XLVt BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



of tlu' (iliservances of one of the most devotional peoples 

 known to .students. 



While L)r Fewkes' record is b(i.sed wholly on his own recent 

 observations, it is sig'niticant as an extension and corroboration 

 of notes made by me many years ago, and warrants the presen- 

 tation of a sunmiarv of these notes. 



In the winter of 1868-69 I was encamped on ^yhite river, 

 in what was then the territory of Colorado, not far from the 

 Utah line. During the time a tribe of Utes lived near our 

 camp ground, and I utilized the opportunity to study their 

 language, together with their haljits, customs, ceremonies, and 

 opinions. It was during this winter that I obtained the first 

 concept of the Amei-ind fraternity, or, as I called it at that 

 time, the cult society, which is an incorporated body whose 

 function it is to prevent and cure diseases, or to secure any 

 good or prevent any evil which may come to man through 

 any agency of nature. Thus it is the function of the frater- 

 nity to control tlie weather and the seasons, to secure abundant 

 fruits, to secure the rainfall upon which they depend, to secure 

 abundant game, and all the other things of nature upon which 

 the welfare of men are contingent. The cult society, or frater- 

 nity, or phratry, or curia (for l)y all of these names it has been 

 known), has an ecclesiastic or religious motive which distin- 

 o-uishes it from the clan and "'ens wliich have a sociologic 

 motive. 



Subsequently I investigated the nature of these fraternities 

 as they are developed among tlu- trilies in southern Utah and 

 northern Arizona, and in 1870 I went from Kanab, in southern 

 Utah, eastward across the Colorado river to the province of 

 Tusayan — the seven villages on the rocks — Zuiii, and other 

 pueblos in Arizona and New Mexico. But I especially lin- 

 gered in Tusayan to investigate the fraternities of the Ho])i 

 people, who constitute six of the seven tribes of that region. 

 The language of these people belongs to the Shoshonian 

 stock and is somewhat closely allied to that of the Ute and 

 Paiute of Colorado and Utah, whose languages I had pre- 

 viously studied. I had with me a Mormon missionary, who 

 had spent much time in Hopi villages; and a slight knowledge 



