THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 79 



larger two-thirds of the room, and greeted me 

 with grave courtesy; they spread a blanket on 

 the edge of the dais, and I sat down, with my 

 back to the snakes and about eight feet from 

 them; a httle behind and to one side of me sat 

 a priest with a kind of fan or brush made of 

 two or three wing-plumes of an eagle, who kept 

 quiet guard over his serpent wards. At the 

 farther end of the room was the altar; the 

 rude picture of a coyote was painted on the 

 floor, and on the four sides of this coyote pic- 

 ture were paintings of snakes; on three sides it 

 was hemmed in by lightning-sticks, or thunder- 

 sticks, standing upright in little clay cups, and 

 on the fourth side by eagle plumes held similarly 

 erect. Some of the priests were smoking — • 

 for pleasure, not ceremonially — and they were 

 working at parts of the ceremonial dress. One 

 had a cast rattlesnake skin which he was chew- 

 ing, to limber it up, just as Sioux squaws used 

 to chew buckskin. Another was fixing a leather 

 apron with pendent thongs; he stood up and 

 tried it on. All were scantily clad, in breech- 

 clouts or short kilts or loin flaps; their naked, 

 copper-red bodies, lithe and sinewy, shone, and 

 each had been splashed in two or three places 

 with a blotch or streak of white paint. One 

 spoke English and translated freely; I was care- 



