One of the most characteristic modern decorations employed by the
Hopi, especially as a symbol of fecundity, is the butterfly or moth.
It is a constant device on the beautiful white or cotton blankets
woven by the men as wedding gifts, where it is embroidered on the
margin in the forms of triangles or even in more realistic patterns.
This symbol is a simple triangle, which becomes quite realistic when a
line is drawn bisecting one of the angles. This double triangle is not
only a constant symbol on wedding blankets, but also is found on the
dadoes of houses, resembling in design the arrangement of tiles in the
Alhambra and other Moorish buildings. This custom of decorating the
walls of a building with triangles placed at intervals on the upper
edge of a dado is a feature of cliff-house kivas, as shown in
Nordenskiöld's beautiful memoir on the cliff villages of Mesa Verde.
While an isosceles triangle represents the simplest form of the
butterfly symbol, and is common on ancient pottery, a few vessels from
Sikyatki show a much more realistic figure. In plate CXXXIV, _f_, is
shown a moth with extended proboscis and articulated antennæ, and in
_d_ of the same plate another form, with the proboscis inserted in a
flower, is given. As an associate with summer, the butterfly is
regarded as a beneficent being aside from its fecundity, and one of
the ancient Hopi clans regarded it as their totem. Perhaps the most
striking, and I may say the most inexplicable, use of the symbol of
the butterfly is the so-called _Hokona_ or Butterfly virgin slab used
in the Antelope ceremonies of the Snake dance at Walpi, where it is
associated with the tadpole water symbol.
[Illustration: FIG. 270--Outline of plate CXXXV, _b_]
The most beautiful of all the butterfly designs are the six figures on
the vase reproduced in plate CXXXV, _b_. From the number of these
pictures it would seem that they bore some relationship to the six
world-quarters--north, west, south, east, zenith, and nadir. The vase
has a flattened shoulder, and the six butterfly figures are
represented as flying toward the orifice. These insect figures closely
resemble one another, and are divided into two groups readily
distinguished by the symbolism of the heads. Three have each a cross
with a single dot in each quadrant, and each of the other three has a
dotted head without the cross. These two kinds alternate with each
other, and the former probably indicate females, since the same
symbols on the heads of the snakes in the sand picture of the Antelope
altar in the Snake dance are used to designate the female.[139]
[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY