266 Kansas Academy of Science. 



it amongst his medicine curios. Then, while the populace danced 

 from left to right around him, he laid the hide on the gound and 

 stamped on it, as he again prayed and sprinkled the sacred dust. 



The scene at once changed: With one blow, the war-captain 

 severed the scalp from the hide and hoisted it on a pole; then 

 around this the men danced the scalp dance for hours. This was 

 continued till day began to dawn. Then all present seated them- 

 selves in the big house or in the street just outside of it. The 

 breech-clothed dancers then served them with eatables. At the 

 rising of the sun the cermonies closed. 



THE CORN DANCE. 



At dusk one evening in the late summer of 1900 every man, 

 woman and child that could walk prepared prayer-sticks, feathered 

 them, and then all set out in a long-drawn-out procession, in In- 

 dian file, to the bank of the Rio Chiquito, north of the village. 

 Here they tossed the sticks out from the mesa wall to the valley 

 below. Then after them they cast the pollen of the gods, as they 

 prayed to the rulers of heaven and earth. They then marched 

 back to the plaza in the same manner as they had come. 



Reaching the public dancing plat, the returning people lined 

 up, and the representatives of each clan marched to its respect- 

 ive estufa, climbed up the ladder to its roof, and entered it through 

 the hatchway. Then around the center post, which supports the 

 roof, they danced and prayed to the god symbols on the walls, 

 while the caciques sprinkled them with sacred pollen. This they 

 continued to do till about eleven o'clock in the evening. Then 

 they left the estufa. 



On leaving the estufa some of the men went to digging holes in 

 the plaza ; some went to cutting down pine trees and dragging 

 them to the plaza ; others, under the direct guidance of the cacique, 

 began to prepare a long pole by peeling it and painting it in 

 colors, so that it looked much like a barber pole, except that it was 

 many times larger. When painted they put a cross on it. Over 

 this they suspended a large wreath of corn leaves, interwoven with 

 spruce twigs. Meanwhile the men at the plaza set the trees in 

 the ground so as to make a crescent-shaped grove, with open space 

 facing the north. This completed the night scene. 



At sunrise the populace gathered around the painted pole and, 

 with a great shout, raised it to a vertical position. Then before it, 

 that is, between it and the village, the dancers, two men alter- 

 nating with three women, lined up abreast, facing the pueblo. The 

 women were dressed in black cloth, richly embroidered in shining 



