PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 

 Vol. II, pp. 60^-629. December 28, 1900. 



A THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE AT WALPI.^ 

 Bv J. Walter Fewkes. 

 [PivATES XXXII-XXXIV.] 



CONTENTS : 



Relation of Primitive Drama and Ceremony 605 



The Great Serpent Drama of the Hopi 606 



Additional Acts, sometimes performed 61S 



Paraphernalia, their Construction and Symbolism 621 



Resume of Events in Paliilukonti 623 



Conclusions 626 



RELATION OF PRIMITIVE DRAMA AND CEREMONY. 



Drama and ceremony spring from the same soil, the religious 

 sentiment. In primal conditions of growth they have a com- 

 mon root, and later are so closely related that it is difficult to 

 distinguish one from the other. Ceremony, the prescribed ac- 

 tion, is dramatic or makes use of representations of mythological 

 events and personages, both in its simplest and most compli- 

 cated stages of evolution. These representations become more 

 and more realistic, and finally part company with ceremony, 

 becoming at last purely secular. 



The drama is always a means of artistic expression. Among 

 primitive men it is wholly dominated by the religious sentiment, 

 by which is meant the sense of relation and fancied obligation 

 of man to his supernatural conceptions called gods. This senti- 

 ment, the key to early pictorial art, is as has been shown else- 

 where, also all potent in the drama. 



'The work on which this paper is based was done under the direction of the 

 Bureau of Americati Ethnology, in the spring of 1900. 



Proc. Wash. Acad. Sci., December 1900. ( 605 ) 



