252 Field Columbian Museum — Anthropology, Vol. III. 



to them. None seem to be more reckless in handling the snakes than 

 the smaller boys (see Pis. CXXXIX and CXL). 



When all the snakes have been "handled," the chief priest goes 

 to one side and sprinkles a circle of meal on the ground and in it a 

 meal line from the north, west, south, east, northeast and southwest 

 towards the center (see PI. CXLI), The Snake men are stand- 

 ing at one side of the circle, a line of women and girls standing on 

 the other side holding trays with cornmeal in their hands. This 

 meal they throw on the meal circle, whereupon the Snake men rush 

 to the circle, throw all the reptiles on it (see PL CXLII, />) and 

 immediately thrust their hands into the wriggling, writhing mass of 

 snakes, grabbing with both hands as many as they can get hold of; 

 then they dash away with them to the four cardinal points, some 

 going to the north, some to the west, and so on, where they 

 release them at certain points, preferably behind rocks, called Tcuki 

 (snake house), depositing with them the long black bahos {c/tochopkis), 

 which they held in their hands with some cornmeal during the 

 dance (see Pis. CXLIII and CXX, d). After the Snake men had left, 

 the Antelope priests again made the four circuits on the plaza in the 

 same manner as when they came and then returned to the kiva. The 

 asperger who had held the medicine bowl and who had asperged the 

 dancers occasionally during the dance, threw some cornmeal into one 

 of the shrines on the plaza (Bahoki), then placed a baho and poured 

 the water from the medicine bowl into the shrine, and finally threw 

 in the wreath of cottonwood saplings that he had worn around his head. 

 One of the snake dancers who had evidently failed to get any 

 snakes to take down the mesa made the visual four circuits on the 

 plaza, which caused some hilarity among the spectators, and then 

 also left for the Snake kiva. 



In about fifteen or twenty minutes the Snake men began to 

 return, divested of their snake costumes. (See PI. CXX, c.) They 

 began at once to wash off the paint from their bodies at some little 

 distance from the kiva. While this was going on five elderly women 

 brought six bowls of emetic to the kiva that had been boiled in the house 

 of a woman of the Snake order in the afternoon (see PI. CXLIV, d). 

 After the men had washed their bodies they began to drink great 

 quantities of the emetic (see PI. CXLIV, c), which, after some assist- 

 ance by the forefingers, caused profuse emesis. It is said that this is 

 done to purge the participants in the ceremony from any snake charm 

 that might be dangerous to the other inhabitants of the village (see 

 Pis. CXLV and CXLVI).* The costumes were taken into the kiva 



*In the course of the afternoon the old blind man asked one of the novitiates whether he 

 knew how to produce vomiting, and if not, he should not drink too much of the emetic. 



