BUNZEL] DISTRIBOTION OF KATCINA DANCING 903 



guard himself ritualistically. Moreover, there seems to be no other 

 place in which the personality of the wearer is so completely absorbed. 



It has already' been pointed out that impersonation extending over 

 a period of time is found among the ancient Aztecs. The youth 

 chosen as a sacrifice to Tezcatlipoca impersonates the god for 20 days, 

 and during this period lives in honor and is finally sacrificed, and thus 

 united with the god on the last day, and his flesh is eaten in com- 

 munion by the priests and populace. We have already suggested the 

 possible relation of katcina dancing to human sacrifices (p. 846) and 

 to the fertility cults of ancient Mexico. 



Doctor Parsons has made a good case *' for the influence of the 

 Catholic missionaries on the development of katcina ritual. Wien 

 one survey's the enormous amount of concrete details that she amasses 

 in proof of her point that katcina dancmg is an adaptation of religious 

 dancing of Spain, one must be convinced of the readiness of the 

 pueblos to incorporate Catholic ceremonial into their own ritual. 

 One is struck, too, at the enormous impetus which contact with the 

 Catholics gave to the growth of the cult in those villages where it 

 could develop unhampered by the church. As pointed out by Doctor 

 Parsons, the cult reached its greatest exuberance in viUages where 

 Catholic contacts were brief and superficial. But that the larger 

 patterns or the imderlying concepts are of European origin seems 

 more doubtful. Communications with the supernatural through 

 impersonation, the use of masks in spectacular ceremonies for rain, 

 fertility, and healing are widely distributed in aboriginal America, 

 and many of the most striking features of the cult flourished in pre- 

 Columbian Mexico. The underlying ideas of the fertilization of the 

 earth are part of the general North American Indian background. 



"* Spanish Elements in the Katcina Cult of the Pueblos. 



