NOTES ON TUSAYAN, SNAKE, AND FLUTE CEREMONIES 
By Jesse Watrer Fewkes 
INTRODUCTION 
The Hopi or so-called Moqui Indians of Arizona are among the few 
surviving tribes of American aborigines which still retain an ancient 
ritual that is apparently unmodified by the Christian religion. This 
ritual is of a very complicated nature and is composed of monthly 
ceremonies the recurrence of which is precise as to time and place. 
It must be remembered that these ceremonies are not performed at 
irregular intervals by well-to-do Hopi to cure sickness of themselves 
or their families. Among other Indians this motive is often the 
keynote of their rites, but while among the Hopi there are ceremonials 
which are directed to that end, and all the regularly recurring cere- 
monials are regarded as efficacious in healing bodily ills, they have 
primarily another purpose. Whether they originated as a preventive 
of disease, and in their primitive condition had the same intent as the 
rites of the Navaho shamans, is beyond the scope of this memoir. At 
present the ritual is performed for the purpose of bringing abundant 
rains and successful crops. 
Two most important summer ceremonies in this elaborate ritual are 
the Snake dance and the Flute observance, and the former, from 
the startling fact that venomous reptiles are carried in the mouths 
of the participants, has achieved world-wide celebrity. It is thought 
by some white men to be the most important ceremony in the calendar, 
but anyone familiar with the Hopi ritual will recognize that these 
Indians have several other ceremonies more complicated, though far 
Jess sensational. Only the bare outlines of many of these ceremonies 
have yet been described, but enough is known to cause due appre- 
ciation of their importance in the Hopi system of religion. The Flute 
ceremony is one of these, and as it is closely connected with the Snake 
dance it is naturally considered in this connection. 
With the accompanying description of the Snake dance at Mishong- 
novi the author completes his account of the general features of this 
ceremony in the five Tusayan pueblos in which it takes place, but 
this additional knowledge of the externals of the observance has by 
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