THE EVOLUTION OF DANCING. 747 



the department of agriculture. As a rule, dances appropriate to 

 seedtime and harvest are partly secret, partly public. At one 

 time or another the whole people participate in the festivities. 

 Among the Seminole Indians, the Rev. Clay MacCauley informs 

 us, as the season for holding the " green-corn dance " approaches, 

 the medicine-men assemble and, through their ceremonies, decide 

 when it shall take place.* The Iroquois have also a green-corn 

 dance a September festival lasting three days. The " Great 

 Feather-Dance " is performed at this time by a band of costumed 

 dancers. It is one of the most imposing dances of the Iroquois. 

 " The Great Feather-Dance/' says Mrs. Converse, who witnessed 

 the ceremonies in the fall of 1891, "is quite unlike the war-dance. 

 In its performance the dancer remains erect, not assuming those 

 warlike attitudes of rage and vengeance which plainly distin- 

 guish the two dances." f 



The most elaborate dances in vogue among the Zuni Indians 

 are those performed to obtain rain for the growing crops. The 

 course of the sun at the summer solstice is watched by the priest, 

 who counts the days for the dances. Then the herald announces 

 from the house-tops that the time for the rain-dances has arrived, 

 and all are summoned. J During the summer there are eight kor- 

 kok-shi, or " good dances " for rain." A strange feature of one 

 or two of these rain-dances is the appearance of clowns, who in- 

 troduce a comic element into the sacred ceremonials. 



But stranger still is the use of serpents in the medicine-dances 

 around seed time. The striking example is that of the Moqui 

 "Snake-Dance," an account of which fills a book.* As to the 

 origin and significance of this wonderful dance, in which venom- 

 ous snakes are carried in the hands and mouths of the performers, 

 we do not undertake to decide. Captain Bourke says that " one 

 of the minor objects of the snake-dance has been the perpetu- 

 ation, in dramatic form, of the legend of the Moqui family." He 

 inclines to the belief that the dance is a form of serpent-worship. 

 On the other hand, Mr. Walter Fewkes has recently put forth the 

 suggestion that the Moqui snake-dance " is a simple form of 

 water ceremonial." | According to his view, the snake was first 

 introduced into the dance as a symbol of water, and the predomi- 

 nance given to the snake in the ceremonials is the result of later 

 additions to the primitive ceremonial. A 



* Fifth Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 522. 

 f Journal of American Folk Lore, vol. iv, p. 75. 



% This summons or invitation to the harvest or agricultural dances is a common 

 practice. 



* The Snake-dance of the Moquis. By Captain John G. Bourke. 



|| The Meaning of the Snake-dance, in Journal of American Folk Lore, vol. iv, p. 137. 

 A See also Mr. Fewkes's paper, A Few Summer Ceremonials at Zuni Pueblo. The curi- 



