296 



NATURE 



[July 



same site that their ancestors did when visited by the 

 early Spanish explorers, in the middle of the sixteenth 

 century. 



For three hundred years after their discovery the Mokis 

 were practically independent, and notwithstanding efforts 

 were made by zealous priests to Christianise them during 

 that time, these heroic attempts signally failed to change 

 the aboriginal character of their religious beliefs and 

 practices. With a pertinacity, born of conservatism, they 

 still cling to their ancient mythology and ritual, which 

 remains practically unmodified, presenting to the ethno- 

 logist a most instructive phase of native American 

 religion. 



An examination of this ritual shows it to be a most 

 complicated one, as may be seen by a consultation of the 

 extensive literature which has accumulated on this sub- 

 ject. Notwithstanding considerable progress has been 

 made in the interpretation of many details, much still 

 remains to be studied before accurate general ideas of 

 its character are possible. 



The Mokis are primarily agriculturists, and their 

 religion is consequently one in which worship of the sun, 

 rain, and growth of maize is pre-eminent. 



The nature of their sun-worship is very obscurely 

 known, notwithstanding it is well marked both in all great 

 ceremonials from one end of the calendar to the other, 

 and in many rites, which are limited to family life. Solar 

 worship is especially prominent in the religious festivals 

 which take place at the two equinoxes, and on the summer 

 and winter solstices. Manifestly an adequate treatment 

 of the subject of sun-worship among a people with whom 

 it is so complicated, and all-pervading, would require a 

 volume ; and in a limited space I can hardly hope to do 

 more than mention a few of many aspects of the subject. 



The few lines which follow describe an aboriginal 

 astronomical method of determination of the date of the 

 winter solstice ceremony, and the dramatisation adopted 

 in the performance of solar rites at that time. It is well 

 known to students of the Moki ritual that the dates of 

 the months on which the great ceremonials of their 

 calendar are performed vary but little year by year, or 

 that their rehgious festivals recur annually in the same 

 months, and on or near the same days of the months. 

 This precision would occasion little surprise, but for the 

 fact that these Indians are, and always have been, 

 ignorant of our almanacs, knowing nothing of our 

 months, weeks or days. 



The dates of their festivals, recurring year after year 

 on the same, or nearly the same, days of the months, are 

 determined by a method of great antiquity, probably 

 pre-Columbian times. The native calendar of the Maya 

 and kindred peoples of Central America are well known, 

 and the accuracy with which the ceremonial and solar 

 years were adjusted has been commented upon by several 

 well-known Americanists. The Mokis had taken the 

 most important step in the discovery of a similar 

 calendar, for they are able to recognise the same day 

 when it returns, year after year, by a purely astronomical 

 method. To count the intervening days, or to determine 

 the number of days in a ceremonial or solar year, was a 

 secondary step which they never took, nor had they dis- 

 covered that one festival follows another by a lapse of a 

 certain interval of time. 



The student who is interested in the question of the 

 accuracy with which this same date was fixed upon year 

 by year, will find in the American Attthropologist a 

 tabular list of ceremonies and dates on which they'occur. 

 It will be seen from this list that while there is a variation 

 of a few days in several important festivals, as the snake 

 dance, in the case of those which take place at the winter 

 solstice the method is perfect, and, as a result, the deter- 

 mination accurate to a day. 



The dates for the celebration of the great ceremonies 

 in their calendar are determined by the position of the 

 NO. 1500, VOL. 58] 



sun on the horizon. The sun-lore, or astronomical know- 

 ledge necessary for this purpose, is traditional among 

 men, called sun-priests, who belong to certain clans of 

 the pueblo, and these clans are reputed to have migrated 

 to Moki from ancestral homes in Southern Arizona, 

 bringing this lore with them. 



The time of year is determined by the place of the sun 

 at sunrise or sunset, as seen from the roof of a particular 

 house in the pueblo. The points on the horizon of sun- 

 rise and sunset, at the summer and winter solstices, are 

 cardinal among these Indians, and they recognise that 

 these directions have no relation to the polar north, or to 

 one west, south and east. The four Moki cardinal points 

 determine the orientation of their sacred rooms or kivas, 

 and are connected with an elaborate world-quarter 

 worship, to discuss which, in detail, would be out of place 

 in this article. 



Two of these points are called sun-houses. When the 

 sun sets behind a certain notch in the horizon it descends 

 into a so-called western sun-house which bears 50' south 

 of west from the house of the sun-chief. This notch is 

 made by a depression at the end of the Eldon Mesa, a 

 spur of the San Francisco Mountains, appearing as a 

 slight dent in the horizon silhouetted against the sky. It 

 marks that point on the rim of the horizon south of which 

 the sun never sets. The day on which the sun enters his 

 western house he appears to stop in his southern course, 

 as the word solstice signifies ; and on the following day 

 appears to retrace his steps, and set north of this point. 

 Astronomically speaking, he is at the winter solstice. 



In the same way a point on the eastern horizon marks 

 the position of the sun when he halts in his northern 

 course. This point marks the eastern sun-house from 

 which the sun emerges at the summer solstice. 



The peoples of the eastern and western horizons, as 

 limited by the Moki cardinal points, is marked off by a 

 number of intervals indicated by hillocks, trees, notches, 

 or pinnacles. Each of these horizontal abjects has a 

 name known to sun-priests, who likewise know the par- 

 ticular days of the year which the conjunction of the sun, 

 at sunrise or sunset, with these points indicate. Thus, 

 when the sun rises from behind one of these hillocks 

 the time for planting has come ; or from a certain notch, 

 the date of a great monthly festival is at hand. The sun- 

 priest, who has determined the time by these solar hori- 

 zontal observations, communicates the information to a 

 town-crier, who announces it from the house-top in a 

 voice audible throughout the pueblo. The native names 

 of all these horizon points, and the corresponding cere- 

 monials, are given in an account of the Tusayan Kat- 

 cinas, published in the fifteenth Annual Report of the 

 Bureau of American Ethnology. 



It will thus be seen that with the Moki priests the 

 position of the sun, rather than phases of the moon, is 

 the primary method of assigning the dates to their great 

 festivals ; but there are certain ceremonials when the 

 appearance of the moon likewise enters into the cal- 

 culation. 



The connection between the diminution of the lengths 

 of the days, the cold winter, and the gradual withdrawal 

 of the sun as each day it sets more and more to the 

 south, has made a profound impression on the observant 

 mind of the Mokis, and the fear naturally arose that 

 the sun is about to desert them. As winter advances 

 his rays become less powerful, and with equal pace a 

 dread grows in the primitive mind that the sun will 

 ultimately wholly abandon the distressed farmers. 

 Special ceremonials arose out of this uncertainty. 

 Means must be adopted to stay the sun's retreat, and 

 rites were inaugurated for that purpose. These were 

 founded on the belief that the sun is an anthropomorphic 

 being who is liable to become feeble ; he must be 

 endowed with new life, and thus it comes about that one 

 object of the winter solstice ceremony among the Mokis,, 



