9386 TUSAYAN FLUTE AND SNAKE CEREMONIES (ETH. ANN. 19 
THE MOST PRIMITIVE SNAKE DANCE 
We have now sufficient data regarding the five variants of the Hopi 
Snake dance to enable us to consider the question which one of them 
is most primitive or more nearly like the ancestral performance. 
There is no doubt which is the largest and most complex, for the 
Walpi performance easily holds that position; and there is no other 
pueblo where the influence of white men is so pronounced, especially 
in the paraphernalia of the participants in the public dance. To these 
innoyations the prosperity of the East mesa people, due to their inter- 
course with civilization, has contributed largely. The three pueblos 
on the East mesa are, or haye been, more frequently visited, and, 
as a rule, their inhabitants are more liberally disposed to improve- 
ments of all kinds than are those of Oraibi and the Middle mesa, As 
a result we should expect the Walpi ritual to be more greatly modi- 
fied than that of any other Hopi village, and we may therefore suppose 
that the Snake dances of Oraibi and the Middle Mesa are nearer to 
the ancestral form. 
It is not alone that the white man’s civilization has acted more pro- 
foundly on Walpi than on more isolated Oraibi; the former pueblo 
is nearer Zuni and the other New Mexican villages, and was naturally 
more greatly affected by outside contact before the advent of white 
men. The Hopi population gained many increments from the Rio 
Grande before the white man’s influence began. 
The coming of the Tanoan class of Hano exerted a liberalizing ten- 
dency on the adjacent pueblos, for their ancestors came to Tusayan with 
a more intimate knowledge of white people than the Hopi could have 
gained at that time. These Tewa received the Americans more hospita- 
bly than did the true Hopi. Men of Hano moyed down from the mesa 
to the foothills and the plain when urged by governmental officials, 
braving the threats and superstitious forebodings of the more consery- 
ative people of Walpi. They have for the last twenty years exerted 
a liberalizing influence on Hopi relations with the United States, 
and that ever-growing influence has greatly reduced the conservatism 
of Walpi and Sichumovi.' Such an influence has not existed to the 
same extent at Oraibi and among the Middle Mesa villages. One 
needs but visit the three clusters of Hopi pueblos and note their pres- 
ent condition to see that the inhabitants of those on the East mesa 
are far ahead of the others in the adoption of new secular customs, 
and this influence can be seen in their ritual, leading to the belief that 
the oldest variants of ceremonies persist at Oraibi and the Middle 
mesa. 
1In 1890 there were only two houses in the foothills under the East mesa and these were inhab- 
ited by Tewa families. There was nota single house at the base of the Middle mesa and Oraibi. 
At the present writing the foothills and plains are dotted with new houses of the white man’s type, 
