1006 TUSAYAN FLUTE AND SNAKE CEREMONIES (ETH. ANN. 19 
RELATION OF SNAKE SOCIETY AND SNAKE CLAN 
The Hopi ritual, or that part of it which pertains to communal 
worship. making up the yearly calendar, bears evidence of being com- 
posite, and we may suppose that it has become so for the same reasons 
that the social system of the Hopi is composite. It is composed of a 
collection of ceremonies which have come together, yet remain distinct. 
In the traditional account of the growth of Walpi, for instance, it is 
stated that families drifted to the site of the pueblo from difkerent direc- 
tions. and as they arrived certain sections of the village were assigned 
to them for their homes: these sections their descendants still occupy. 
By mutual consent each clan was allotted certain tracts of land in the 
plain for their farms, and these land holdings still remain in the clans. 
While the clans were living together, a community of interest de- 
veloped and intermarriage broke down the limitation of sacerdotal 
societies to clans. Certain emergencies arose when clans were forced 
to act together. These influences resulted in an amalgamation of 
clans, and a new organization was effected. The clan languages were 
fused into a common speech, and a coalescence of the different arts 
and customs also occurred. The new organization retained much that 
was good in each of component clans. 
The ritual developed along the same lines, but the religious senti- 
ment being more conservative, the clan units have remained more 
apparent in the rites than elsewhere. When each new family joined 
the already established villagers, it brought its own mythology and 
ritual clustering about a special cultus hero and clan mother, or tute- 
lary ancestral couple and, after the union with other clans continued 
to practice its own clan rites. The germ of that clan ancients wor- 
ship was evidently ancestor worship. The Hopi ritual is thus a com- 
posite of several distinctive clan units. 
The Snake dance and the Flute observance are two of these units— 
one the clan worship of the Snake clans, the other that of the Flute 
clans. Moreover, since these two clans were among the first to unite 
and form the nucleus of Watpi, their clan rites must necessarily haye 
been practiced side by side for a longer time than those of most other 
clans. Henee we should expect to find mutual reaction and many 
pronounced similarities, which account for the ritualistic resemblances 
noted. and aiso afford a verification of the legend of the antiquity of the 
Snake and Flute ceremonies at Walpi; but there is nothing to show 
that they are older than the others, although good evidence exists that 
they have been observed at Walpi for a longer time than any other 
forms of clan worship. It would be interesting to know the sources 
and characteristics of the subsequent increments to the Walpi ritual, 
but the Snake and Flute clan rites are preeminently attractive to the 
ethnologist. 
