Books with title Field Mouse Goes to War/ Tusan Homichi Tuwvota: A Bilingual Hopi Tale

This traditional Hopi tale recounts the courage and cleverness of a tiny field mouse striving to protect the village from a mighty hawk who is stealing the chickens. It was originally published in 1944 by the Bureau of Indian Afffairs. The drawings are by Hopi artist Fred Kabotie who was born at the turn of the twentieth century on the Second Mesa. Kabotie was commissioned by the Museum of the American Indian in New York to record authentic native dances and by the Fred Harvey Company to decorate the Indian Tower on the south Rim of the Grand Canyon. The book is in English and phonetic Hopi with a pronunciation guide.

This traditional Hopi tale recounts the courage and cleverness of a tiny field mouse striving to protect the village from a mighty hawk who is stealing the chickens. It was originally published in 1944 by the Bureau of Indian Afffairs. The drawings are by Hopi artist Fred Kabotie who was born at the turn of the twentieth century on the Second Mesa. Kabotie was commissioned by the Museum of the American Indian in New York to record authentic native dances and by the Fred Harvey Company to decorate the Indian Tower on the south Rim of the Grand Canyon. The book is in English and phonetic Hopi with a pronunciation guide.

Field Mouse Goes To War is the story of a brave little field mouse who pits his own courage and cunning against the hawk that is threatening the livelihood of the village of Mishongnovi by devastating its chicks. This book is the first of its kind. Before Field Mouse Goes To War, there were only literary books by non–Native authors, written in English and translated into Native languages. This book is based on spoken Hopi, and the Native illustrator, Fred Kabotie, would say later: “I liked that book because it caught the true feeling of the Hopi story, the way a Hopi would tell it.”