SUN WORSHIP FEWKES. 499 



who sing songs to the accompaniment of rattles and say the appro- 

 priate prayers as the occasion requires. 



The ceremony or drama before this altar opens with a formal 

 smoke by the chiefs, in which, with due reverence, a lighted tobacco 

 pipe is passed with great solemnity from one priest to another, seated 

 about the fireplace, after which steps are heard on the roof of the 

 room, indicating an important arrival. Soon a small ball of sacred 

 meal thrown through the hatchway of the roof lands on the floor 

 by the side of the fireplace, by which the arrival of the god is 

 formally announced. The visitor is invited to enter. Cries of the 

 eagle have been imitated for a long time by a man seated in one 

 corner of the room blowing through a bone whistle into a bowl of 

 medicine. These cries or calls to the Sky god now become louder 

 than ever, and soon the visitor appears in the hatchway and de- 

 scends the ladder through the roof. He is welcomed into the room 

 and is seen to represent a large bird, wearing on his head a bunch 

 of feathers attached to a leather helmet made in imitation of a 

 bird's head. The disguise is not limited to the head, for his body is 

 daubed in spots with piiion pitch, to which are attached feathers, 

 while across his shoulders is stretched a string to which are tied rows 

 of feathers in imitation of wings which he flaps up and down, 

 mimicking the motions of a bird. Thus appareled he struts around 

 the room, imitating a bird in gait and in the movements of his 

 wings, at times emitting calls like those of a hawk or eagle. This 

 personation represents the Sky god,* whose advent is the return of 

 that supernatural. 



In one corner of the room, at the right of the altar, sits a maiden 

 apart from all others, who represents the Earth maid. On the floor 

 in front of her there is a pile of sand a few inches high, in which are 

 stuck a few short sticks like arrows. After the Sky god has made 

 several circuits about the room, during which he is the recipient of 

 many prayers from the assembled priests, he halts and squats 

 directly in front of the girl. Bending down his body almost to 

 the mound, he takes from it in each hand an arrow, and then 

 raising his body with a cry, throws them back into the pile of 

 sand. Having made another circuit of the room, always sinistral 

 in direction, he returns to the girl, repeating the act several times. 

 The meaning of this performance is not hard to discern; it repre- 

 sents the fertilization of the earth, as symbolized by the girl, by the 

 lightning as symbolized by the arrows. The act is a declaration 

 that man desires the god to fructify the earth and thus to bless them 

 with abundant harvest. 



The object of this winter solstice ceremony is not only to draw 

 back the sun, the arrival of whom, as we have seen, is dramatized 

 in the rite just described, but likewise to impart new life to all 



