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=Beliefs and Ceremonials=
The beliefs of a tribe, philosophical, religious, and magical, are, for
the most part, expressed in objective ceremonies. The formal procedure
or ritual is essentially a representation or dramatization of the main
idea, usually based upon a narrative. Often the ceremony opens with or
is preceded by the narration of the myth on which it is based, or the
leader may merely refer to it on the assumption that everyone present
knows it.
As to the purpose of the ceremony, there are those who maintain that
entertainment is the main incentive, but the celebration or holiday
seems to be a secondary consideration according to the explanation of
the primitives themselves.
If there chances to be a so-called educated native present to answer
your inquiry on the point, he will perhaps patiently explain to you that
just as July Fourth is celebrated for something more than parades and
firecrackers, and Thanksgiving was instituted for other considerations
than the eating of turkey, so the Hopi Snake Dance, for instance, is
given not so much to entertain the throng of attentive and respectful
Hopi, and the much larger throng of more or less attentive and more or
less respectful white visitors, as to perpetuate, according to their
traditions, certain symbolic rites in whose efficacy they have
profoundly believed for centuries and do still believe.
Concerning the Pueblos (which include the Hopi), Hewett says:[19] "There
can be no understanding of their lives apart from their religious
beliefs and practices. The same may be said of their social structure
and of their industries. Planting, cultivating, harvesting, hunting,
even war, are dominated by religious rites. The social order of the
people is established and maintained by way of tribal ceremonials.
Through age-old ritual and dramatic celebration, practiced with
unvarying regularity, participated in by all, keeping time to the days,
seasons and ages, moving in rhythmic procession with life and all
natural forces, the people are kept in a state of orderly composure and
like-mindedness.
[Footnote 19: Hewett, E.L., Op. cit., p. 117.]
"The religious life of the Pueblo Indian is expressed mainly through the
community dances, and in these ceremonies are the very foundations of
the ancient wisdom...."
Dance is perhaps hardly the right word for these ceremonies, yet it is
what the Hopi himself calls them, and he is right. But we who have used
the word to designate the social dances of modern society or the
aesthetic and interpretive dances for entertainment and aesthetic
enjoyment will have to tune our sense to a different key to be in
harmony with the Hopi dance.
Our primitive's communion with nature and with his own spirit have
brought him to a reverent attitude concerning the wisdom of birds,
beasts, trees, clouds, sunlight, and starlight, and most of all he
clings trustingly to the wisdom of his fathers.
"All this," according to Hewett, "is voiced in his prayers and
dramatized in his dances--rhythm of movement and of color summoned to
express in utmost brilliancy the vibrant faith of a people in the deific
order of the world and in the way the ancients devised for keeping man
in harmony with his universe. All his arts, therefore, are rooted in
ancestral beliefs and in archaic esthetic forms."
Surely no people on earth, not even the Chinese, show a more consistent
reverence for the wisdom of the past as preserved in their myths and
legends, than do the Hopi.