AT ZUftl AND MOQUI PUEBLOS. 107 



LEY-LA-TUK. 



Learning at the close of the Ham-po-ney that an inter- 

 esting dance was to take place in the distant Moqui pueblo 

 of Wol-pi, I left Zuni on the following day and made a trip 

 to this interesting pueblo. I was particularly anxious to 

 see this dance, the Ley-la-tuk, because of its reported 

 connection with the rattlesnake dance, since it is my inten- 

 tion to specially study this ceremony in some subsequent 

 year. I, therefore, hurried away from Zuni to Gallup and 

 with a new "outfit" took the trail via Fort Defiance and Pue- 

 blo Colorado to the Moqui pueblos. I arrived under the 

 shadow of the rnesa upon which stands the first three Mo- 

 qui towns, on the afternoon of Aug. 20, in time to witness 

 parts at least of this most interesting and primitive cere- 

 mony. 



The ceremony on the mesa began at sundown, but on 

 my arrival at the pueblo in the late afternoon, the partic- 

 ipants were assembled at a sacred spring in the plain below, 

 where certain preliminaries were being performed. These 

 I did not witness, but at a few minutes before dusk I ob- 

 served a long procession winding up the side of the mesa 

 to the town of Wol-pi, the most interesting of the three 

 villages on the easternmost mesa of Moqui. 1 



About twenty persons took part in the ceremony at the 

 well, and a few joined the procession after it reached the 

 mesa top. 



The line of participants marching from the spring to the 

 mesa top was led by a priest who carried in his hand a 



1 It is a most desirable thing to study the character of the religious observ- 

 ances in the Moqui towns especially in Oraibe, the one which lias least been in- 

 llticnced by the Americans and Spaniards. The Moquis have been studied with 

 great profit by the Stovensons, Bourke, Stevens, Keain and others, but much yet 

 remains before we can get at the true significance of their religious ceremonials. 

 There is no subject in comparative religion which will better repay investigation 

 than that of the ceremonial life of the Moqujs. 



