THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 77 



livable. Give him a chance to utilize his own 

 inherent sense of beauty in making over his 

 own village for himself. Give him a chance to 

 lead his own life as he ought to; and realize 

 that he has something to teach us as well as 

 to learn from us. The Hopi of the younger gen 

 eration, at least in some of the towns, is chang 

 ing rapidly; and it is safe to leave it to him 

 to decide where he will build and keep his 

 house. 



I cannot so much as touch on the absorb 

 ingly interesting questions of the Hopi spiritual 

 and religious life, and of the amount of def 

 erence that can properly be paid to one side of 

 this life. The snake-dance and antelope-dance, 

 which we had come to see, are not only in 

 teresting as relics of an almost inconceivably 

 remote and savage past analogous to the 

 past wherein our own ancestors once dwelt - 

 but also represent a mystic symbolism which 

 has in it elements that are ennobling and not 

 debasing. These dances are prayers or invoca 

 tions for rain, the crowning blessing in this dry 

 land. The rain is adored and invoked both as 

 male and female; the gentle steady downpour 

 is the female, the storm with lightning the male. 

 The lightning-stick is &quot;strong medicine,&quot; and 

 is used in all these religious ceremonies. The 



