BUNZEL] THE POWER AND USE OP MASKS 847 



never see them again." The final ceremony of the departure of the 

 Ca'Iako is especially suggestive of this interpretation. When out of 

 sight of the village the Ca'Iako are pursued by young men. When 

 caught they are thrown down and killed, and the mask is treated like 

 the body of a fallen deer — "for good luck in hunting."* On retiu'ning 

 the impersonators are met outside the village by their aunts and taken 

 at once to their houses to be bathed before they are safe for human 

 contact. 



Identification with the god, and the lolling of the god, for fecundity, 

 as found in ancient Mexico, seem to be ideas in keeping with Zuni 

 concepts. But Zuni temperament would repudiate the bloody 

 sacrifice. It may well be that the particular technique of impersona- 

 tion, with its atmosphere of the sinister and dangerous, is the symbolic 

 representation of the extirpated fact. Tales of the former existence 

 of human sacrifice in the pueblos continually crop up. 



Frazer, quoting Bourke, gives an account of the sacrifice of a youth 

 at the fire festival (tribal initiation) of the Hopi.' Mrs. Stevenson 

 refers to the report of human sacrifice at Zia. There are cases of 

 human sacrifices for fertility among the Pawnee and the Sioux. 

 The prevalence of all forms of human sacrifice among the Aztecs is 

 too well Ivnown to require comment. Among the Aztecs, however, 

 are found two strildng features: The dancing of priests in the flayed 

 skin of the sacrificial victim, and the identification of the sacrificial 

 victim with the god, as, for example, in the sacrifice of Tezcatlipoca. 

 In the battle with the katcinas at Acoma the katcinas are ritualis- 

 tically slain so that their blood may fertilize the earth. In the prayers 

 of the scalp dance there are frequent allusions to blood as a fertiliz- 

 ing medium, so possibly the whole complex of human sacrifice is 

 not so remote historically or conceptually as might at first appear. 



The persistent rumors of an early prevalence of human sacrifice in 

 the pueblos may be without foundation, but the reworldng of a cult 

 that once included human sacrifice is quite in accord with pueblo 

 tendency to absorb ritual from all sides and mitigate all its more 

 violent features. 



THE POWER AND USE OF MASKS 



The Katcina cult at Zuni revolves about the fetishistic power im- 

 puted to the mask. The myth of the origin of masks is to be found 

 on page 604. The word koko is used alike of the being impersonated 

 and the mask wherein resides the power of transformation. The 

 mask is the corporeal substance of the katcina, and in wearing it a 

 man assumes the personality of the god whose representation he 

 bears. The Zuiii expression for this process of transformation is 



8 This is the one part of the Ca'Iako ceremony that I was not permitted to see. 

 •Golden Bough, 4: 215. 



