THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE 79 



larger two-thirds of the room, and greeted me 

 with grave courtesy; they spread a blanket on 

 the edge of the dais, and I sat down, with my 

 back to the snakes and about eight feet from 

 them; a little behind and to one side of me sat 

 a priest with a kind of fan or brush made of 

 two or three wing-plumes of an eagle, who kept 

 quiet guard over his serpent wards. At the 

 farther end of the room was the altar; the 

 rude picture of a coyote was painted on the 

 floor, and on the four sides of this coyote pic 

 ture were paintings of snakes; on three sides it 

 was hemmed in by lightning-sticks, or thunder- 

 sticks, standing upright in little clay cups, and 

 on the fourth side by eagle plumes held similarly 

 erect. Some of the priests were smoking 

 for pleasure, not ceremonially and they were 

 working at parts of the ceremonial dress. One 

 had a cast rattlesnake skin which he was chew 

 ing, to limber it up, just as Sioux squaws used 

 to chew buckskin. Another was fixing a leather 

 apron with pendent thongs; he stood up and 

 tried it on. All were scantily clad, in breech- 

 clouts or short kilts or loin flaps; their naked, 

 copper-red bodies, lithe and sinewy, shone, and 

 each had been splashed in two or three places 

 with a blotch or streak of white paint. One 

 spoke English and translated freely; I was care- 



