In a simple prayer the sacrifice is a pinch of meal thrown on the
fetish or toward it. This is an individual method of prayer, and the
pinch of meal, his prayer bearer, the sacrifice.
When a society made its prayers this meal, symbolic of a gift of corn,
is tied in a packet and attached to two sticks, one male, the other
female, with prescribed herbs and feathers. Here we have the ordinary
prayer-stick, varying in details but essentially the same, a sacrifice
to the gods appropriately designated by prescribed accessories.
Frequently this packet of meal may be replaced by a picture of an ear
of corn drawn on a flat slat, the so-called "corn paho" of the Flute
maidens,[164] or we may have an ear of corn tied to the wooden slat.
In the _Mamzrau_ ceremony the women carry these painted slats in their
hands, as I have elsewhere described.[165] It appears as if, in all
these instances, there exists a sacrificial object, a symbolic
offering of corn or meal.
The constant appearance of the feather on the paho has suggested an
interpretation of the prayer-plumes as symbolic sacrifices of birds on
the theory of a part for the whole; we know that among the Nahua
sacrifices of birds were common in many ceremonials. The idea of
animal sacrifice, and, if we judge from legends, of human sacrifice,
was not an unknown conception among the Pueblos. While it is possible
that the omnipresence of the feather on the prayer-sticks may admit of
that interpretation, to which it must be confessed the male and the
female components in double pahos lend some evidence,[166] I believe
the main object was, as above stated, an offering of meal, which
constituted the special wealth of an agricultural people.