The Real History of the End of the World (34 page)

This is the part of the prophecy that appeals most to outsiders. Some Hopi ethnographers have doubted that White Brother is part of the ancient prophecy. He doesn't appear in all the stories.
¹⁵
But many thousands of Europeans and Americans have seen it as permission for them to adopt aspects of the Hopi culture.

This is where some of the Hopi part company with those who wish to participate in the Hopi religion. They feel that it isn't something that one can pick and choose symbols and ceremonies from.
¹⁶
Moreover, as I understand it, there is a firm connection between sacred sites, the Hopi ancestors, and the people. As Dr. Philip Tuwaletstiwa, a Hopi geologist explained, “[Y]ou cannot export the Hopi religion. It can exist only here, where we have our shrines, springs, landmarks, materials, animals, plants and hundreds and hundreds of years of belief and practice.” He added that even Hopi can't practice their religion away from the mesas.
¹⁷

But that hasn't stopped even some Hopi from trying to explain the religion to outsiders, warning them of a coming Apocalypse.
¹⁸
A Swedish film crew interviewed several people, some Hopi, on the coming end. Few mentioned the White Brother. None mentioned 2012. In my search through the Internet (the modern equivalent of the seventeenth-century pamphlets) I found nothing written or spoken by Hopis that gave a date for the ending of the Fourth World, only a general warning that we are ruining our planet and the time of reckoning is coming. They encourage a way of life that is in balance with nature. It sounds like good advice to me.

Many of the proponents of the Fifth World prophecy state that even non-Hopi can join the move to the next level if they follow the Hopi way.
¹⁹
This has led to an influx of sightseers, pilgrims, and others to the Hopi lands, all wanting to become part of the Hopi culture as they understand it. I have the distinct impression that even those Hopi who are willing to share the possibility that non-Hopis will make the ascent, would rather that the outsiders follow their idea of the Hopi way somewhere else.

While some Hopi now think that the Fifth World may be metaphorical, rather than literal, should the sky open to show the Hopi the way to the Fifth World, I wouldn't blame them if they climbed as rapidly as possible, leaving the rest of us to cope with the mess we made.
²⁰

This time I hope that they will be careful to make sure no evil witches come with them.

1
Armin W. Geertz, “A Reed Pierced the Sky: Hopi Indian Cosmography on Third Mesa, Arizona,”
Numen
31, no. 2 1984): 216-241. See also, Geertz,
The Invention of Prophecy
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

2
I've put this together from several different versions in various sources, including Geertz and Peter G. Beidler, “First Death in the Fourth World: Teaching the Emergence Myth of the Hopi Indians,”
American Indian Quarterly
19, no. 1 (1995): 75-89.

3
Geertz, “A Reed,” 215; Michael Lomatuway'ma, Lorena Lomatuway'ma, Sidney Namingha Jr., and Ekkehart Malotki,
Hopi Ruin Legends: Kiqotutuwutsi
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 77-79.

4
Peter G. Beidler, “First Death in the Fourth World,” 77-84.

5
A search taken in June 2009 showed 73,000 Internet sites for “Hopi prophecy end of the world.”

6
S. Ryan Johansson and S. H. Preston, “Tribal Demography: The Hopi and Navaho Population as Seen Through Manuscripts from the 1900 U.S. Census,”
Social Science History
33, no. 1 (1978): 1.

7
William M. Clements, “ ‘A Continual Beginning, and Then an Ending, and Then a Beginning Again': Hopi Apocalypticism in the New Age,”
Journal of the Southwest
46 (2004): 3.

8
Kathleen M. Sands and Emory Sekaquapteka, “Four Hopi Lullabies: A Study in Method and Meaning,”
American Indian Quarterly
4, no. 3 (1978), 195-210.

9
Philip Jenkins,
Dreamcatches How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 140.

10
Ibid., 162.

11
I don't need to cite an expert; I remember.

12
Frank Waters,
Book of the Hopi
(New York: Viking, 1963).

13
Geertz,
The Invention of Prophecy,
422-432, gives a chronological list of the various forms of prophecy.

14
Clements, 9.

15
Geertz and Clements both have mentioned this.

16
Actually, I don't know of a religion in which that is encouraged.

17
Quoted in Susan Milius, “When Worlds Collide,”
Science News
154, no. 6 (1998): 92.

18
The late Thomas Banyacya recorded an interpretation of rock carvings that can be found at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Vhivi6nws
. Accessed November 2009.

19
Clements, 12.

20
Geertz, on the current opinion of some Hopi, private correspondence, July 17, 2009. I wish to thank Professor Geertz for reading the first draft of this chapter and making suggestions. Any misunderstandings are totally mine.

David Koresh presented the Federal authorities with a
four-page “letter from God” on Friday, citing biblical passages
and threatening the forces that have surrounded his religious
sect's compound near here for 43 days. Federal Bureau of
Investigation officials said the letter, written in the first person
as if from God and bearing no salutation, was addressed to
“Friends” and was signed “Yahweh Koresh.”

—
New York Times,
April 11, 1993, section 1, p. 18

 

 

 

 

O
n April 19, 1993, after a siege of fifty-one days, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) raided the compound of the Branch Davidians, in Mt. Carmel, near Waco, Texas. The exact events of that day are still being debated, but at the end of it about seventy-five people inside the compound lay dead, twenty-five of them children. The conflagration that destroyed their home was seen on television news by millions of people all over the world. And yet finding accurate information on the Davidians and their young, charismatic leader, Vernon Howell/David Koresh, is almost impossible. Much of what was said after the raid was colored by the emotions of those who told their stories, both from those in support of Koresh and those violently against him. The news reports focused on allegations of child abuse and molestation by Koresh and then on whether the ATF had acted inappropriately in firing tear gas into the compound.

No one seemed interested in who the Branch Davidians were and where they came from.

The Davidians were formed in 1929 by a Bulgarian immigrant named Victor Houteff. They were originally a splinter group of the Seventh-Day Adventists. Houteff and his followers felt that the mainstream Adventist Church had drifted from its apocalyptic beginnings and was integrating too much with the modern world. In 1935, Houteff bought the land in Mt. Carmel that became the headquarters of the Branch Davidians.
¹

Houteff broke with the Seventh Day Adventists in 1942 to establish the group as a genuine sect in its own right, but the Davidians drew most of their converts from that faith. This may have been because of the stress the Davidians put on an imminent Apocalypse like the forerunners of the Adventists, the Millerites.
²

The Davidians carried on an intense missionary program and soon had converts in Portugal, Indonesia, and the Caribbean as well as the United States.
³
I read through Houteff 's books
The Shephard's Rod I& II
as well as several of the Davidian newsletters. Houteff followed William Miller's calculations that the millennium would begin in October 1844. The time since then has been occupied in the “cleansing of the sanctuary.”
⁴
While Houteff implied that the final accounting was near, he did not give a specific date. His fiercest diatribes were against “backsliders,” those Adventists who had not listened to his message.

The following disappointment caused most of the group to disband and return to their previous lives. Among those who stayed were Ben and Lucy Roden, who kept the community going, in anticipation of the end, although Ben tried to encourage the Davidians to move to Israel. According to a disenchanted Branch Davidian, Marc Breault, writing in 1991 after Ben's death in 1978, Lucy, who had received several prophetic visions, took over the leadership of the group, now named the Branch Davidians. One of the stipulations for leadership was that the leader must be a prophet chosen by God.
⁶
Lucy convinced the others that she was now the chosen one.

In the early 1980s, Vernon Howell appeared at Mt. Carmel. He soon became a favorite of Lucy Roden. By 1983, they were living together and traveled to Israel as a couple. In 1984, according to ex-Davidians, Howell married Rachel Perry, then fourteen.
⁷
Lucy seems not to have been happy about this, but by then Howell had assumed control of the group. Lucy and her son, George, were pushed aside, having lost all authority. Lucy died in 1986. It is recorded that, after Lucy died, there was a shoot-out over the Mt. Carmel property between George Roden and Howell and his followers. The resulting court case convicted Roden, who was sentenced to six months in jail.
⁸
Later he was convicted of murder and, in 1993, was in a penitentiary for the criminally insane.

Over the next nine years, it's not certain what Vernon Howell, now calling himself David Koresh, was thinking or doing. The reports indicate that Koresh considered himself to be, at least at first, a divine messenger. The Davidians believed that the seven angels of Revelation are meant to be the Adventist prophets, starting with William Miller. Koresh stated that he was the seventh angel. He seemed to have a gift for convincing people that his biblical interpretations were logical, including convincing parents to let him sleep with their teenaged daughters.

The allegation is that Koresh insisted that he was entitled to any woman among the believers because God had told him that he was the man in the Song of Solomon (Ecclesiastes) who had queens, concubines, and virgins.
⁹
Eventually, he realized that he was the Lamb of Revelation and therefore Jesus Christ. This meant that he should produce as many children of God as possible. When the standoff began in 1993, Koresh was interviewed by CNN. “There are a lot of children here . . . ,” he said. “I do have a lot of children and I do have a lot of wives.”
¹⁰

The alleged sex with underage girls aspect of life in the compound provided the impetus for the first raid on the Davidians on March 2, 1993, but the stated reason was to serve a warrant to them for firearms violations. The ATF agents soon found out just how much fire power the Davidians had. Four of them died in the initial crossfire. In a phone conversation, Koresh insisted that the agents had fired first and killed two people, one of them his two-year-old daughter.
¹¹

I remember the newspapers and television reports on the siege. There were stories of various things that Koresh had done. He was portrayed as someone who was able to brainwash his followers into anything. Often the reporters would mention Jonestown. The images of the dead children in the jungle were fresh in everyone's mind. I think there was the real fear that this would happen again that caused people to feel that something must be done at once.

Again, the reports conflicted. Sometimes Koresh was reported as saying that they were not a suicide cult. In others, he implied that he might prefer death to surrender. No one knew which Koresh would choose. On the fifth day of the siege, the
Washington Post
interviewed one of the ATF agents at the house asking what would happen next. The man wasn't sure. “It is my understanding,” said FBI special agent Jeffrey Jamar, “that he is still waiting for a message from God.”
¹²

As the siege dragged on, reports from the FBI said that Koresh wanted an “all out fire fight.” That statement wasn't corroborated by outside witnesses. The news reporters were already questioning the tactics of the ATF.

I don't think that Vernon Howell/David Koresh intended to create his own private Apocalypse. One reason is that he still seemed to adhere to the Davidian belief in the signs as stated in the Book of Revelation, and he gave no indication that he thought that they had all manifested themselves. When he decided that he was Christ, he may have figured that the clock had been reset for the thousand years of peace and prosperity. The other clue that he might not have planned martyrdom is that he authorized his attorneys to try to get him a book deal for his memoirs.
¹³

On April 19, 1993, ATF agents started sending tear gas into the building where the Davidians were barricaded. A few minutes later, the house went up in flames. Some of the few that escaped said that the fire was an accident, caused when a can of heating oil fell and ignited. Koresh did die of a bullet wound, but he may have shot himself rather than die in the fire.