SUN WORSHIP — -FEWKES. 509 



the vases from which they have emerged. The means by which this 

 is done cannot be discovered in the darkened room, but invisible 

 horsehair or other strings attached to the heads and bodies of the 

 effigies pass over the beams of the kiva roof, and down to the hand 

 of the singers. While with one hand these men shake their rattles in 

 accompaniment to their songs, with the other they manipulate the 

 serpent in realistic movements. It is apparent that this act repre- 

 sents the serpent destroying the planted field, possibly by a great 

 flood, as recounted in the legend given above. 



The episode represents in a more or less complete form a myth 

 which is said to have originated in the far south, and which is 

 still current in modified form among the Pima and Papago, supposed 

 to be descendants of the ancients who once peopled the massive walled 

 ruins, of which Casa Grande is the recognized type. The horned 

 snake represents among the Pima as among the Hopi, the Sun god, 

 called Tcuhu ("Montezuma"), who taught mankind how to irrigate 

 fields for cultivation and to build ditches to distribute the water of 

 the Gila over their thirsty farms. It is said that this being controlled 

 the waters of the Gila, and that he was worshiped. A story re- 

 counts how he took a hair from his head and drawing it through his 

 mouth laid it on the ground so that one end touched the channel 

 through which the river now flows. He took another hair or feather 

 and drew it through his mouth and laid it parallel to the first, and 

 so on until he had marked out the land in sections. When that had 

 been accomplished he spoke a word and each of these hairs or 

 feathers became a serpent, and later an irrigating ditch:. The 

 channel of the river itself became the great serpent, " and that is 

 why," added the narrator, " we worship the river in the form of a 

 serpent, and on this account we make frequent sacrifices on the banks 

 of irrigating ditches." When this cult was transported into the arid 

 mountains of Hopi, where rivers are unknown, except in the rainy 

 season, it still persisted, but, like many survivals, the environment 

 and object of the worship was changed; the serpent became the rain 

 god, or the agent of the sky, in causing rain to fall on the crops. 

 This myth is perpetuated in the dramatic festival at the vernal 

 equinox. 



The cult of the Zuni horned serpent, Kolowissi, has a close 

 resemblance to that of the Hopi, suggesting that it was probably 

 derived from the same source, or the former inhabitants of villages 

 now in ruins along the Little Colorado. We owe to Mrs. Stevenson a 

 description of the rites observed when the e^gy of this being is car- 

 ried to the Zuni kivas, from which it looks as if the Zuni horned 

 serpent, like the Hopi, is an incarnation of the Sky god and has the 

 same function. At certain times in these rites the Zuni effigy is made 

 to vomit water and all kinds of seed at the command of the Sky god. 

 The Zuni drama of the advent of the horned serpent occurs at the 



