Page 173 - TheHopiIndians

MESA FOLK OF HOPILAND 165
women from the houses drench them with water and
shout rude jests. At night there are patrols of the
celebrants, who ring cowbells or beat on tin cans and
make night hideous. The novices take their nocturnal
rounds at breakneck speed led by a priest, somewhat
in the way of a college initiation. These poor fellows
have a hard life of fasting and vigils; one of their
ordeals is to go to a mountain about fifteen miles away
to dig soap root and white earth with which they
return gaunt and worn.
This ceremony presents more life and public exhi
bition than almost any other in Hopiland, hence a de
scription of it in brief compass is impossible. To an
onlooker it must exhibit a chaos of acts by the four
powerful fraternities that perform it, a bewildering
pageant by day and alarms and sallying forth by
night, with rites also in progress in all the kivas.
The meaning of the New Fire Ceremony is obscure,
but it seems in our present knowledge to be a prayer
to the Germ God for fertility of human beings, animals,
and crops. The Germ Gods, earth gods, and fire gods
are to be placated and honored by these rites, and no
doubt the new fire ceremonies of all times and peoples
were held with such intent, for the relation of life and
fire was a philosophic observation of the remote past.
With this ceremony the round of the year has been
finished and the Hopi are ready to begin again.7
i The Naac-nai-ya. By J. Walter Fewkes and A. M.
Stephen; Jour. American Folk-Lore, Vol. 5, 1892. The Tusa