496 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. 



pies from the South — virtually from southern Arizona. Legends 

 say that these southern people, called the Patki, introduced into 

 Hopiland the serpent sun cult, a higher form of religious symbolism 

 than that previously existing. 



The cult of the Snake people and other northern clans which set- 

 tled the Hopi towns before the Patki came emphasizes ancestor wor- 

 ship, sky and earth playing a subordinate role in its ceremony. 

 Their appeal to nature powers is through ancestral beings, repre- 

 sented by reptilian descendants of a culture-hero or heroine, brought 

 into the town for that purpose in their great annual festival. Sky 

 worship with them was secondary, or at least they have no symbolic 

 personation of the Sky god. Among the southern clans agriculture 

 had become the main occupation in the food quest long before they 

 came to Hopiland, and with them prayers were made directly to 

 the sky and earth as powers that cause the crops to grow. Both their 

 myths and ritual deal more with cosmic powers, showing a high 

 development of aboriginal worship. 



Two positions of the sun on the horizon, at his solstitial rising 

 and setting, the former at the end of June and the latter at the 

 close of December, mark occasions of elaborate solar ceremonies. 

 The time is determined by the Sun priests of the Patki people. It 

 has been found that the former event is directly connected with the 

 advent of the rainy season, and the latter marks when the sun 

 reaches his most distant point to the south, at a time when the great 

 cold intensifies the growing fear of the people that he is about to 

 depart from the earth never to return. The departure of the being 

 to whom the farmer owes his crops must be prevented, he must be 

 compelled to turn back, or, as poetically expressed, the malign in- 

 fluences of the winter — personated by a hostile being — must be offset 

 that the Sky god may return. In midsummer all known magic 

 must be exerted to compel the Sky god to water the fields that the 

 corn may grow and ripen. In both cases the sky power must be 

 compelled 1 to aid the farmer. For want of a better term we call 

 this process prayer, but it is more than a verbal entreaty, it is com- 

 pulsion by sympathetic magic, and may be expressed in several 

 ways, one of which is by mimetic representation called dramatiza- 

 tion. 



In rites performed at the two periods above mentioned a partici- 

 pant personates the sun, and others represent supernatural beings 

 to whom the needs of the worshipers are addressed. The per- 

 sonators are clothed in the dress and carry the paraphernalia that 

 in Hopi legends are associated with these supernaturals. They 



1 The word is used advisedly. A priest by magic may compel a supernatural to do 

 what he wishes. 



