SUN WORSHIP FEWKES. 



521 



on which is depicted the sun emblem (fig. 1 and pi. 9). This appears 

 in certain dances that are worn down to their essential features, hav- 

 ing lost in the course of time subsidiary rites which legends declare 

 formerly accompanied them. Take, for instance, the Buffalo dance. 

 Buffalo hunting was common among some of the ancestors of clans 

 that now live with the Hopi, but in the course of time these clans 

 migrated into a region where the buffalo no longer ranged. Natu- 

 rally, the buffalo cult declined and their great ceremony assumed a 

 contracted form as compared with the original. It has, in fact, be- 



Fig. 1. — Sun Emblem (horsehair stained red omitted). 



come a spectacular dance of one day's duration, in which appear a 

 girl called the Buffalo Maid and a boy called the Buffalo Youth 

 (pi. 10), the cultus heroine and hero of the Buffalo cult. On the 

 back of the Buffalo Maid is an elaborately made symbol of the sun, 

 while the youth carries a zigzag stick representing the lightning. 

 The signification of these two symbols is apparent; the Buffalo Maid 

 is the daughter of the Sun or the Sky god, and the Buffalo Youth 

 the agent who wields the lightning that fertilizes the earth to produce 

 buffaloes, a modified form of the elaborate drama already described. 



