Feb., 191 2. The Oraibi Marau Ceremony — Voth. 63 



and then bends forward in a kneeling position and whistles through 

 a bone whistle into the medicine bowl (see Plate IX, b). This she 

 repeats for all the other directions. During the fourth song No. 3 dips 

 the north corn-ear and its husband into the liquid in the medicine bowl 

 and asperges towards the altar. She also repeats this with the re- 

 maining five directions. While the fifth song is being sung No. 2 takes 

 the two small bow sticks from the west side of the altar, No. 10 those 

 from the east side, No. 7 the two sticks with the grass wheel from the 

 figurines on the west side, and No. 9 those from the east side figurine, 

 and all beat time with these objects by striking them endwise on the 

 floor. At the sixth song all throw a pinch of meal towards the altar 

 six times. While the women chant the seventh song the chief priest 

 takes a pinch of honey into his mouth and then blows smoke from his 

 cloud blower over the altar. 



Nine songs then follow during which no special rites take place, 

 except sprinkling of the liquid from the medicine bowl with an aspergill, 

 by No. 8, at the end of each song. During the seventeenth song the 

 waving of a stick from the altar by No. 1 is gone through again as on 

 the first day. In fact, the entire altar ceremony of this day is an exact 

 repetition of that of the first day. On other days only sixteen songs 

 are chanted, the one during which the meal lines on the walls are made 

 at the beginning of the ceremony being omitted. After these altar 

 rites are concluded in the usual way by a brief prayer by the chief 

 priest, responses and sprinkling of meal by all the rest, there is a recess, 

 during which the men smoke, the women rest or go to their houses. 



At about six o'clock the chief priestess takes one of the bunches of 

 feathers that forms the natsi in her right hand, an ear of corn in her 

 left. Her assistant takes a tray with sacred meal and, being followed 

 by most of the other women, each of whom have an ear of corn, they 

 proceed to the plaza where the public performances are to take place 

 the following day. Here some prayer-meal is sprinkled towards the 

 small shrine by the assistant priestess and all then go through the 

 same kind of a dance as they perform the next day, waving the arms 

 •and the ears of corn in the same manner as they wave the large Marau 

 slabs on the succeeding day. 



When they return to the kiva the evening meal is eaten in the kiva 

 by all participants. 



The proceedings from the evening meal until about two-thirty o'clock 

 in the night have not been observed, but from information, which I 

 believe to be reliable, I infer, that the same ceremonies inside and out- 

 side of the kiva took place as during the night between the fourth and 

 fifth day of this and the winter ceremony (see pages 31 and 56). 



