Part 9

"But all I can say is that to my unutterable astonishment, it happened exactly as I tell it. At a certain stage in this part of the ceremony there was a pause. No one left the plaza, but every one stood as still as a graven image, and not a sound broke the hush, apparently of breathless expectancy. The stillness was so unearthly that it became oppressive, and a few white friends who were with me began to urge in whispers that we leave the plaza as all was evidently at an end, and go back to our camp below the mesa, when suddenly there rang out such a wild, exultant shout of unrestrained, unmeasured rejoicing as only Indians can give in moments of supreme religious exaltation--raindrops had splashed on devout, upturned faces.

"Their prayers had been answered. The spell of the drouth-evil had been broken, and the long strain of the solemn ceremonial gave place to such a carnival of rejoicing as it seldom falls to the lot of civilized man to see....

"From the white man's point of view, this answer to prayer was, of course, the merest coincidence, but not all the power of church or government combined could convince the Hopi that their god had not heard them ... that their devotion to the ancient faith had brought relief from famine, and life to themselves and their flocks and herds."

The present-day Hopi, including the most intelligent and best educated of them, will tell you, that all their important dances and ceremonials follow faithfully the old traditions, and are still believed to be efficacious and necessary to the welfare of the people. And this has been the conviction of a majority of the scientific observers who have studied them.

=Other Dances=

There is a very definite calendar arrangement of these ceremonials, some variation in the different villages, but no deviation in the order and essential details of the main dances.

In December comes the Soyaluna, or winter solstice ceremony, to turn the sun back from his path of departure and insure his return with length of days to the Indian country. Good-will tokens are exchanged, not unlike our idea of Christmas cards, at the end of the ceremony; they are prayer tokens which are planted with prayers for health and prosperity. The kiva rituals are rich in symbolism and last eight days, if young men are to be initiated, otherwise four. The public dance at the end is a masked pageant.

In January comes the Buffalo Dance, with masks representing buffalo, deer, mountain sheep, and the other big game animals. Its chief characters are the Hunter and the Buffalo Mother, or Mother of all big game. A prayer for plentiful big game is the idea of this dance.

In February the Powamu, "bean sprouting," ceremony occurs, with very elaborate ritual signifying consecration of fields for planting. Various masks and symbolic costumes are used, and the children's initiation is accompanied with a ceremonial "flogging"--really a switching by kachinas. Dr. Dorsey considers this the most colorful of all Hopi ceremonies and says that nowhere else on earth can one see in nine days such a wealth of religious drama, such a pantheon of the gods represented by masked and costumed actors, such elaborate altars and beautiful sand mosaics, nor songs and myths sung and recited of such obvious archaic character, containing many old words and phrases whose meaning is no longer known even to the Hopi themselves.

March brings the Palululong, "Great Plumed Serpent," a masked and elaborately costumed mystery play given in the kiva. This shows more of the dramatic ability and ingenuity of this people than any other of their ceremonies; the mechanical representation of snakes as actors being one of its astonishing features.

One of the very pretty social dances is the Butterfly Dance, given during the summer by the young people of marriageable age. Costumes are colorful and tall wooden headdresses or tablets are worn. Figure 7 shows a Hopi girl acquaintance photographed just at the close of a Butterfly Dance that the writer witnessed in the summer of 1932 at Shungopovi. (See Figure 8.)

This dance is really a very popular social affair, a sort of coming out party adopted from the Rio Grande Pueblos a good many years ago.

=The Snake Myth and the Snake Dance=

The Snake Dance of the Hopi is, of course, the best known and most spectacular of their ceremonies, and comparatively few white people have seen any other.

One hears from tourists on every hand, "Oh, they used to believe in these things, but of course they know better now, and at any rate it's all a commercial racket, a side show to attract tourists!"

--Photo by Lockett.]

Anyone who says this has seen little and thought less. The Hopi women make up extra supplies of baskets and pottery to offer for sale at the time of the Snake Dance because they know many tourists are coming to buy them, otherwise they get no revenue from the occasion. No admission is charged, and the snake priests themselves seriously object to having Hopi citizens charge anything for the use of improvised seats of boxes, etc., on the near-by house tops.

The writer has seen tourists so crowd the roofs of the Hopi homes surrounding the dance plaza that she feared the roofs would give way, and has also observed that the resident family was sometimes crowded out of all "ring-side" seats. No wonder the small brown man of the house has in some cases charged for the seats. What white man would not? Yet the practice is considered unethical by the Hopi themselves and is being discontinued.

We know that this weird, pagan Snake Dance was performed with deadly earnestness when white men first penetrated the forbidding wastelands that surround the Hopi. And we have every reason to believe that it has gone on for centuries, always as a prayer to the gods of the underworld and of nature for rain and the germination of their crops.

The writer has observed these ceremonies in the various Hopi villages for the past twenty years, some with hundreds of spectators from all over the world, others in more remote villages, with but a mere handful of outsiders present. She is personally convinced that the Snake Dance is no show for tourists but a deeply significant religious ceremony performed definitely for the faithful fulfillment of traditional magic rites that have, all down the centuries, been depended upon to bring these desert-dwellers the life-saving rain and insure their crops. They have long put their trust in it, and they still do so.

Are there any unbelievers? Yes, to be sure; but not so many as you might think. There are unbelievers in the best, of families, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Hopi, but the surprising thing is that there are so many believers, at least among the Hopi.

The Snake Dance, so-called, is the culmination of an eight-days' ceremonial, an elaborate prayer for rain and for crops. Possibly something of the significance of parts of its complicated ritual may have been forgotten, for some of our thirst for knowledge on these points goes unquenched, in spite of the courteous explanations the Hopi give when our queries are sufficiently courteous and respectful to deserve answers. And possibly some of the things we ask about are "not for the public" and may refer to the secret rituals that take place in the kivas, as in connection with many of their major ceremonials.

We do know that the dramatization of their Snake Myth constitutes part of the program. This myth has many variations. The writer, personally, treasures the long story told her by Dr. Fewkes, years ago, and published in the Journal of American Ethnology and Archaeology, Vol. IV., 1894, pages 106-110. But here shall be given the much shorter and very adequate account of Dr. Colton, as abbreviated from that of A.M. Stephen:

"To-ko-na-bi was a place of little rain, and the corn was weak. Tiyo, a youth of inquiring mind, set out to find where the rain water went to. This search led him into the Grand Canyon. Constructing a box out of a hollow cottonwood log, he gave himself to the waters of the Great Colorado. After a voyage of some days, the box stopped on the muddy shore of a great sea. Here he found the friendly Spider Woman who, perched behind his ear, directed him on his search. After a series of adventures, among which he joined the sun in his course across the sky, he was introduced into the kiva of the Snake people, men dressed in the skins of snakes. The Snake Chief said to Tiyo, 'Here we have an abundance of rain and corn; in your land there is but little; fasten these prayers in your breast; and these are the songs that you will sing and these are the prayer-sticks that you will make; and when you display the white and black on your body the rain will come.' He gave Tiyo part of everything in the kiva as well as two maidens clothed in fleecy clouds, one for his wife, and one as a wife for his brother. With this paraphernalia and the maidens, Tiyo ascended from the kiva. Parting from the Spider Woman, he gained the heights of To-ko-na-bi. He now instructed his people in the details of the Snake ceremony so that henceforth his people would be blessed with rain. The Snake Maidens, however, gave birth to Snakes which bit the children of To-ko-na-bi, who swelled up and died. Because of this, Tiyo and his family were forced to emigrate and on their travels taught the Snake rites to other clans."

Most of the accounts tell us that later only human children were born to the pair, and these became the ancestors of the Snake Clan who, in their migrations, finally reached Walpi, where we now find them, the most spectacular rain-makers in the world.

Another fragment of the full Snake legend must be given here to account for what Dr. Fewkes considers the most fearless episode of the Snake Ceremonial--the snake washing:

"On the fifth evening of the ceremony and for three succeeding evenings low clouds trailed over To-ko-na-bi, and Snake people from the underworld came from them and went into the kivas and ate corn pollen for food, and on leaving were not seen again. Each of four evenings brought a new group of Snake people, and on the following morning they were found in the valleys metamorphosed into reptiles of all kinds. On the ninth morning the Snake Maidens said: 'We understand this. Let the Younger Brothers (The Snake Society) go out and bring them all in and wash their heads, and let them dance with you.'"

Thus we see in the ceremony an acknowledgment of the kinship of the snakes with the Hopi, both having descended from a common ancestress. And since the snakes are to take part in a religious ceremony, of course they must have their heads washed or baptized in preparation, exactly as must every Hopi who takes part in any ceremony. The meal sprinkled on the snakes during the dance and at its close is symbolic of the Hopi's prayers to the underworld spirits of seed germination; and thus the Elder Brothers bear away the prayers of the people and become their messengers to the gods, to whom the Elder Brothers are naturally closer, being in the ground, than are the Younger Brothers, who live above ground.