalms and the flying machine lifts off, making a humming noise.5 “Hopis say that the gourd is amagic vehicle used by those who have power to use it for travel—something like a spacecraft orflying saucer.”6

Hopi narratives additionally describe spinning trays that can transport various beings. A typeof wicker plaque called a sooyungyapu has a star design woven on it, thus suggesting its origin.These woven artifacts are perhaps mimetic of the aerial craft.

Hopi woman making star plaques at Shungopovi, Second Mesa, 1901, photograph by A. C. Vroman.

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One myth incorporating this vehicle describes two virginal sisters from Kawàyka’a (LagunaPueblo in New Mexico) who constantly resisted the advances of many young suitors in theirvillage. They both finally agreed to marry Tókila, the Night. After going outside the village withhim, they found a large póta, or coiled plaque.

“So they all took a place on the tray, whereupon they were lifted up and carriedthrough the air to Nuwátok'aovi [also spelled Nuvatukya’ovi, the San FranciscoPeaks in Arizona], where they entered a deep canyon or gulch. Here the Nightlived. When they came into the house they saw in an inner room a great manyhuman bones. They were the remains of many women whom the Night had stolenin the village, and with whom he had lived a while and then, as soon as theybecame pregnant, had thrown them into the room to perish.”7

In this case the entity that piloted the flying shield turned out to be malicious rather thanbenevolent. Perhaps “Night” is merely the allegorical name for this murderous creature ofunknown origin.

In my previous book Eye of the Phoenix: Mysterious Visions and Secrets of the AmericanSouthwest (Adventures Unlimited Press, 2008), I describe, on the other hand, the compassionateHopi sky god named Sotuknang. His face “shone like a star” and his costume “glittered likeicicles.” Interpreted metaphysically, this may refer to the glistening aura of a ghostly inter-dimensional being. On a physical level, it may point to some sort of electrically lit helmet and asilvery or metallic spacesuit.

This petroglyph showing Sotuknang is located on the cliff below the village of Walpi on First Mesa.His face is a crescent moon; above his head is a four-pointed star. His right hand holds a cloud symbol;his left hand holds lightning. Above the lightning is a symbol for either the four directions or Orion.

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As a primary deity in the Hopi pantheon, Sotuknang had been influencing the people sincethe beginning of their current epoch on earth they call the Fourth World. In one tale he rescues ayoung pair of boy-and-girl twins from a deluge, which, by the way, eventually destroyed theThird World. He takes them up in his flying shield from which they could see the landscape formany miles around.

A craft of this sort would certainly allow the perspective by which one could gauge theaccuracy of a star correlation on the ground—that is, the pattern of a constellation such as Orionspread out upon the Arizona desert. (See my book The Orion Zone: Ancient Star Cities of theAmerican Southwest, Adventures Unlimited Press, 2006.) From 175 miles above the earth mostof northern Arizona can be seen, from Grand Canyon in the west to Canyon de Chelly in the east,and from Tsegi Canyon in the north near the Utah/Arizona border to the Little Colorado River inthe south near the modern town of Winslow. (This altitude is a little less than the lowest altitudefor the space shuttle in orbit.)

Like the space flights of Ezekiel or Enoch, a ride on a flying shield would reveal thepanorama of the sky-earth correlation and confirm the hermetic maxim “As above, so below.”

The celestial template of Orion is projected on the high desert of Arizona. A Hopi ruin site orvillage corresponds to each major star in the constellation. The belt stars correspond to Third,Second, and First Mesas. The distance between Betatakin and Canyon de Chelly is slightlystretched in relation to the constellation—about twelve miles. The distance between WalnutCanyon and Homol’ovi is also stretched—about ten miles. (See my book The Orion Zone: AncientStar Cities of the American Southwest for a full description.)

In August of 1970 a rash of UFO sightings occurred in the skies over Prescott, Arizona. Overa two-week period many hundreds of flying saucers were seen by hundreds of witnesses. Thisprompted Chief Dan Katchongva of the Hopi Sun Clan, his councilor, and an interpreter to travel

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southwest about one hundred and twenty-five miles from his village of Hotevilla on Third Mesato Prescott to learn more of the event.

He described to the Prescott Courier an ancient petroglyph near the village of Mishongnovion Second Mesa that depicts a dome-shaped object. “‘We believe other planets are inhabited andthat our prayers are heard there,’ he said. ‘The arrow on which the dome-shaped object rests,stands for travel through space,’ Katchongva said in explaining the rock carving. ‘The Hopimaiden on the dome-shape (drawing) represents purity. Those Hopi who survive PurificationDay will travel to other planets. We, the faithful Hopi, have seen the ships and know they aretrue,’ he said.”8 As we have seen, the purity of Hopi maidens throughout the ages has attractedthe high-flying kachinas.

Paul Solem, a non-Indian expert on Hopi prophecy and Mormon doctrine, was also keyfigure during the Prescott sightings. He even claimed to attract the flying saucers bytelepathically communicating with them. In one instance he took a group of people outside andthen began to mentally focus on extraterrestrial contact. He soon exclaimed: “They are here! Ican’t see them, but I know they are here. One just said, ‘We’re here, Paul!’ There are severalpeople in the saucer. I can hear them talking.” After a few minutes a star-like UFO appeared,halted, then moved first in one direction and then the other.

He believed the entities in the spacecraft were angelic and kind, like the Hopi kachinas, andhailed from the planet Venus. He said that they had shoulder-length hair neatly cut and theirvoices were musical and androgynous. This sounds like what we would typically describe todayas a Nordic ET. He even received the space travelers’ proclamations, which he transcribed:

“We come to lend credence and as a sign or token that the Hopi prophecy was ofa divine nature. Great sorrow and fear will be coming to this planet very soon andfew will escape it. Our leader as spoken of in Hopi prophecy is already here (onEarth) in mortality and is known as the Apostle John (the same as in the NewTestament). The white brother shall be introduced by a huge fire and the Earthshall quake at his arrival. We are of the 10 lost tribes and we will return severalnights unless there is contempt for us.”9

Local UFO researcher Dan Carlson said that the area around Prescott had been a magnet formany of the early important though controversial figures in the field of ufology, includingGeorge Adamski, Daniel Fry, George Van Tassel, as well as former Prescott residents TrumanBethurum and George Hunt Williamson. “If one is to believe Hopi prophecy,” Carlson remarked,“the reasons the saucers are sighted here most often and contactors seem to be attracted here isthat this is a chosen land. Prescott is within the Hopi circle of sacred ground where the beingsfrom another world are supposed to bring about prophecy.”10

Chief Katchongva had been one of the elders most active in bringing the knowledge of Hopilegends and prophecies of End Times to the world at large.11 He believed that these persistentUFO visitations were among the signs and omens that the Fourth World is about to end.Apparently on the last day of his visit to Prescott an unidentified spacecraft flew in very low—about eight hundred feet.12

Chief Katchongva passed away in 1972 at age 107 under some rather strange circumstances.“When Dan Katchongva ‘died’, his body was never found. He was last seen walking up a smallvalley where a UFO had just been seen.”13

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Thumb Butte in Prescott, Arizona, is a miniature version of Devils Tower, Wyoming, which wasfeatured in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Like the larger geological uplift, it mayserve as a beacon for extraterrestrial craft. According to Mrs. Irene Wood during the 1970 Prescottsightings: “…we saw a huge brilliant mass of light looking as big as three moons coming very fastover Thumb Butte. It seemed almost over Prescott and went to the east. It halted and a huge massdetached itself and fell straight down behind the hills.”14 Was this a UFO or merely a huge meteor?

A much more recent sighting of a flying shield occurred on the evening of January 24th,2007, about fifty miles south of Third Mesa. Sean and Deanna Dover were driving east towardtheir hometown of Leupp, Arizona, when they spotted a triangular-shaped craft with three lightson it flying an estimated mile-and-a-half above them. The object was moving too fast to be anairplane and was not making any noise whatsoever.

Returning home, they got some night vision equipment that Sean’s father owned as a NavajoNation Police Ranger. That’s when they saw (and heard) two jets flying from the southwestintercept the completely silent object, which managed to evade these aircraft. Eventually aboutthirty witnesses in the small, somewhat isolated town saw the UFO circle the area a total offifteen times over a period of almost an hour before it headed southeast toward Winslow.

They all said the object was triangular with three or four tiers and a pulsating light positionedon a sphere on its underside. A local fifth grade teacher claimed the craft emitted a yellow lightand was about twice the size of the school gymnasium.

This amazing sighting, however, did not at all surprise Sean Dover. “I believe that it reallywas a UFO because of my family’s history. I've seen [UFO’s] too many times to remember,”Sean said. “Leupp is a hot spot for UFO’s.”15

The historic relationship between flying shields and the Native Americans of Arizona hasbecome a part of a long tradition. Legends of ancient star beings that pilot spacecraft andsometimes mate with the indigenous people are an accepted fact for the native peoples, not amatter of dispute. Perhaps we should start listening to the deep wisdom and wide experience thatthe original inhabitants of this continent possess. They’ve been on the case for ages.

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Endnotes

1. Fate magazine article quoted at: www.burlingtonnews.net/kivas.2. Michael Lomatuway’ma, Lorena Lomatuway’ma, and Sidney Namingha, Jr., Hopi Ruin

Legends, collected by Ekkehart Malotki (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska, 1993),p. 307.

3. Genesis 6:44. Harold Courlander, Hopi Voices: Recollections, Traditions, and Narratives of the Hopi

Indians (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), pp. 200-202.5. Ekkehart Malotki, Hopi Stories of Witchcraft, Shamanism, and Magic (Lincoln, Nebraska:

University of Nebraska, 2001), p. xl.6. Ekkehart Malotki, editor, Hopi Dictionary: A Hopi-English Dictionary of the Third Mesa

Dialect (Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, 1998), p. 587.7. H. R. Voth, Traditions of the Hopi, Field Columbian Museum Anthropological Publication,Vol. VIII, 1905, www.sacred-texts.com/nam/hopi/toth/toth042.htm#fn_99.8. www.dreamscape.com/morgana/iapetus.htm and

http://members.tripod.com/~drunken_bean/arizona.html.9. Prescott Courier, Sunday, August 9, 1970.10. Prescott Courier, Tuesday, August 11, 1970.11. www.hopiland.net/prophecy/katch-1.htm.12. Prescott Courier, Tuesday, August 18, 1970.13. www.wovoca.com/occult-ufo-hopi-sun-chief-dan-katchongva-confirms-existence-of-flying-

saucers.htm14. Prescott Courier, Friday, August 21, 1970.15. www.navajohopiobserver.com/main.asp?SectionID=35&SubSectionID=47&ArticleID=5477 and www.nuforc.org/webreports/055/S55002.html.

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Gary A. David is an archaeo-astronomer and independent researcher who has studiedSouthwestern archaeological ruins and rock art for over twenty-five years.His books about the Hopi and other ancestral Pueblo cultures of Arizona and New Mexicoinclude: The Orion Zone—Ancient Star Cities of the American Southwest Eye of the Phoenix—Mysterious Visions and Secrets of the American Southwest The Kivas of Heaven—Ancient Hopi Starlore Star Shrines and Earthworks of the Desert Southwest.

These are all available from Adventures Unlimited Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.His most recent book titled Mirrors of Orion—Star Knowledge of the Ancient World wasreleased by CreateSpace.

Mr. David earned a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Colorado,and he is a former college professor. He is also a poet, with numerous volumes published,and a professional lead guitarist and vocalist.

His articles or interviews have appeared in many magazines, including:Ancient American, Atlantis Rising, Fate, Fenix (Italy), Mysteries (Greece),Erich von Däniken’s Sagenhafte Zeiten (or “Legendary Times”), UFO, and

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World Explorer. His work has also been featured in both of the Graham Hancock Readersand in Underground! The Disinformation Guide to Ancient Civilizations, AstonishingArchaeology and Hidden History.

Gary continues to give presentations, including:Ancient Mysteries International Conferences (AMI), Conference for Precession and AncientKnowledge (CPAK), Verde Valley Archaeology Society, and many branches of MutualUFO Network (MUFON).

He had given international radio interviews, including Coast to Coast AM with GeorgeNoory, Jeff Rense, Whitley Strieber’s Dreamland, Paracast, and many others.

He recently appeared on the History Channel’s TV series:Ancient Aliens, Brad Meltzer’s Decoded, The Coming Apocalypse,as well as on both Japanese and Russian TV programs.His website is: www.theorionzone.com.

Gary, his wife, and an aging cat live together in Chino Valley, Arizona, where theskies are still relatively pristine.