44 HOPI KATCINAS [eth. a.n.n. 21 



Fourth Act 



After the audience had sat ^;ilent for about a quarter of an hour 

 men were heard walking on the roof and strange cries came down the 

 hatchway. Again the fire tenders called to the visitors to enter, and 

 nuiffled responses, as of masked persons outside, were heard in reply. 

 First came down the ladder a man wearing a shabby- mask covered 

 with vertical zigzag lines," bearing a heavy bundle on his back. As 

 he climbed down the ladder he pretended to slip on each rung, but 

 ultimately landed on the floor without accident, and opened his bundle, 

 which was found to contain a metate and meal-grinding stone. He 

 arranged these on the floor before the fireplace and took his place at 

 one side. A .'^econd man with a like bundle followed, and deposited 

 his burden b}- the side of tne other. Two masked girls,* elaborately 

 di-essed in white ceremonial blankets, followed, and knelt by the stones 

 facing the fire, assuming the posture of girls when grinding corn. 



After them entered the chorus, a procession of masked men who 

 filed around the room and halted in line behind the kneeling girls. 

 At a signal these last arrivals began to sing, and as they sang moved 

 in a solemn dance. The girls rubbed the mealing stones back and 

 forth over the metates. grinding the meal in time with the song, and 

 the men clapped their hands, swaying their bodies in rhj'thm. 



The last-mentioned men held an animated conversation with the fire 

 tenders, asserting that the girls Mere expert meal grinders, and from 

 time to time crossed the room, glutting pinches of the meal into the 

 mouths of the fire tenders and spectators. This continued for some 

 time, after which the girls rose and danced in the middle of the room, 

 posturing their bodies and extending alternately their hands, in which 

 they carried corn ears. The chorus personated the Navaho Aiiya kat- 

 cinas, the girls were called the Navaho Anya maids and were supposed 

 to be sisters of men in the chorus. 



In order better to understand this act. let us consider the nature of 

 the cult from which the personages appearing in it were derived. 

 These jiersonages are called katcinas, of which there are many kinds 

 among the Hopis, differing from each other in the symbolism of their 

 masks and other paraphernalia. Their distinctive names are totem- 

 istic, the same as those of clans now living either at Walpi or at some 

 other place from which the katcinas were derived. Katcinas are 

 tutelary clan gods of the ancestral type, and when personated appear 

 as both males and females. 



In manj^ cases the katcina is represented hy no clan of the same 

 totemistic name now living in the pueblo. This has been brought 

 about in several ways, of which there may be mentioned: (1) The 



<i These men were called Hehea katcinas. 



h These girls were called the Tacab Afiya katcina manas. On the day following, two girls repre- 

 senting the Anya katcina manas performed the same act in the public plaza of Walpi, 



