FEWKES] SYMBOLIC OFFERINGS—SHELL OBJECTS 739 
In a simple prayer the sacrifice is a pinch of meal thrown on the 
fetish or toward it. This is an individual method of prayer, and 
the pinch of meal, his prayer bearer, the sacrifice. 
When a society made its prayers this meal, symbolic of a gift of 
corn, is tied in a packet and attached to two sticks, one male, the other 
female, with prescribed herbs and feathers. Here we have the ordinary 
prayer-stick, varying in details but essentially the same, a sacrifice to 
the gods appropriately designated by prescribed accessories. 
Frequently this packet of meal may be replaced by a picture of an 
ear of corn drawn on a flat slat, the so-called “corn paho” of the Flute 
maidens,' or we may have an ear of corn tied to the wooden slat. In 
the Mamzrau ceremony the women carry these painted slats in their 
hands, as I have elsewhere described.? It appears as if, in all these 
instances, there exists a sacrificial object, a symbolic offering of corn 
or meal. 
The constant appearance of the feather on the paho has suggested 
an interpretation of the prayer-plumes as symbolic sacrifices of birds 
on the theory of a part for the whole; we know that among the Nahua 
Sacrifices of birds were common in many ceremonials. The idea of 
animal sacrifice, and, if we judge from legends, of human sacrifice, was 
not an unknown conception among the Pueblos. While it is possible 
that the omnipresence of the feather on the prayer-sticks may admit of 
that interpretation, to which it must be confessed the male and the 
female components in double pahos lend some evidence,’ I believe the 
main object was, as above stated, an offering of meal, which constituted 
the special wealth of an agricultural people. 
MARINE SHELLS AND OTHER OBJECTS 
The excavations at Sikyatki did not reveal a large number of marine 
Shells, although some of the more common genera used in the ancient 
pueblos were found. 
There were several fragments of Pectunculus cut into the form of 
wristlets, like those from the ruins on the Little Colorado which I have 
described. Two beautiful specimens of Oliva angulata, truncated at 
each pole, which occurred in one of the mortuary bowls, and a few coni- 
cal rattles, made of the spires of Conus, were taken from the graves; 
there were also a few fragments of an unknown Haliotis. All of the 
above genera are common to the Pacific, and no doubt were obtained by 
barter or brought by migratory clans to Tusayan from the far south. 
One of the most interesting objects in Sikyatki food basins from the 
necropolis was a comparatively well preserved rattle of a rattlesnake. 
The Walpi Snake chief, who was employed by me when this was found 
and was present at the time it was removed from the earth, declared 
1 Journal of American Ethnology and Archwology, Vol. 1, p. 131. 
2 American Anthropologist, July, 1892. 
’ As stated in former pages, there is some paleographic evidence looking in that direction. 
