BUNZEL] DISTRIBUTION OF KATCINA DANCING 901 



memory of living men. The Zufiis claim to have borrowed one of 

 their Tcakwena dances from Laguna (see p. 1022). However, at 

 Laguna it is claimed that the Tcakwena dance is of Zuni provenience." 

 The same is true also of other dances: Hilili, which the Hopi claim 

 was recently introduced from Zuni, and to which the Zuni, on the 

 other hand, attribute a Hopi origin. Unquestionably there is a great 

 deal of intertribal borrowing of ceremonial details and of whole dances. 

 It seems to go in all directions. I have myself been present when 

 Hopis from various villages and a visitor from San Felipe were com- 

 paring ceremonies and swapping katcina songs. The San Felipe man 

 was learning the songs for the katcina corn grinding, a ceremony 

 which interested him greatly. In return he was teaching his Hopi 

 friends the Keresan words of a Shiwana song. Neither spoke the 

 language of the other. The explanations and translations were in 

 English. It is always interesting to catch a bit of culture at the 

 moment of transfer; in this case, the casual way in which sacred infor- 

 mation is passed about is instructive. It shows the fluidity of detail 

 under the rigid pattern, which becomes more and more striking the 

 more we learn of variants in pueblo culture. 



In general, we may say that most of the group dances which occupy 

 fixed and important places in the Zuni calendar — Kokokci, UpiRaia- 

 pona, Tcakwena, Wotemla, Hemucikwe, Muluktakii — are found in 

 other pueblos, while the occasional dances are more local in distribu- 

 tion. We may conclude, therefore, that these fixed dances are more 

 ancient — which might have been guessed in the first place. 



The problem is, perhaps, not a historic one at all but rather one of 

 esthetics. There is a style of religious behavior common to the 

 pueblo peoples; all, furthermore, utilize the same religious material, 

 the same paraphernalia, the same techniques for controlhng the 

 supernatural. The varied adjustments of the material in conformity 

 to the ritual style is analogous to similar problems in decorative art- — 

 the individual reworking and recombining decorative motives within 

 the narrow limits of a tribal style. 



Considered from the standpoint of any large problems of the his- 

 tory of human civilization, the pueblos form a small unit, and the 

 slight differences of patterning among them vanish in the face of the 

 great differences between the pueblos and, say, the rest of North 

 America. 



The fimdamental and striking traits of the katcina cult, common to 

 all pueblos, to the best of our knowledge, are five: The existence of a 

 large group of supematurals who live in a lake and are identified with 

 clouds and rain, and, surely at Zuni and Cochiti, and possibly else- 

 where, with the dead; the impersonation of these supematurals by 

 means of masks in a series of spectacular group dances "to call the 



" Parsons: Notes on Ceremonialism at Laguna. 



