Page 160 - TheHopiIndians

152 MESA FOLK OF HOPILAND

out, not having left the hands of the priests, and for
cibly 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 fol
lowed 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 con
tinued 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 thor