THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE
On our trip we not only traversed the domains of two totally different
and very interesting and advanced Indian tribes, but we also met all
sorts and conditions of white men. One of the latter, by the way,
related an anecdote which delighted me because of its unexpected racial
implications. The narrator was a Mormon, the son of an English
immigrant. He had visited Belgium as a missionary. While there he went
to a theatre to hear an American Negro minstrel troupe; and, happening
to meet one of the minstrels in the street, he hailed him with "Halloo,
Sam!" to which the pleased and astonished minstrel cordially responded:
"Well, for de Lawd's sake! Who'd expect to see a white man in this
country?"
I did not happen to run across any Mormons at the snake-dance; but it
seemed to me that almost every other class of Americans was
represented--tourists, traders, cattlemen, farmers, government
officials, politicians, cowboys, scientists, philanthropists, all kinds
of men and women. We were especially glad to meet the assistant
commissioner of Indian affairs, Mr. Abbot, one of the most useful public
servants in Uncle Sam's employ. Mr. Hubbell, whose courtesy toward us
was unwearied, met us; and we owed our comfortable quarters to the
kindness of the Indian agent and his assistant. As I rode in I was
accosted by Miss Natalie Curtis, who has done so very much to give to
Indian culture its proper position. Miss Curtis's purpose has been to
preserve and perpetuate all the cultural development to which the Indian
has already attained--in art, music, poetry, or manufacture--and,
moreover, to endeavor to secure the further development and adaptation
of this Indian culture so as to make it, what it can undoubtedly be
made, an important constituent element in our national cultural
development.
Among the others at the snake-dance was Geoffrey O'Hara, whom Secretary
of the Interior Lane has wisely appointed instructor of native Indian
music. Mr. O'Hara's purpose is to perpetuate and develop the wealth of
Indian music and poetry--and ultimately the rhythmical dancing that goes
with the music and poetry. The Indian children already know most of the
poetry, with its peculiarly baffling rhythm. Mr. O'Hara wishes to
appoint special Indian instructors of this music, carefully chosen, in
the schools; as he said: "If the Navajo can bring with him into
civilization the ability to preserve his striking and bewildering
rhythm, he will have done in music what Thorpe, the Olympic champion,
did in athletics." Miss Curtis and Mr. O'Hara represent the effort to
perpetuate Indian art in the life of the Indian to-day, not only for his
sake, but for our own. This side of Indian life is entirely unrevealed
to most white men; and there is urgent need from the standpoint of the
white man himself of a proper appreciation of native art. Such
appreciation may mean much toward helping the development of an original
American art for our whole people.
No white visitor to Walpi was quite as interesting as an Indian visitor,
a Navajo who was the owner and chauffeur of the motor in which Mr.
Hubbell had driven to Walpi. He was an excellent example of the Indian
who ought to be given the chance to go to a non-reservation school--a
class not perhaps as yet relatively very large, but which will grow
steadily larger. He had gone to such a school; and at the close of his
course had entered the machine-shops of the Santa Fé and Northeastern
Railway--I think that was the name of the road--staying there four
years, joining the local union, going out with the other men when they
struck, and having in all ways precisely the experience of the average
skilled mechanic. Then he returned to the reservation, where he is now a
prosperous merchant, running two stores; and he purchased his automobile
as a matter of convenience and of economy in time, so as to get quickly
from one store to the other, as they are far apart. He is not a
Christian, nor is his wife; but his children have been baptized in the
Catholic Church. Of course, such a prosperous career is exceptional for
an Indian, as it would be exceptional for a white man; but there were
Hopi Indians whom we met at the dance, both storekeepers and farmers,
whose success had been almost as great. Among both the Navajos and Hopis
the progress has been marked during the last thirty or forty years, and
is more rapid now than ever before, and careers such as those just
mentioned will in their essence be repeated again and again by members
of both tribes in the near future. The Hopis are so far advanced that
most of them can now fully profit by non-reservation schools. For large
sections of the Navajos the advance must be slower. For these the agency
school is the best school, and their industrial training should
primarily be such as will fit them for work in their own homes, and for
making these homes cleaner and better.
Of course, the advance in any given case is apt to be both fitful and
one-sided--the marvel is that it is not more so. Moreover, the advance
is sometimes taking place when there seems dishearteningly little
evidence of it. I have never respected any men or women more than some
of the missionaries and their wives--there were examples on the Navajo
reservation--who bravely and uncomplainingly labor for righteousness,
although knowing that the visible fruits of their labor will probably be
gathered by others in a later generation. These missionaries may fail to
make many converts at the moment, and yet they may unconsciously produce
such an effect that the men and women who themselves remain heathen are
rather pleased to have their children become Christians. I have in mind,
as illustrating just what I mean, one missionary family on the Navajo
reservation whom it was an inspiration to meet; and, by the way, the
Christian Navajo interpreter at their mission, with his pretty wife and
children, gave fine proof of what the right education can do for the
Indian.
Among those at the snake-dance was a Franciscan priest, who has done
much good work on the Navajo reservation. He has attained great
influence with the Navajos because of his work for their practical
betterment. He doesn't try to convert the adults; but he has worked with
much success among the children. Like every competent judge I met, he
strongly protested against opening or cutting down the Navajo
reservation. I heartily agree with him. Such an act would be a cruel
wrong, and would benefit only a few wealthy cattle and sheep men.
There has apparently been more missionary success among the adult Hopis
than among the adult Navajos; at any rate, I came across a Baptist
congregation of some thirty members, and from information given me I am
convinced that these converts stood in all ways ahead of their heathen
brethren. Exceptional qualities of courage, hard-headed common sense,
sympathy, and understanding are needed by the missionary who is to do
really first-class work; even more exceptional than are the qualities
needed by the head of a white congregation under present conditions. The
most marked successes have been won by men, themselves of lofty and
broad-minded spirituality, who have respected the advances already made
by the Indian toward a higher spiritual life, and instead of condemning
these advances have made use of them in bringing his soul to a loftier
level. One very important service rendered by the missionaries is their
warfare on what is evil among the white men on the reservations; they
are most potent allies in warring against drink and sexual immorality,
two of the greatest curses with which the Indian has to contend. The
missionary is always the foe of the white man of loose life, and of the
white man who sells whiskey. Many of the missionaries, including all who
do most good, are active in protecting the rights of each Indian to his
land. Like the rest of us, the missionary needs to keep in mind the fact
that the Indian criminal is on the whole more dangerous to the
well-meaning Indian than any outsider can at present be; for there are
as wide differences of character and conduct among Indians as among
whites, and there is the same need in the one case as in the other of
treating each individual according to his conduct--and of persuading the
people of his own class and color thus to treat him.
Several times we walked up the precipitous cliff trails to the mesa top,
and visited the three villages thereon. We were received with friendly
courtesy--perhaps partly because we endeavored to show good manners
ourselves, which, I am sorry to say, is not invariably the case with
tourists. The houses were colored red or white; and the houses
individually, and the villages as villages, compared favorably with the
average dwelling or village in many of the southern portions of
Mediterranean Europe. Contrary to what we had seen in the Hopi village
near Tuba, most of the houses were scrupulously clean; although the
condition of the streets--while not worse than in the Mediterranean
villages above referred to--showed urgent need of a crusade for
sanitation and elementary hygiene. The men and women were well dressed,
in clothes quite as picturesque and quite as near our own garb as the
dress of many European peasants of a good type; aside, of course, from
the priests and young men who were preparing for the ceremonial dance,
and who were clad, or unclad, according to the ancient ritual. There
were several rooms in each house; and the furniture included stoves,
sewing-machines, chairs, window-panes of glass, and sometimes
window-curtains. There were wagons in one or two of the squares, for a
wagon road has been built to one end of the mesa; and we saw donkeys
laden with fagots or water--another south European analogy.
Altogether, the predominant impression made by the sight of the ordinary
life--not the strange heathen ceremonies--was that of a reasonably
advanced, and still advancing, semicivilization; not savagery at all.
There is big room for improvement; but so there is among whites; and
while the improvement should be along the lines of gradual assimilation
to the life of the best whites, it should unquestionably be so shaped as
to preserve and develop the very real element of native culture
possessed by these Indians--which, as I have already said, if thus
preserved and developed, may in the end become an important contribution
to American cultural life. Ultimately I hope the Indian will be absorbed
into the white population, on a full equality; as was true, for
instance, of the Indians who served in my own regiment, the Rough
Riders; as is true on the Navajo reservation itself of two of the best
men thereon, both in government employ, both partly of northern Indian
blood, and both indistinguishable from the most upright and efficient of
the men of pure white blood.
A visiting clergyman from the Episcopal Cathedral at Fond du Lac took me
into one of the houses to look at the pottery. The grandmother of the
house was the pottery-maker, and, entirely unhelped from without and
with no incentive of material reward, but purely to gratify her own
innate artistic feeling, she had developed the art of pottery-making to
a very unusual degree; it was really beautiful pottery. On the walls, as
in most of the other houses, were picture-cards and photographs,
including those of her children and grandchildren, singly and grouped
with their schoolmates. Two of her daughters and half a dozen
grandchildren were present, and it was evident that the family life was
gentle and attractive. The grandfather was not a Christian, but "he is
one of the best old men I ever knew, and I must say that I admire and
owe him much, if I am a parson," said my companion. The Hopis are
monogamous, and the women are well treated; the man tills the fields and
weaves, and may often be seen bringing in fire-wood; and the fondness of
both father and mother for their children is very evident.
Many well-informed and well-meaning men are apt to protest against the
effort to keep and develop what is best in the Indian's own historic
life as incompatible with making him an American citizen, and speak of
those of opposite views as wishing to preserve the Indians only as
national bric-à-brac. This is not so. We believe in fitting him for
citizenship as rapidly as possible. But where he cannot be pushed ahead
rapidly we believe in making progress slowly, and in all cases where it
is possible we hope to keep for him and for us what was best in his old
culture. As eminently practical men as Mr. Frissell, the head of Hampton
Institute (an educational model for white, red, and black men alike),
and Mr. Valentine, the late commissioner of Indian affairs, have agreed
with Miss Curtis in drawing up a scheme for the payment from private
sources of a number of high-grade, specially fitted educational experts,
whose duty it should be to correlate all the agencies, public and
private, that are working for Indian education, and also to make this
education, not a mechanical impress from without, but a drawing out of
the qualities that are within. The Indians themselves must be used in
such education; many of their old men can speak as sincerely, as
fervently, and as eloquently of duty as any white teacher, and these old
men are the very teachers best fitted to perpetuate the Indian poetry
and music. The effort should be to develop the existing art--whether in
silver-making, pottery-making, blanket and basket weaving, or
lace-knitting--and not to replace it by servile and mechanical copying.
This is only to apply to the Indian a principle which ought to be
recognized among all our people. A great art must be living, must spring
from the soul of the people; if it represents merely a copying, an
imitation, and if it is confined to a small caste, it cannot be great.
Of course all Indians should not be forced into the same mould. Some can
be made farmers; others mechanics; yet others have the soul of the
artist. Let us try to give each his chance to develop what is best in
him. Moreover, let us be wary of interfering overmuch with either his
work or his play. It is mere tyranny, for instance, to stop all Indian
dances. Some which are obscene, or which are dangerous on other grounds,
must be prohibited. Others should be permitted, and many of them
encouraged. Nothing that tells for the joy of life, in any community,
should be lightly touched.
A few Indians may be able to turn themselves into ordinary citizens in a
dozen years. Give these exceptional Indians every chance; but remember
that the majority must change gradually, and that it will take
generations to make the change complete. Help them to make it in such
fashion that when the change is accomplished we shall find that the
original and valuable elements in the Indian culture have been retained,
so that the new citizens come with full hands into the great field of
American life, and contribute to that life something of marked value to
all of us, something which it would be a misfortune to all of us to have
destroyed.
As an example, take the case of these Hopi mesa towns, perched in such
boldly picturesque fashion on high, sheer-walled rock ridges. Many good
people wish to force the Hopis to desert these towns, and live in
isolated families in nice tin-roofed houses on the plains below. I
believe that this would be a mistake from the standpoint of the
Indians--not to mention depriving our country of something as notable
and as attractive as the castles that have helped make the Rhine
beautiful and famous. Let the effort be to insist on cleanliness and
sanitation in the villages as they are, and especially to train the
Indians themselves to insist thereon; and to make it easier for them to
get water. In insisting on cleanliness, remember that we preach a
realizable ideal; our own ancestors lived in villages as filthy not
three centuries ago. The breezy coolness of the rocky mesa top and the
magnificent outlook would make it to me personally a far more attractive
dwelling-place than the hot, dusty plains. Moreover, the present Hopi
house, with its thick roof, is cooler and pleasanter than a tin-roofed
house. I believe it would be far wiser gradually to develop the Hopi
house itself, making it more commodious and convenient, rather than to
abandon it and plant the Indian in a brand-new government-built house,
precisely like some ten million other cheap houses. The Hopi
architecture is a product of its own environment; it is as picturesque
as anything of the kind which our art students travel to Spain in order
to study. Therefore let us keep it. The Hopi architecture can be kept,
adapted, and developed just as we have kept, adapted, and developed the
Mission architecture of the Southwest--with the results seen in
beautiful Leland Stanford University. The University of New Mexico is,
most wisely, modelled on these pueblo buildings; and the architect has
done admirable work of the kind by adapting Indian architectural ideas
in some of his California houses. The Hopi is himself already thus
developing his house; as I have said, he has put in glass windows and
larger doors; he is furnishing it; he is making it continually more
livable. Give him a chance to utilize his own inherent sense of beauty
in making over his own village for himself. Give him a chance to lead
his own life as he ought to; and realize that he has something to teach
us as well as to learn from us. The Hopi of the younger generation, at
least in some of the towns, is changing rapidly; and it is safe to leave
it to him to decide where he will build and keep his house.
I cannot so much as touch on the absorbingly interesting questions of
the Hopi spiritual and religious life, and of the amount of deference
that can properly be paid to one side of this life. The snake-dance and
antelope-dance, which we had come to see, are not only interesting as
relics of an almost inconceivably remote and savage past--analogous to
the past wherein our own ancestors once dwelt--but also represent a
mystic symbolism which has in it elements that are ennobling and not
debasing. These dances are prayers or invocations for rain, the crowning
blessing in this dry land. The rain is adored and invoked both as male
and female; the gentle steady downpour is the female, the storm with
lightning the male. The lightning-stick is "strong medicine," and is
used in all these religious ceremonies. The snakes, the brothers of
men, as are all living things in the Hopi creed, are besought to tell
the beings of the underworld man's need of water.
As a former great chief at Washington I was admitted to the sacred room,
or one-roomed house, the kiva, in which the chosen snake priests had for
a fortnight been getting ready for the sacred dance. Very few white men
have been thus admitted, and never unless it is known that they will
treat with courtesy and respect what the Indians revere. Entrance to the
house, which was sunk in the rock, was through a hole in the roof, down
a ladder across whose top hung a cord from which fluttered three eagle
plumes and dangled three small animal skins. Below was a room perhaps
fifteen feet by twenty-five. One end of it, occupying perhaps a third of
its length, was raised a foot above the rest, and the ladder led down to
this raised part. Against the rear wall of this raised part or dais lay
thirty odd rattlesnakes, most of them in a twined heap in one corner,
but a dozen by themselves scattered along the wall. There was also a pot
containing several striped ribbon-snakes, too lively to be left at
large. Eight or ten priests, some old, some young, sat on the floor in
the lower and larger two-thirds of the room, and greeted me with grave
courtesy; they spread a blanket on the edge of the dais, and I sat down,
with my back to the snakes and about eight feet from them; a little
behind and to one side of me sat a priest with a kind of fan or brush
made of two or three wing-plumes of an eagle, who kept quiet guard over
his serpent wards. At the farther end of the room was the altar; the
rude picture of a coyote was painted on the floor, and on the four sides
of this coyote picture were paintings of snakes; on three sides it was
hemmed in by lightning-sticks, or thunder-sticks, standing upright in
little clay cups, and on the fourth side by eagle plumes held similarly
erect. Some of the priests were smoking--for pleasure, not
ceremonially--and they were working at parts of the ceremonial dress.
One had a cast rattlesnake skin which he was chewing, to limber it up,
just as Sioux squaws used to chew buckskin. Another was fixing a leather
apron with pendent thongs; he stood up and tried it on. All were
scantily clad, in breech-clouts or short kilts or loin flaps; their
naked, copper-red bodies, lithe and sinewy, shone, and each had been
splashed in two or three places with a blotch or streak of white paint.
One spoke English and translated freely; I was careful not to betray
too much curiosity or touch on any matter which they might be reluctant
to discuss. The snakes behind me never rattled or showed any signs of
anger; the translator volunteered the remark that they were peaceable
because they had been given medicine--whatever that might mean,
supposing the statement to be true according to the sense in which the
words are accepted by plainsmen. But several of them were active in the
sluggish rattlesnake fashion. One glided sinuously toward me; when he
was a yard away, I pointed him out to the watcher with the eagle
feathers; the watcher quietly extended the feathers and stroked and
pushed the snake's head back, until it finally turned and crawled back
to the wall. Half a dozen times different snakes thus crawled out toward
me and were turned back, without their ever displaying a symptom of
irritation. One snake got past the watcher and moved slowly past me
about six inches away, whereupon the priest on my left leaned across me
and checked its advance by throwing pinches of dust in its face until
the watcher turned round with his feather sceptre. Every move was made
without hurry and with quiet unconcern; neither snake nor man, at any
time, showed a trace of worry or anger; all, human beings and reptiles,
were in an atmosphere of quiet peacefulness. When I rose to say good-by,
I thanked my hosts for their courtesy; they were pleased, and two or
three shook hands with me.
On the afternoon of the following day, August 20, the antelope
priests--the men of the antelope clan--held their dance. The snake
priests took part. It was held in the middle of Walpi village, round a
big, rugged column of rock, a dozen feet high, which juts out of the
smooth surface. The antelope-dancers came in first, clad in kilts, with
fox skins behind; otherwise naked, painted with white splashes and
streaks, and their hair washed with the juice of the yucca root. Their
leader's kilt was white; he wore a garland and anklets of cottonwood
leaves, and sprinkled water from a sacred vessel to the four corners of
heaven. Another leader carried the sacred bow and a bull-roarer, and
they moved to its loud moaning sound. The snake priests were similarly
clad, but their kirtles were of leather; eagle plumes were in their long
hair, and under their knees they carried rattles made of tortoise-shell.
In two lines they danced opposite each other, keeping time to the rhythm
of their monotonous chanting.
On the top of the column were half a dozen Hopi young men, clad in
ordinary white man's clothing. Archie joined these, and entered into
conversation with them. They spoke English; they had been at
non-reservation schools; they were doing well as farmers and citizens.
One and all they asserted that, in order to prosper in after life, it
was necessary for the Indian to get away to a non-reservation school;
that merely to go to an agency school was not enough in any community
which was on the highroad of progress; and that they intended to send
their own children for a couple of years to an agency school and then to
a non-reservation school. They looked at the ceremonial religious dances
of their fathers precisely as the whites did; they were in effect
Christians, although not connected with any specific church. They
represented substantial success in the effort to raise the Indian to the
level of the white man. In their case it was not necessary to push them
toward forgetfulness of their past. They were travelling away from it
naturally, and of their own accord. As their type becomes dominant the
snake-dance and antelope-dance will disappear, the Hopi religious myths
will become memories, and the Hopis will live in villages on the mesa
tops, or scattered out on the plains, as their several inclinations
point, just as if they were so many white men. It is to be hoped that
the art, the music, the poetry of their elders will be preserved during
the change coming over the younger generation.
On my return from this dance I met two of the best Indian agents in the
entire service. The first was Mr. Parquette, a Wisconsin man, himself
part Indian by blood. The other was Mr. Shelton, who has done more for
the Navajos than any other living man. He has sternly put down the
criminal element exactly as he has toiled for and raised the decent
Indians and protected them against criminal whites; moreover, he has
actually reformed these Indian criminals, so that they are now
themselves decent people and his fast friends; while the mass of the
Indians recognize him as their leader who has rendered them incalculable
services. He has got the Indians themselves to put an absolute stop to
gambling, whiskey-drinking, and sexual immorality. His annual
agricultural fair is one of the features of Navajo life, and is of
far-reaching educational value. Yet this exceptionally upright and
efficient public servant, who has done such great and lasting good to
the Indians, was for years the object of attack by certain Eastern
philanthropic associations, simply because he warred against Indian
criminals who were no more entitled to sympathy than the members of the
Whyo gang in New York City. Messrs. Shelton and Parquette explained to
me the cruel wrong that would be done to the Navajos if their
reservation was thrown open or cut down. It is desert country. It cannot
be utilized in small tracts, for in many parts the water is so scanty
that hundreds, and in places even thousands, of acres must go to the
support of any family. The Indians need it all; they are steadily
improving as agriculturists and stock-growers; few small settlers could
come in even if the reservation were thrown open; the movement to open
it, and to ruin the Indians, is merely in the interest of a few needy
adventurers and of a few wealthy men who wish to increase their already
large fortunes, and who have much political influence.
Mr. Robinson, the superintendent of irrigation, in protesting against
opening the reservation, dwelt upon the vital need of getting from
Congress sufficient money to enable the engineers to develop water by
digging wells, preserving springs, and making flood reservoirs. The lack
of water is the curse of this desert reservation. The welfare of the
Indians depends on the further development of the water-supply.
That night fires flared from the villages on the top of the mesa. Before
there was a hint of dawn we heard the voice of the crier summoning the
runners to get ready for the snake-dance; and we rose and made our way
to the mesa top. The "yellow line," as the Hopis call it, was in the
east, and dawn was beautiful, as we stood on the summit and watched the
women and children in their ceremonial finery, looking from the
housetops and cliff edges for the return of the racers. On this occasion
they dropped their civilized clothes. The children were painted and
naked save for kilts; and they wore feathers and green corn leaves in
their hair. The women wore the old-style clothing; many of them were in
their white bridal dresses, which in this queer tribe are woven by the
bridegroom and his male kinsfolk for the bride's trousseau. The
returning racers ran at speed up the precipitous paths to the mesa,
although it was the close of a six-mile run. Most of them, including the
winner, wore only a breech-clout and were decked with feathers. I should
like to have entered that easy-breathing winner in a Marathon contest!
Many of the little boys ran the concluding mile or so with them; and the
little girls made a pretty spectacle as they received the little boys
much as the women and elder girls greeted the men. Then came the
corn-scramble, or mock-fight over the corn; and then in each house a
feast was set, especially for the children.
At noon, thanks to Mr. Hubbell, and to the fact that I was an
ex-President, we were admitted to the sacred kiva--the one-roomed
temple-house which I had already visited--while the snake priests
performed the ceremony of washing the snakes. Very few white men have
ever seen this ceremony. The sight was the most interesting of our
entire trip.
There were twenty Indians in the kiva, all stripped to their
breech-clouts; only about ten actually took part in handling the snakes,
or in any of the ceremonies except the rhythmic chant, in which all
joined. Eighty or a hundred snakes, half of them rattlers, the others
bull-snakes or ribbon-snakes, lay singly or in tangled groups against
the wall at the raised end of the room. They were quiet and in no way
nervous or excited. Two men stood at this end of the room. Two more
stood at the other end, where the altar was; there was some sand about
the altar, and the eagle feathers we had previously seen there had been
removed, but the upright thunder-sticks remained. The other Indians were
squatted in the middle of the room, and half a dozen of them were in
the immediate neighborhood of a very big, ornamented wooden bowl of
water, placed on certain white-painted symbols on the floor. Two of
these Indians held sacred rattles, and there was a small bowl of sacred
meal beside them. There was some seemingly ceremonial pipe-smoking.
After some minutes of silence, one of the squatting priests, who seemed
to be the leader, and who had already puffed smoke toward the bowl,
began a low prayer, at the same time holding and manipulating in his
fingers a pinch of the sacred meal. The others once and again during
this prayer uttered in unison a single word or exclamation--a kind of
selah or amen. At the end he threw the meal into the bowl of water; he
had already put some in at the outset of the prayer. Then he began a
rhythmic chant, in which all the others joined, the rattles being shaken
and the hands moved in harmony with the rhythm. The chant consisted
seemingly of a few words repeated over and over again. It was a strange
scene, in the half-light of the ancient temple-room. The copper-red
bodies of the priests swayed, and their strongly marked faces, hitherto
changeless, gained a certain quiet intensity of emotion. The chanting
grew in fervor; yet it remained curiously calm throughout (except for a
moment at a time, about which I shall speak later). Then the two men who
stood near the snakes stooped over, and each picked up a handful of
them, these first handfuls being all rattlesnakes. It was done in
tranquil, matter-of-fact fashion, and the snakes behaved with equally
tranquil unconcern. All was quiet save for the chanting. The snakes were
handed to two of the men squatting round the bowl, who received them as
if they had been harmless, holding them by the middle of the body, or at
least well away from the head. This was repeated until half a dozen of
the squatting priests held each three or four poisonous serpents in his
hands. The chanting continued, in strongly accented but monotonous
rhythm, while the rattles were shaken, and the snakes moved up and down
or shaken, in unison with it. Then suddenly the chant quickened and rose
to a scream, and the snakes were all plunged into the great bowl of
water, a writhing tangle of snakes and hands. Immediately afterward they
were withdrawn, as suddenly as they had been plunged in, and were hurled
half across the room, to the floor, on and around the altar. They were
hurled from a distance of a dozen feet, with sufficient violence to
overturn the erect thunder-sticks. That the snakes should have been
quiet and inoffensive under the influence of the slow movements and
atmosphere of calm that had hitherto obtained was understandable; but
the unexpected violence of the bathing, and then of the way in which
they were hurled to the floor, together with the sudden screaming
intensity of the chant, ought to have upset the nerves of every snake
there. However, it did not. The snakes woke to an interest in life, it
is true, writhed themselves free of one another and of the upset
lightning-sticks, and began to glide rapidly in every direction. But
only one showed symptoms of anger, and these were not marked. The two
standing Indians at this end of the room herded the snakes with their
eagle feathers, gently brushing and stroking them back as they squirmed
toward us, or toward the singing, sitting priests.
The process was repeated until all the snakes, venomous and non-venomous
alike, had been suddenly bathed and then hurled on the floor, filling
the other end of the room with a wriggling, somewhat excited serpent
population, which was actively, but not in any way nervously, shepherded
by the two Indians stationed for that purpose. These men were, like the
others, clad only in a breech-clout, but they moved about among the
snakes, barelegged and barefooted, with no touch of concern. One or two
of the rattlers became vicious under the strain, and coiled and struck.
I thought I saw one of the two shepherding watchers struck in the hand
by a recalcitrant sidewinder which refused to be soothed by the
feathers, and which he finally picked up; but, if so, the man gave no
sign and his placidity remained unruffled. Most of the snakes showed no
anger at all; it seemed to me extraordinary that they were not all of
them maddened.
When the snakes had all been washed, the leading priest again prayed.
Afterward he once more scattered meal in the bowl, in lines east, west,
north, and south, and twice diagonally. The chant was renewed; it grew
slower; the rattles were rattled more slowly; then the singing stopped
and all was over.
At the end of the ceremony I thanked my hosts and asked if there was
anything I could do to show my appreciation of the courtesy they had
shown me. They asked if I could send them some cowry shells, which they
use as decorations for the dance. I told them I would send them a
sackful. They shook hands cordially with all of us, and we left. I have
never seen a wilder or, in its way, more impressive spectacle than that
of these chanting, swaying, red-skinned medicine-men, their lithe bodies
naked, unconcernedly handling the death that glides and strikes, while
they held their mystic worship in the gray twilight of the kiva. The
ritual and the soul-needs it met, and the symbolism and the dark
savagery, were all relics of an ages-vanished past, survivals of an
elder world.
The snake-dance itself took place in the afternoon at five o'clock.
There were many hundreds of onlookers, almost as many whites as Indians,
and most of the Indian spectators were in white man's dress, in strong
contrast to the dancers. The antelope priests entered first and ranged
themselves by a tree-like bundle of cottonwood branches against the wall
of buildings to one side of the open place where the dance takes place;
the other side is the cliff edge. The snakes, in a bag, were stowed by
the bundle of cottonwood branches. Young girls stood near the big pillar
of stone with sacred meal to scatter at the foot of the pillar after the
snakes had been thrown down there and taken away. Then the snake priests
entered in their fringed leather kilts and eagle-plume head-dresses; fox
skins hung at the backs of their girdles, their bodies were splashed
and streaked with white, and on each of them the upper part of the
face was painted black and the lower part white. Chanting, and stepping
in rhythm to the chant, and on one particular stone slab stamping hard
as a signal to the underworld, they circled the empty space and for some
minutes danced opposite the line of antelope priests. Then, in couples,
one of each couple seizing and carrying in his mouth a snake, they began
to circle the space again. The leading couple consisted of one man who
had his arm across the shoulder of another, while this second man held
in his teeth, by the upper middle of its body, a rattlesnake four feet
long, the flat, ace-of-clubs-shaped head and curving neck of the snake
being almost against the man's face. Rattlesnakes, bull-snakes,
ribbon-snakes, all were carried in the same way. One man carried at the
same time two small sidewinder rattlesnakes in his mouth. After a while
each snake was thrown on the rock and soon again picked up and held in
the hand, while a new snake was held in the mouth. Finally, each man
carried a bundle of snakes in his hand, all so held as to leave the head
free, so that the snake could strike if it wished. Most of the snakes
showed no anger or resentment. But occasionally one, usually a small
sidewinder, half coiled or rattled when thrown down; and in picking
these up much caution was shown, the Indian stroking the snake with his
eagle feathers and trying to soothe it and get it to straighten out; and
if it refused to be soothed, he did his best to grasp it just back of
the head; and when he had it in his hand, he continued to stroke the
body with the feathers, obviously to quiet it. But whether it were angry
or not, he always in the end grasped and lifted it--besides keeping it
from crawling among the spectators. Several times I saw the snakes
strike at the men who were carrying them, and twice I was sure they
struck home--once a man's wrist, once his finger. Neither man paid any
attention or seemed to suffer in any way. I saw no man struck in the
face; but several of my friends had at previous dances seen men so
struck. In one case the man soon showed that he was in much pain,
although he continued to dance, and he was badly sick for days; in the
other cases no bad result whatever followed.
At last all the snakes were in the hands of the dancers. Then all were
thrown at the foot of the natural stone pillar, and immediately, with a
yell, the dancers leaped in, seized, each of them, several snakes, and
rushed away, east, west, north, and south, dashing over the edge of
the cliff and jumping like goats down the precipitous trails. At the
foot of the cliff, or on the plain, they dropped the snakes, and then
returned to purify themselves by drinking and washing from pails of dark
sacred water--medicine water--brought by the women. It was a strange and
most interesting ceremony all through.
I do not think any adequate explanation of the immunity of the dancers
has been advanced. Perhaps there are several explanations. These desert
rattlesnakes are not nearly as poisonous as the huge diamond-backs of
Florida and Texas; their poison is rarely fatal. The dancers are
sometimes bitten; usually they show no effects, but, as above said, in
one instance the bitten man was very sick for several days. It has been
said that the fangs are extracted; but even in this case the poison
would be loose in the snake's mouth and might get in the skin through
the wounds made by the other teeth; and I noticed that when any snake,
usually a small sidewinder, showed anger and either rattled or coiled,
much caution was shown in handling it, and every effort made to avoid
being bitten. It is also asserted that the snakes show the quiet and
placid indifference they do because they are drugged, and one priest
told me they are given "medicine"; but I have no idea whether this is
true. Nor do I know whether the priests themselves take medicine. I
believe that one element in the matter is that the snake priests either
naturally possess or develop the same calm power over these serpents
that certain men have over bees; the latter power, the existence of
which is so well known, has never received the attention and study it
deserves. An occasional white man has such power with snakes. There was
near my ranch on the Little Missouri, twenty-five years ago, a man who
had this power. He was a rather shiftless, ignorant man, of a common
frontier type, who failed at about everything, and I think he was
himself surprised when he found that he could pick up and handle
rattlesnakes with impunity. There was no deception about it. I would
take him off on horseback, and when I found a rattler he would quietly
pick it up by the thick part of the body and put it in a sack. He
sometimes made movements with his hands before picking up a coiled
rattler; but when he had several in a bag he would simply put his hand
in, take hold of a snake anywhere, and draw it out. I can understand the
snakes being soothed and quieted by the matter-of-fact calm and
fearlessness of the priests for most of the time; but why the rattlers
were not all maddened by the treatment they received at the washing in
the kiva, and again when thrown on the dance rock, I cannot understand.
That night we motored across the desert with Mr. Hubbell to his house
and store at Ganado, sixty miles away, and from Ganado we motored to
Gallup, and our holiday was at an end. Mr. Hubbell is an Indian trader.
His Ganado house, right out in the bare desert, is very comfortable and
very attractive, and he treats all comers with an open-handed
hospitality inherited from pioneer days. He has great influence among
the Navajos, and his services to them have been of much value. Every
ounce of his influence has been successfully exerted to put a stop to
gambling and drinking; his business has been so managed as to be an
important factor in the material and moral betterment of the Indians
with whom he has dealt. And he has been the able champion of their
rights wherever these rights have been menaced from any outside source.
Arizona and New Mexico hold a wealth of attraction for the archæologist,
the anthropologist, and the lover of what is strange and striking and
beautiful in nature. More and more they will attract visitors and
students and holiday-makers. That part of northern Arizona which we
traversed is of such extraordinary interest that it should be made more
accessible by means of a government-built motor road from Gallup to the
Grand Canyon; a road from which branch roads, as good as those of
Switzerland, would gradually be built to such points as the Hopi
villages and the neighborhood of the Natural Bridge.