THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 95 



they do because they are drugged, and one 

 priest told me they are given "medicine"; 

 but I have no idea whether this is true. Nor 

 do I know whether the priests themselves take 

 medicine. I believe that one element in the 

 matter is that the snake priests either naturally 

 possess or develop the same calm power over 

 these serpents that certain men have over bees; 

 the latter power, the existence of which is so 

 well known, has never received the attention 

 and study it deserves. An occasional white 

 man has such power with snakes. There was 

 near my ranch on the Little Missouri, twenty- 

 five years ago, a man who had this power. 

 He was a rather shiftless, ignorant man, of a 

 common frontier type, who failed at about 

 everything, and I think he was himself surprised 

 when he found that he could pick up and handle 

 rattlesnakes w^ith impunity. There was no de- 

 ception about it. I would take him off on horse- 

 back, and when I found a rattler he would 

 quietly pick it up by the thick part of the body 

 and put it in a sack. He sometimes made move- 

 ments w^ith his hands before picking up a coiled 

 rattler; but when he had several in a bag he 

 would simply put his hand in, take hold of a 

 snake anywhere, and draw it out. I can under- 

 stand the snakes being soothed and quieted by 



