HOPI KATCINA ALTARS—FEWKES 485 
CONCLUSIONS REGARDING THE PLACE OF KATCINAS IN TUSAYAN 
WORSHIP 
We are justified in regarding the Katcinas as spirits of the dead, 
or divinized ancestors, shades or breath-bodies of those who once 
lived, as mortuary prayers clearly indicate. The theory of ancestor 
worship gives us a ready explanation for the fact that ancestral 
spirits are represented by masked persons, and as a corollary, a 
suggestion regarding the significance of the different symbolism of 
those masks. 
The Hopi, like many people, look back to mythic times when 
they believe their ancestors lived in a “ paradise,” or state or place 
where food (corn) was plenty and rains abundant, a world of 
perpetual summer and flowers. Their legends recount how, when 
corn failed or rain ceased, cultus heroes have sought these imagi- 
nary or ideal ancestral homes to learn the “ medicine,” songs, pray- 
ers, fetishes, and charms efficacious to influence or control super- 
naturals, which blessed these happy lands. Each sacerdotal society 
tells the story of its own hero bringing from that land a bride, who 
transmitted to her son the knowledge of the altars, songs, and 
prayers, which forced the crops to grow and the rains to fall in 
her native country. To become thoroughly conversant with the 
rites he is said to marry the maid; otherwise at his death they would 
be lost, since knowledge of the “ medicine ” is believed to be trans- 
mitted, not through his clan, but that of his wife. So the Snake 
hero brought the Snake-Maid (corn-rain girl) from the under- 
world; the Flute hero, her sister, the Flute-Maid; the Little War 
God, the Lakonemana and other supernaturals. 
A Katcina hero in the old times, “on a rabbit hunt came to a 
region where there was no snow. There he saw other Katcina people 
dancing amidst beautiful gardens. He received melons from them 
and carrying them home told a strange story of the people who 
inhabited a country where there were flowering plants in mid- 
winter. The hero and a comrade were sent back, and they stayed 
with their people, returning home loaded with fruit in February. 
They had learned the songs of those with whom they had lived, 
and taught them in the kiva of their own people.” ** 
In the ceremonies with unmasked personifications, or those cele- 
brated yearly between July and January which are not Katcinas, an 
attempt is made to reproduce rites which legends declare the cultus 
or ancestral heroes saw in the lands they visited, which lands are 
reputed to be variously situated, but generally in the underworld, 
to augment the efficacy of the ceremonies. In the ceremonies between 
3% Journ. Amer. Ethnol. and Archzol., Vol. II, No. 1, p. 152. The Katcina hero in this 
story would appear not to have brought a wife from this people. 
