The chief feature attracting popular interest to the Hopi is the number and remarkable character of their ceremonies. These “dances,” as they are usually called, seem to be going on with little intermission. Every Hopi is touched by some one of the numerous ceremonies and nearly every able-bodied inhabitant of the seven towns takes an active part during the year.

This keeps the Hopi out of mischief and gives them a good reputation for minding their own business, besides furnishing them with the best round of free theatrical entertainments enjoyed by any people in the world, for nearly every ceremony has its diverting as well as its serious side, for religion and the drama are here united as in primitive times. The Hopi live and move and have their being in religion. They have peopled the unseen world with a host of beings, and they view all nature as full of life. The sun, moon, stars, rocks, winds, rain, and rivers are members of the Hopi pantheon to be reckoned with in their complicated worship.

Every moon brings its ceremony, and the cycle of the different “dances” is completed in perhaps four years; a few dances indeed may have even longer intervals, but these dances do not seem to fall in the calendar and are held whenever decided upon by the proper chief. Some of the dances alternate also, the Snake Dance, for instance, being held one year and the Flute Dance the following year. For half the year, from August to January, the actors in the ceremonies wear masks, while for the remainder of the year the dancers appear unmasked; and as every ceremony has its particular costumes, ritual, and songs, there is great variety for the looker-on in Tusayan. So many are the ceremonies, which differ more or less in the different villages, and so overwhelming is the immemorial detail of their performance, that one might well despair of recording them, much less of finding out a tithe of their meaning.

There is grouped around these dances the lore of clans in the bygone centuries, innumerable songs and prayers and rites gathered up here and there in the weary march, strewn with shells of old towns of the forgotten days. No fear that this inexhaustible mine will be delved out by investigators before it disappears utterly; the wonder is that it has survived so long into this prosaic age of anti-fable. We have here the most complete Freemasonry in the world, which, if preserved, would form an important chapter in the history of human cults, and in the opinion of enlightened men, it should have a record before the march of civilization treads it in the dust. The searcher for truth at the bottom of the Hopi well is likely to get various answers. Seeing the importance of the sun in Hopi thoughts and rites, one feels inclined to say “sun worship,” but the clouds, wind, rain, rocks, springs, rivers that enter into this paganism make for “nature worship”; then the birds and beasts give “animal worship”; the plants for food and ceremony, “plant worship”; the snake means “serpent worship,” and the communion with deified ancestors shows “ancestor worship” with unmistakable plainness.

The oldest gods in the Hopi conception of the unseen world are the deified manifestations of Nature and the natural objects that force themselves to his notice. The lightning, the cloud, the wind, the snow, the rain, the water, the rainbow, the dawn, the fire, all are beings. The sun, the moon, certain planets and constellations, and the sky are beings of power. The surface of the earth is ruled by a mighty being whose sway extends to the underworld and over death, fire, and the fields; springs, rivers, and mountains have their presiding deities. Among animals also there are many gods,—the eagle, bear, deer, mountain lion, badger, coyote, and mole among the rest. Among the insects the butterfly, dragonfly, and spider are most important, the latter as the Spider Woman or Earth Goddess. She is spouse of the Sun and as mother of the warrior culture heroes of the race is revered by the Hopi. To the plants, however, the list of beings does not extend, except in few instances, as the Corn Maid or Goddess of Corn, and perhaps to the Goddess of Germs. There are beings of the six directions; a god of chance in games and of barter; gods of war and the chase; a god of the oven, and endless beings, good and bad, that have arisen in the Hopi fancy as the centuries rolled by with their changes of culture.

At some period a group of beings called Kachinas and new to Hopi worship was added to the pantheon. Most of these were brought in by the Badger clans, as tradition relates, from the East, which means the upper Rio Grande, and some were probably introduced during the great westward migrations of other clans from that region. The Kachinas are believed to be the spirits of ancestors in some part, but the Kachina worship is remarkable for the diversity of beings that it includes, from the representation of a tribe as the Apache Kachina, to the nature beings as the sun, but many of them are not true Kachinas. (See Chapter X, Intiwa, p. 227.)

As might be anticipated from the fact that the Hopi are made up of clans and fragments of clans of various origin, each with its separate ideas and practices, their beliefs and customs as to the unseen world show a surprising variety and include those of lower and higher comparative rank. One idea, however, running through all the ceremonies gives a clue to their intention, obvious to any man of the Southwest, be his skin white or brown, the desire for rain so there shall be food and life. To wheedling, placating, or coercing the agencies which are thought to have power to bring rain all the energies of the Hopi are bent. Included among these petitions are prayers for other things that seem good and desirable, and the ceremonies also embrace such episodes as the installing of a chief, or the initiation of novitiates, the hunts, races, etc.

From these ceremonies, which fall under one or the other of the thirteen moons, we may select the more striking for a brief description of their more salient features.

No one can determine which ceremony begins the Hopi calendar, but perhaps the Soyaluna, celebrated at the last of December, should have the honor. Not because it nearly coincides with our Christmas, but because it marks the astronomical period known as the winter solstice, an important date which ought by right to begin the new year. Few strangers see the Soyaluna, but those who have braved the winter to be present say that it is one of the most remarkable of the Hopi ceremonies. All the kivas are in use by the various societies taking part, and while there is only a simple public “dance,” there are dramatic observances of surprising character going on in the meeting places.

When the faint winter sun descends into his “south house,” which is a notch in the Elden Mesa near Flagstaff, there is great activity in the Hopi pueblos, and as in our holiday season the people exchange greetings of good wishes and make presents of nakwakwoshi, consisting of a downy eagle feather and long pine needles tied to a cotton string. December is a sacred month when all occupations are limited and few games are allowed, so that the Soyal is at the center of a “holy truce,” a time of “peace on earth and good will to men,” but strangely celebrated by pagan sun-worshippers. For the Soyal is peculiarly a ceremony brought to Hopiland by the Patki people who came from the south where in past centuries they worshipped the god of day. The warrior societies of the pueblos have made this their great festival and are most prominent in its celebration.

In the principal kiva the customary elaborate ritual has been conducted for nine days by the Soyal fraternity, which is made up of members of the Agave, Horn, Singers, and New Fire societies. At one end of the kiva is placed the altar, consisting of a frame with parallel slats on which are tied bunches of grass, and in these bunches are thrust hundreds of gaudily painted artificial flowers. On the top are bows covered with cotton, representing snow clouds. Before the altar is a pile of corn laid up like a wall which has been collected in the village to be returned filled with fertility after the ceremony. Before the corn wall is a ridge of sand on which are set corn fetiches of stone and wood. The medicine bowl and many pipes, feather prayer-sticks, etc., are in position on the floor. There is also in the Walpi ceremony a performance of the Great Feathered Serpent who thrusts his grotesque head through an orifice in the screen and roars in answer to the prayers of the priests.

After a series of musical songs accompanied by rattles, flutes, whistles, and bull-roarers, and interspersed with prayers, there is an initiation of novices. Then enters the first bird man, elaborately costumed, whose postures and pantomime imitate a bird. Next come another bird man and the Soyaluna maid who perform a strange dance, then comes Eototo, the forerunner of the Kachinas, bearing corn, and this episode closes with a stirring dance of the priests around the fireplace accompanied with song.

Next occurs the fierce assault by members from the different kivas on the Soyal shield-bearer. With wild yells and dramatic action they thrust their shields against the sun shield as in deadly combat, but the sun shield-bearer forces them back and vanquishes them in turn. This remarkable drama represents perhaps the driving of the sun back into his northward path, so that he may bring life to the Hopi. The Soyal public dance is performed by a Kachina and two Kachina maids and is simple compared with the elaborate, multicolored pageant of other dances. At the close of the public ceremony the corn is distributed to the villagers, and for four days consecrated pahos are placed in the shrines, some for the dead and some for increase of flocks, corn, peaches, and all good things spiritual and temporal and the people feast and are happy.

In February comes a ceremony called Powamu with its introductory ceremony called Powalawu. Some expectancy of the coming activities in the fields is in the air and hence, as the name indicates, the ceremony relates to getting ready, preparing the fields, etc. One of the chief features is the sprouting of beans in the kivas and the distribution of the sprouts to various persons. Another is the initiation of youthful candidates, accompanied by severe flogging with yucca switches at the hands of ferocious Kachinas. The ceremony lasts nine days and is presided over by the chief of the Powamu fraternity assisted by the Kachina chief. In the kivas various rites are carried on and altars of bright-colored sand are made. The most interesting event is the recital of the myth of the Powamu on which the ceremony is based. This account is given by a costumed priest who represents the Kachina Muyingwa, the god of germs, and relates to the wanderings of certain clans and their arrival in Tusayan.

On the ninth and last day bands of different Kachinas roam the village, some furnishing amusement to the people and others bringing terror to naughty children, while still others go about distributing bean sprouts or on various errands. With this ceremony the joyous season of the Kachinas begins. Dr. Fewkes says:[4]

The origin of this feast dates from the adventures of a hero of the Ka-tci-nyu-muh, “Ka-tci-nia people.” The following legend of this people is preserved. While the group of gentes known by this name was on its travels, they halted near the San Francisco Mountains and built houses. During this moon the hero went out to hunt rabbits, and came to a region where there was no snow. There he saw another Ka-tci-na people dancing amidst beautiful gardens. He received melons from them, and carrying them home, told a strange story of a people who inhabited a country where there were flowering plants in midwinter. The hero and a comrade were sent back, and they stayed with these people, returning home, loaded with fruit, during February. They had learned the songs of those with whom they had lived, and taught them in the kib-va of their own people.

The Great Plumed Serpent who appears in the mythology of many American tribes is the chief actor in the Palulukong ceremony, which is held in March. It is a serpent drama in which the sun also has high honor. The actors are masked, as the ceremony is under the control of the Kachinas, who are adept at theatrical performances when represented by the fertile-minded Hopi. The clans have gathered in their respective kivas, where painting of masks and other paraphernalia, rehearsals, etc., have continued for several days. In the kiva which is for the nonce to be the theater, a crowd of visitors have assembled, and in the middle of the room two old kiva chiefs sit around the fire, which they feed with small twigs of greasewood to produce an uncertain, flickering light.

The arrival of the first group of actors is heralded by strange cries from without the kiva, and a ball of corn meal thrown down the hatchway is answered with invitations to enter. The fire is darkened by a blanket held over it, and the actors climb down the ladder and arrange their properties. The fire tenders drop the blankets, and on the floor is seen a miniature field of corn made by fastening sprouted corn in clay pedestals. Behind this corn field is a cloth screen decorated with figures of human beings, corn, clouds, lightning, etc., hung across the room, and along the screen six openings masked by flaps. On either side of the screen stand several masked men, one dressed as a woman holding a basket tray of meal and an ear of corn. A song begins and the actors dance to the music; the hoarse roar of a gourd horn resounds through the kiva, and instantly the flaps in the screen are drawn up and the heads of grotesque serpents with goggle eyes, feather crest, horn, fierce teeth, and red tongues, appear in the six openings. Farther and farther they seem to thrust themselves out, until four feet of the painted body can be seen. Then as the song grows louder the plumed snakes sway in time to the music, biting at each other and darting toward the actors. Suddenly they bend their heads down and sweep the imitation cornfield into a confused heap, then raise their wagging heads as before, and it is seen that the central serpent has udders and suckles the others. Amid the roars of the horn and great excitement offerings of meal and prayers are made to the plumed serpents. The actor dressed as a woman and who represents the mother of the Kachinas now presents the corn and meal to the serpents as food and offers his breasts to them.

Now the song diminishes, the effigies are drawn back, and the flaps with the sun symbol painted on them let down; the blankets are again held around the fire, the spectacle is dismantled, the actors file out, and the people among whom the corn hills have been distributed wait for other actors to appear, while foreign visitors wonder at the mechanical skill displayed in constructing and manipulating the effigies.

Now Tewan actors from Hano give a remarkable buffalo dance. They wear helmets, representing buffalo heads, and are clad in black sheep pelts. In their hands they hold zigzag lightning wands, and to the beat of a drum dance with characteristic postures; with them dance a man and boy dressed as eagles, who give forth shrill bird calls. This dance is an introduction from Rio Grande Pueblos. After them comes another group of actors clothed in ceremonial kilts and wearing helmet masks. They are called the “Stone War Club Kachinas” and with them are two men dressed as women; one, representing the Spider Woman, dances before the fire with graceful movements of the arms and body to the sound of singing and the beat of a drum. At the close of the dance she distributes seeds of corn, melons, and useful plants.

The fourth act is that of the Maiden Corn Grinders. First, two masked men bring down the ladder bundles containing two grinding slabs and grinding stones and arrange them on the floor. After them come two masked girls in elaborate ceremonial attire, followed in a little while by a line of masked dancers who form the chorus. At a signal the chorus begins to sing and posture while the maids grind corn in time with the song. They then leave the mills and dance in the middle of the room with graceful movements, pointing at the audience with ears of corn, while the bearers of the mill stones put pinches of meal in the mouths of the spectators.

The fifth act is somewhat like the first, except that there are two huge snakes, and several of the actors as chorus, with knobs of mud on their masks, wrestle with the snakes in a most realistic fashion and afford great entertainment.

After this act another set of performers gives a more remarkable serpent drama. Back of the field of corn on the floor are seen two large pottery vases, and, as if by magic, the covers of the vases fly back, and from them two serpents emerge, swoop down and overthrow the corn hills, struggle with each other and perform many gyrations, then withdraw into the vases. In the dim light of the kiva fire the cords by which the serpents are manipulated cannot be seen, and the realism of the act is wonderful. In other years the acts are even more startling, as when masked men wrestle with serpents which seem to try to coil about their victims. The actor thrusts one arm in the body of the snake in order to give these movements, while a false arm is tied to his shoulder. Sometimes also the corn-maid grinders are represented by joined figures surrounded by a framework. They are made to bend backward and forward and grind corn on small metates. At times they raise one hand and rub meal on their faces, like the Hopi corn grinders in daily life, while above them on the framework two birds carved from wood and painted are made to walk back and forth. On the day of the public dance the corn maids attended by many masked Kachinas grind in the dance plaza.

The Great Plumed Serpent who has control of all the waters of the earth and who frequents the springs, once, as the legend goes, caused a great flood and was appeased only by the sacrifice of a boy and girl. (See Myths.) The home of this monster was in the Red Land of the South, whence some of the Hopi clans came. Dr. J. Walter Fewkes believes that the great serpent of Mexican and Central American mythology is this same being, which shows the debt of the Hopi to the culture of the south.

Now the Kachinas throng the pueblos and a perfect carnival reigns with the joyful Hopi. There is a bewildering review of the hosts of the good things and bad, interwoven with countless episodes. Songs of great beauty, strange masked pageants, bright-tinted piki and Kachina bread attract powerfully three of the senses, and the Hopi enjoy the season to the full with the knowledge that the growing crops thrive toward perfection in the fields below the mesa.

The Kachinas are the deified spirits of the ancestors, who came from San Francisco Mountains and perhaps from the Rio Grande and other places, to visit their people. Their name means the “sitters,” because of the custom of burial in a sitting posture, and they resemble “The watchers sitting below” of Faust. They are believed to guard the interests of the Hopi and to intercede with the gods of rain and fertility. Their first coming is in December at the Soyal ceremony, and others continue to come till August when the great Niman, or Farewell Kachina, is celebrated with songs, dances, and feasting.

These deified spirits, or Kachinas, are personated by Indians who sometimes go outside the town, dress themselves in appropriate costume, present themselves at the gate, and are escorted through the streets with great fun and frolic. Every few days there is a new arrival and a fresh festival. Each year there is something new, and the Indians rack their inventive genius to produce the most startling masks and costumes. The kachinas admit of any character in the extensive Hopi mythology. Almost any character from a clown to a god can be introduced, and there are songs belonging to each. Every male Hopi takes some part in the kachinas, and all dates and distances are cancelled when these dances are in progress.

The kachina dances promote sociability among the pueblos. The Walpi boys, for instance, may give a representation of a kachina at a neighboring pueblo in return for a like expression of good-will on some other occasion. It goes without saying that there is a friendly rivalry among the pueblos, each striving to give the best dance. Like his white brothers, the Indian works harder at his amusement than at almost anything else.

These dances also show the cheerful Hopi at his best,—a true, spontaneous child of nature. They are the most characteristic ceremonies of the pueblos, most musical, spectacular, and pleasing. They are really more worthy of the attention of white people than the forbidding Snake Dance, which overshadows them by the element of horror.

In July the kachinas take their flight, and with a great culminating ceremony the Hopi bid them farewell. The Niman, or Farewell ceremony, begins about July 20th and lasts nine days, like the four great ceremonies between August and November, and like them also having a regular secret ritual in the kivas. Instead, however, of one day or so of public ceremony, the Niman furnishes many surprises and sallyings forth to the amusement of the populace. Delegates hurry on very long journeys for sacred water, pine boughs, and other essentials for the use of the priests. Sad indeed is the state of the Hopi that fate detains, and strong must be circumstances that prevent his reunion with his people at this great festival.

The Niman public dances which follow the eight days of kiva rites are imposing spectacles. The first takes place before sunrise and the second in the afternoon. There are many kachinas in rich costumes, wearing strange helmets and adorned in many striking ways. They carry planting sticks, hoes, and other emblematic paraphernalia. A number are dressed as female kachinas. These furnished an accompaniment to the song by rasping sheep’s scapulÆ over notched sticks placed on wooden sounding boxes. The male and female dancers stand in two lines and posture to the music, and the former turn around repeatedly during the dance. The children especially enjoy the dance, because the kachinas have brought great loads of corn, beans, and melons, and baskets of peaches, which are gifts for the young folks, and dolls, bows, and arrows are also given them. The dance is repeated in the afternoon in another plaza, after which the procession departs to carry offerings to a shrine outside the town and the drama of the Farewell kachina is over.

With the coming of the different clans, each having some ceremony peculiar to itself, and held at a certain time in the year, there must have been an adjustment of interests to fit the ceremonies to the moons, as we now see in the Hopi calendar. This may explain the fusing of the Snake-Antelope ceremonies and the two Flutes, which come in August, and the assignment of the two groups to alternate years. It is to be expected also that rain ceremonies would preponderate in the Southwest, and by mutual concessions the clans making up the Hopi would arrange their rites to fit in the month when the rain-makers are needed. Thus, the women’s ceremonies in September and October would not need to be disturbed, perhaps to the relief of the obscure Hopi who, like Julius CÆsar, reformed the calendar.

The Snake and Flute ceremonies of the Hopi are most widely known, since at this season of the year most travelers visit Tusayan, and besides, the Snake Dance, from its elements of horror, has overshadowed other ceremonies that are beautiful and interesting. Still, the Snake Dance is unique, and in its unfolding displays virile action and the compelling force of man over the lesser animate creation, giving to the drama a certain grandeur not observed in other ceremonies. No form of language is capable of describing it. Those who have seen it make it an unforgettable episode in their lives. Those who have made it a study declare that the mind of man has never conceived its equal.

When the Snake and Antelope fraternities descend into their respective kivas about the middle of August, the rites commence. The events that attract popular interest begin at once on the first day, when a party of Snake priests, painted and costumed and with snake whips and digging sticks in their hands, descend from the mesa to hunt snakes in the north quarter. These men, keenly watching for snake trails, eagerly search, beating the sage-brush and digging in holes that may harbor their quarry, thrusting their hands into such places with the utmost fearlessness. At sunset, after an exhausting day’s work, they return from the hunt with snakes, if they have been successful, which are transferred from their pouches into the snake jars. For four days the hunt goes on, each day to a different world quarter. If a snake is seen it is sprinkled with meal, and as it tries to escape, one of the hunters seizes it a few inches back of the head and places it in his pouch.

When the snakes, big and little, venomous and harmless, have been collected and stowed away in the jars like those used by the women to carry water, there comes the great event of snake washing. The priests assemble in the kiva and seat themselves on stone seats around the wall, holding in the hand a snake whip made of two eagle feathers secured to a short stick. On the floor dry sand has been spread out and on it a medicine bowl of water. The snakes have been placed in bags near by in the care of priests, and the snake washer, arrayed as a warrior, sets himself before the bowl, while back of him stand two men waving snake whips. A weird song begins, and the warrior thrusts his hand into the bag and draws out a handful of snakes, plunges them into the medicine water, and drops them on the sand. Then the snakes are rapidly passed to the warrior, who plunges them and casts them forth, while the priests wave their wands and sing, now low and now loudly and vehemently. Some of the snakes try to escape, but are herded on the sand field, which is for the purpose of drying them. The snakes are left on the floor for a few hours intervening before the public dance, a writhing mass, watched over by naked boys. These boys, barefoot and otherwise entirely naked, sit down on the stones and with their whips or naked hands, play with the snakes, permitting them to crawl over and under their feet, between their legs, handling them, using them as playthings, paying no more attention to the rattlesnakes than to the smallest harmless whip-snakes, creating a sight never to be forgotten. It must be admitted, however, that owing to the absolute abandon and recklessness used by the boys in handling these snakes, all of one’s preconceived notions of the dangerousness of the rattlesnake entirely disappear. Occasionally, one of the snakes, being tossed to a distance of four or five feet, apparently resents the insult, but before the snake has had sufficient time to coil, it will be straightened out by one of the other boys or tossed back to its original position, and so the sport (for it was nothing less to these boys) continue, as has been stated, for more than two hours.[5]

Dr. Fewkes thus describes the Walpi snake washing:

The Snake Priests, who stood by the snake jars which were in the east corner of the room, began to take out the reptiles, and stood holding several of them in their hands behind Su-pe-la, so that my attention was distracted by them. Su-pe-la then prayed, and after a short interval two rattlesnakes were handed him, after which venomous snakes were passed to the others, and each of the six priests who sat around the bowl held two rattlesnakes by the necks with their heads elevated above the bowl. A low noise from the rattles of the priests, which shortly after was accompanied by a melodious hum by all present, then began. The priests who held the snakes beat time up and down above the liquid with the reptiles, which, although not vicious, wound their bodies around the arms of the holders. The song went on and frequently changed, growing louder and wilder, until it burst forth into a fierce, blood-curdling yell, or war-cry. At this moment the heads of the snakes were thrust several times into the liquid, so that even parts of their bodies were submerged, and were then drawn out, not having left the hands of the priests, and forcibly thrown across the room upon the sand mosaic, knocking down the crooks and other objects placed about it. As they fell on the sand picture three Snake priests stood in readiness, and while the reptiles squirmed about or coiled for defense, these men with their snake whips brushed them back and forth in the sand of the altar. The excitement which accompanied this ceremony cannot be adequately described. The low song, breaking into piercing shrieks, the red-stained singers, the snakes thrown by the chiefs, and the fierce attitudes of the reptiles as they lashed on the sand mosaic, made it next to impossible to sit calmly down, and quietly note the events which followed one after another in quick succession. The sight haunted me for weeks afterwards, and I can never forget this wildest of all the aboriginal rites of this strange people, which showed no element of our present civilization. It was a performance which might have been expected in the heart of Africa rather than in the American Union, and certainly one could not realize that he was in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. The low weird song continued while other rattlesnakes were taken in the hands of the priests, and as the song rose again to the wild war-cry, these snakes were also plunged into the liquid and thrown upon the writhing mass which now occupied the place of the altar. Again and again this was repeated until all the snakes had been treated in the same way, and reptiles, fetiches, crooks and sand were mixed together in one confused mass. As the excitement subsided and the snakes crawled to the corners of the kiva, seeking vainly for protection, they were pushed back in the mass, and brushed together in the sand in order that their bodies might be thoroughly dried. Every snake in the collection was thus washed, the harmless varieties being bathed after the venomous. In the destruction of the altar by the reptiles the snake ti-po-ni stood upright until all had been washed, and then one of the priests turned it on its side, as a sign that the observance had ended. The low, weird song of the Snake men continued, and gradually died away until there was no sound but the warning rattle of the snakes, mingled with that of the rattles in the hands of the chiefs, and finally the motion of the snake whips ceased, and all was silent.

On the previous day the Antelope society had celebrated its race and public dance, which duplicate those of the Snake society, except that the former take first place, and instead of snakes, the priests dance about, the leader holding a bundle of cornstalks in the mouth.

Now comes the stirring dawn race of the Snake society. The race is from a distant spring to the mesa and is full of excitement, filling one with surprise at the endurance of the runners. The winner will arrive at the kiva, breathing more freely, perhaps, than usual, but showing almost no traces of his strenuous efforts, and will wait quietly for the award of the prize. In the kiva meanwhile the priests have been enacting a drama of the Snake legend.

After a few hours, when the sun is getting low, the Antelope priests file out and after circling the plaza stand in line awaiting the Snake priests, who advance with tragic strides. They circle the plaza three times, each stamping on a plank in front of the cottonwood bower, kisi, to notify the denizens of the underworld that a ceremony in their honor is progressing. They face the Antelope chorus, the rattles tremble with a sound like the warning of the rattlesnake, and a deep, low-toned chant begins like a distant storm. The chant increases in volume, the lines sway, then undulate backward and forward, and at last, in a culminating burst of the chant, the Snake men form in groups of three and dance around the plaza with a strange step like a restrained leap. The snakes have been placed in the kisi in care of the passer hidden among the boughs. As the trios in succession arrive before the kisi the carrier drops to his knees, secures a snake which he grasps in his mouth, rises and dances around in a circular path four times, when the snake is dropped to the ground and is picked up with lightning rapidity by the third member of the trio who retains the squirming reptile in his hands. Thus these groups of demons circle until all the snakes have been carried. The chant ceases; a priest draws a cloud symbol in white meal on the rock floor of the mesa, and with wild action the gatherers throw the snakes on the meal; a fierce scramble ensues, and in a moment one sees the priests running down the trails to deposit their brothers among the rocks a mile or so away.

After all, no ceremony goes on in Hopiland without the aid of the gentler sex. While the dance has focussed the attention of every eye a group of maids and matrons, neat and clean as to hair and costume, and holding trays of sacred meal, have sprinkled the dancers and snakes as they passed by. The Antelopes take up their line, march around the plaza the required number of times, file away to their kiva, and the public dance is over. Those who wish, however, go to the mesa side to see the effects of the powerful emetic taken by the Snake priests as a purification. At Walpi, the old Snake Woman, Saalako, brews the medicine, and she knows how many black bettles must be stewed in this concoction of herbs. Last, but not least, comes the feast consumed with the appetite of youth amid general rejoicing if the August rain cumuli burst over the fields. For several days after the Snake Dance the young and not too old play jolly comes the feast consumed with the appetite of youth, childlike simplicity.

A bite from a venomous snake so rarely occurs that there is no eye witness, so far as is known, to such happening. The fangs are not extracted, nor are the snakes stupefied. Careful handling and the herding of the reptiles with others of their kind before the ceremony perhaps give the explanation.

The Snake Ceremony, whose wild scenes rack the nerves of the onlooker, is a prayer for rain and is based on a legend whose sentiment might be applauded if the other passive actors were not subject to an instinctive enmity. Snakes are blood brothers of the Hopi Snake clan.

The legend relates that a youth, having the curiosity to know where the waters flowed, embarked in a hollow log, closed except a small orifice, and went down the Great Colorado to its mouth, thus antedating the perilous feat of Major Powell by a long time! Here he found the Spider Woman, who prompted him in his dealings with the people living there. After many strange adventures, during which he was taught the rites now practiced by the Snake society, he won the daughter of a Snake chief and brought her to his country. The first fruits of this union were snakes, who bit the Hopi and who were driven away on this account. Later, children were human, and with them originated the Snake clan, whose wanderings brought them at last to Walpi; and tradition affirms that they were among the first arrivals there.

The Flute Ceremony, which alternates with the Snake-Antelope Ceremony, is most pleasing and interesting. Visitors to Hopiland in August of the proper year are always charmed with the dramatic performance and beautiful songs of the Flute society. In Walpi there is only one priesthood of the Flute, but in other pueblos of the Middle Mesa and in Oraibi there are two, one of the Blue Flute and the other of the Gray Flute.

On the first day the sand altar is made and at night the songs are begun. Within the kiva the interminable rites go on, and daily the cycle of songs accompanied with flutes is rehearsed. A messenger clad in an embroidered kilt and anointed with honey runs with flowing hair to deposit prayer-sticks at the shrines, encircling the fields in his runs and coming nearer the pueblo on each circuit. During the seventh and eighth days a visit is made to three important springs where ceremonies are held, and on the return of the priests they are received by an assemblage of the Bear and Snake societies, the chiefs of which challenge them and tell them that if they are good people, as they claim, they can bring rain.

After an interesting interchange of ceremonies the Flute priests return to their kiva to prepare for the public dance on the morrow. When at 3 A.M. the belt of Orion is at a certain place in the heavens the priests file into the plaza, where a cottonwood bower has been erected over the shrine called the entrance to the underworld. Here the priests sing, accompanied with flutes, the shrine is ceremonially opened and prayer-sticks placed within, and they return to the kiva. At some of the pueblos there is a race up the mesa at dawn on the ninth day as in other ceremonies.

On the evening of the ninth day the Flute procession forms and winds down the trail to the spring in order: a leader, the Snake maiden and two Snake youths, the priests, and in the rear a costumed warrior with bow and whizzer. At the spring they sit on the north side of the pool, and as one of the priests plays a flute the others sing, while one of their number wades into the spring, dives under the water, and plants a prayer-stick in the muddy bottom. Then taking a flute he again wades into the spring and sounds it in the water to the four cardinal points. Meanwhile sunflowers and cornstalks have been brought to the spring by messengers. Each priest places the sunflowers on his head and each takes two cornstalks in his hands, and the procession, two abreast, forms to ascend the mesa. A priest draws on the trail with white corn meal a line and across it three cloud symbols. The Flute children throw the offerings they hold in their hands upon the symbols and advance to the symbols, followed by the priests who sing to the sound of the flutes. The children pick the offerings from the ground with sticks held in the hand, and the same performance is repeated till they stand again in the plaza on the mesa before the cottonwood bower, when they sing melodious songs, then disperse.

The Flute legend, of which the ceremony is a dramatization, relates that the Bear and Snake people in early times lived along the Walpi. The Horn and Flute people came that way and halted at a spring. Not knowing whether other people lived in their neighborhood, they sent out a spy who returned and reported that he had seen traces of other peoples. The Flute people set forth to find them, and so they came to the Walpi houses, halting at the foot of the mesa and moving up the trail, as in the ceremony, with songs and the music of flutes.

The Walpi people had drawn a line of meal across the trail, closing it from all comers, and demanded whence the Flutes were going and what they desired. Then the Flute chief said:

“We are of your blood, Hopi. Our hearts are good and our speech straight. We carry on our backs the tabernacle of the Flute Altar. We can cause rain to fall.” Four times they challenged the Flute people as they stood before the line of meal and four times this reply was given. Then the Walpians erased the meal barrier and the Flutes passed into the pueblo, set up their altar, sang the cloud-compelling songs and brought the welcome rain. Then the Bear and Snake chiefs said, “Surely your chief shall be one of our chiefs.”

It will be seen that this legend, collected by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, is enacted in the ceremony just described. And the Flute priests also think they are more successful rain makers than the Snake-Antelope priests, and do not hesitate to so declare.[6]

In the September moon the Hopi women of five of the pueblos hold a celebration of their own, which is not the least interesting ceremony in the calendar. It is called the Lalakonti, and like the other ceremonies of this part of the year extends over nine days. Sometimes it is called the Basket Dance—from the great use made of the sacred plaques in the ceremony—a quite appropriate use, since these baskets are peculiarly the product of women’s taste and skill. The details of the kiva rites, such as paho making, the construction of a sand altar, initiation of novitiates, dispatching of messengers, songs, etc., need not be entered into, since they belong to all the ceremonies and have much in common.

On the morning of the fourth day, if one is up at the faintest dawn he may see a procession emerging from the kiva and marching single-file to deposit, with much ceremony, offerings at a shrine. At six in the evening of the eighth day a picturesque procession winds down the trail among the rocks to the sacred spring, where pahos are planted and rites performed. Then comes the stirring event, the race up the trail to the kiva. Under the supervision of an old priest an even start is made and the women run up the trail. As Hopi women in contrast with the men are stout, the chances are that a lithe, clean-limbed young girl will win the goal over her breathless sisters.

At daybreak on the ninth day the Lalakonti race is eagerly awaited by the spectators and by the Lakone maid, who stands gorgeously costumed, basket in her hand, on the trail by which the runners will come. As the dawn brightens, they may be seen, mere specks on the trail over the plain, and soon they run up the trail to the villages amid great excitement and applause for the winner. The priestesses have marched to the dance plaza, where they form a circle, and as the racers come they rush through the circle and this act of the drama is over. Later in the day comes the public dance, when the circle of priestesses, each carrying a basket plaque, again forms in the plaza and begins singing in chorus. The baskets are held in the two hands with concave side to the front, and as the song continues the women sway their bodies and raise the baskets slowly, first to one breast, then to the other, and finally bring them downward to a line with the hips. In a short time two gorgeously decorated maidens, wearing ceremonial blankets and having bundles on their backs, advance within the circle. All interest is centered in them as they untie their bundles and stand for a moment at opposite sides of the circle, holding up in their hands a basket, and then crossing back and forth and exchanging places. All at once they throw their baskets high in the air and into the crowd of young men. Then begins a titanic struggle that would put a football melee in the shade. Fiercely they wrestle, till out of the squirming, perspiring, now ragged mass emerges the lucky young man with a much damaged basket for his prize. Sometimes these struggles last a long time, but there is no slugging and no blood is spilt, and there is a great deal of jollity. This closes the Lalakonti ceremony and the celebrants return to their homes to take up their ordinary avocations. Supela is one of the two men who aid the women in the Lalakonti ceremony, and he also has an important place in the Mamzrauti ceremony, described below, of which his wife, Saalako, is the chief priestess.

The Mamzrauti ceremony, held at the October moon, is a harvest dance, and fortunate are the Hopi when they can celebrate it with joyful heart and abundant feasting. The Mamzrau resembles in many points the Lalakonti, but the differences are more important. A sand picture is made, a frame of painted slabs erected back of it, and fetiches placed around the medicine bowl and sand picture. Novices are initiated in a tedious ceremony lasting through several days, and messengers are sent to springs and shrines to deposit prayer-sticks. There are ceremonial head washings as in other ceremonies, and various secret rites are performed in the kiva. On the fourth day the final initiation of the novices takes place, and the priestesses dance around a pile of peaches on the kiva floor, and, what is more, enjoy a good feast of this prized fruit. On the sixth day a public dance is held by actors who imitate certain kachinas, and on the seventh day, just at sunset, the priestesses, some disguised as men, dance the spirited buffalo dance. On the eighth day, disguised as clowns, they parade around the pueblo and are attacked by the men who throw water none too clean and various unpleasant things upon them, and after much noise and fun, the women run home.

There is no dawn race on the morning of the ninth day, but early the priestesses have donned their costumes and assemble in the court where they dance and throw green cornstalks among the men who crowd around. Later in the day comes the concluding dance, when the celebrants, holding gaily painted slabs of wood in each hand, march into the plaza and form a horseshoe figure with the opening toward the east. From the kiva now come two women dressed as men, having bows and arrows in their hands. As they advance they throw before them a package of corn husks and shoot their arrows at it, the act representing lightning striking and fertilizing the fields. Thus they advance by stages to the circle of dancers and throw the bundle in their midst, shooting at it, then shooting two arrows in the air they return to the kiva. In a few minutes they appear again, carrying trays of dumplings of sweet corn meal which they toss one by one to the eager spectators. Then the circle of dancers disperse, but again and again throughout the day, the distributors return to dispense their offerings. At sunset, the sand pictures, fetiches, and altar slabs are removed by Saalako and the Mamzrau is over.

At night there is a serenade by two parties of men, each party singing loudly as though to drown the voices of the other. This serenade is said to be in honor of the women for their pious celebration of the Mamzrau.[7]

[7] The Mamzrauti: A Tusayan Ceremony, by J. Walter Fewkes and A.M. Stephen, American Anthropologist, Vol. 5, No. 3, July, 1892.