Part 8

There are many variations in the migration myths of the Snake people, but the most colorful version the writer has encountered is the one given to A.M. Stephen, fifty years ago, by the then oldest member of the Snake fraternity. A picturesque extract only is given here.

It begins: "At the general dispersal, my people lived in snake skins, each family occupying a separate snake-skin bag, and all were hung on the end of a rainbow, which swung around until the end touched Navajo Mountain, where the bags dropped from it; and wherever their bags dropped, there was their house. After they arranged their bags they came out from them as men and women, and they then built a stone house which had five sides.

"A brilliant star arose in the southwest, which would shine for a while and then disappear. The old men said, 'Beneath that star there must be people,' so they determined to travel toward it. They cut a staff and set it in the ground and watched till the star reached its top, then they started and traveled as long as the star shone; when it disappeared they halted. But the star did not shine every night, for sometimes many years elapsed before it appeared again. When this occurred, our people built houses during their halt; they built both round and square houses, and all the ruins between here and Navajo Mountain mark the places where our people lived. They waited till the star came to the top of the staff again, then they moved on, but many people were left in those houses and they followed afterward at various times. When our people reached Wipho (a spring a few miles north from Walpi) the star disappeared and has never been seen since."

There is more of the legend, but quoted here are only a few closing lines relative to the coming of the Lenbaki (the Flute Clan):

"The old men would not allow them to come in until Masauwu (god of the face of the earth) appeared and declared them to be good Hopitah. So they built houses adjoining ours and that made a fine large village. Then other Hopitah came in from time to time, and our people would say, 'Build here, or build there,' and portioned the land among the new-comers."

The foregoing tradition furnishes the answer to two things one asks in Hopiland. First, why have these people, who by their traditions wandered from place to place since the beginning of time, only building and planting for a period sometimes short, sometimes a few generations, but not longer, they believe--why have they remained in their present approximate location for eight hundred years and perhaps much longer? The answer is their story of the star that led them for "many moves and many stops" but which never again appeared, to move them on, after they reached Walpi.

The second point is: The Flute Dance, which is still held on the years alternating with the Snake Dance, is of what significance? It is the commemoration of the arrival of this Lenbaki group, a branch of the Horn people, and the performance of their special magic for rain-bringing, just as they demonstrated it to the original inhabitants of Walpi, by way of trial, before they were permitted to settle there.

=Flute Ceremony and Tradition=

This Flute ceremony is one of the loveliest and most impressive in the whole Hopi calendar. And because it is one which most clearly illustrates this thesis, some detail of the ceremony will be given.

From the accounts of many observers that of Hough has been chosen: "On the first day the sand altar is made and at night 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 3:00 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, two Snake youths, the priests, and in the rear a costumed warrior with bow and whizzer. At the spring they sit on the south 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 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 a line on the trail with white corn meal and across it three cloud symbols. The Flute children throw the offerings they hold in their hands upon the symbols, followed by the priests who sing to the sound of the flutes.

--Courtesy Arizona State Museum.]

"The children pick the offerings from the ground with sticks held in their hands, and the same performance is repeated till they stand again in the plaza on the mesa before the cottonwood bower, where they sing melodious songs then disperse."

The foregoing description of Hough's is an account of the Walpi ceremony, where we find only one Flute fraternity. Each of the other villages has two fraternities, the Blue Flute and the Drab Flute. The Flute Ceremony at Mishongnovi is perhaps the most impressive example of this pageant as given by the double fraternity. Dr. Byron Cummings reports this Mishongnovi ceremony as having several interesting variations from the Walpi report given above. (See Figure 5.)

--Courtesy Arizona State Museum.]

On the ninth day women were observed sweeping the trail to the spring with meticulous care, in preparation for the double procession which came down at about 1:30 in the afternoon.

All the costuming was done at the spring--body painting, putting on of ceremonial garments and arranging of hair.

The fathers of the Flute maidens brushed and arranged their hair for them and put on their blankets. If a girl had no father, her uncle did this for her. There were two Flute Maids and a Flute Boy (See Figure 6) who walked between them, in each of the two fraternities. Even this ceremonial costuming was accompanied by solemn singing.

When all was ready the priests sat on the edge of the pool with their legs hanging over, and the two maids and the boy sat behind them on a terrace of the bank. The Blue Flute fraternity occupied one side of the pool and the Drab Flute fraternity another. Many songs were sung to the strange, plaintive accompaniment of the flute players. After a while an old priest waded into the pool and walked around it in ever-narrowing circles till he reached the center, where he sank into the water and disappeared for a dramatically long moment and came up with a number of ceremonial objects in his hands, including a gourd bottle filled with water from the depths of the spring.

It was late afternoon by the time all the songs had been sung, and evening when the two processions had finished their ceremonial ascent to the mesa top, pausing again and again as the old priest went ahead and drew his symbolic barrier of meal and the three rain clouds across the path, which were to be covered with the pahos of the Flute children, then taken up and moved on to the next like symbol. The old priest led the procession, the three children behind him, then the flute players, followed by the priests bearing emblems, and the priest with the bull roarer at the end of the line. Each fraternity preserved its own formation. Having reached the village plaza they marched to the Kisa and deposited their pahos and ceremonial offerings, then dispersed. The solemnity of the long ritual, the weird chant and the plaintive accompaniment of the flutes running through the whole ceremony, while at the spring, coming up the hill, and to the last act before the Kisa, leaves the imprint of its strange musical vibration long after the scene has closed.

The legend back of this ceremony is a long account of the migrations of the Horn and Flute people. It relates that when they at last reached Walpi, they halted at a spring and sent a scout ahead to see if people were living there. He returned and reported that he had seen traces of other people. So the Flute people went forth to find them. When they came in sight of the houses of Walpi, they halted at the foot of the mesa, then began moving up the trail in ceremonial procession, with songs and the music of the flutes.

Now the Bear and Snake people who lived in Walpi drew a line of meal across the trail, a warning understood by many primitives, and challenged the new-comers as to who they were, where they were going, and what they wanted. 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 the demand was repeated, as the Flute people stood respectfully before the barrier of meal, and four times did their chief make the same reply. Then the Walpis erased the line of meal and the Flute people entered the pueblo, set up their altars and demonstrated their rain magic by singing their ceremonial Flute songs which resulted in bringing the needed rain. Then said the Bear and Snake chiefs, "Surely your chief shall be one of our chiefs."

Thus we see that the Flute Dance as given today is a dramatization of this legend. Dr. Fewkes, who collected this legend, tells us that the Flute fraternity claims to be even more successful rain-makers than the world-famous Snake fraternity.

Dr. Monsen tells of seeing the Flute ceremony at Mishongnovi, a good many years ago, and of the deeply religious feeling that pervaded the whole scene. His words are descriptive of a dramatic moment at the close of the day, when the procession had at last reached the public plaza on top of the mesa.

--Photo by Lockett.]

"By this time it was nearly dark, but the ceremony went on in the center of the plaza where other mysterious symbols were outlined on the rocky floor with the strewn corn meal, and numbers of supplementary chants were sung until night closed down entirely and the moon appeared.... Then came something so extraordinary that I am aware that it will sound as if I were drawing on the rich stores of my imagination, for the coincidence which closed the festival.