RESEMBLANCES TO THE KERESAN SNAKE DANCE 
The valuable article by Mrs Stevenson gives us about all that is known 
of the character of the Snake dance among the Keres. Although 
Hodge! has found evidence that this ceremony was of late introduction 
in Sia, we may rightly suppose that the celebration described by Mrs 
Stevenson gives an idea of its general character among Keresan com- 
munities. I have already shown the points of similarity of the Snake 
dance of Walpi and that of Sia, as described by Mrs Stevenson, and 
have called attention to the probable meaning of those similarities, 
viz, derivation either from each other or differentiation of both from 
the same culture. The studies of the three Tusayan variants of the 
Snake dance, which are described in the preceding pages, add further 
evidence of relationship between the Tusayan and Keresan Snake 
dances. As would naturally be suspected, the Sia ceremonial differs 
more from any one Tusayan variant than the Tusayan dances differ 
among themselves, but the resemblances of the Oraibi, or most primi- 
tive, are closer to that of Sia than the highly differentiated Walpi per- 
formance. 
The only other theory besides the derivation to account for these 
similarities of Tusayan and Keresan Snake dances would be that of 
independent origins, now being vigorously advocated in many quarters. 
While I am heartily in sympathy with this movement as a protest 
against wild comparisons and deductions from isolated likenesses of 
objects or myths, it may be carried too far. Members of the Keresan 
and Tusayan stocks, if we may so call them, have repeatedly been 
brought together in historic times. People from the Rio Grande have 
mnigrated in a body to-Tusayan and built towns there or become assimi- 
lated with the sedentary inhabitants of that province. So, likewise, 
other peoples who once lived in Tusayan have moved back to the Rio 
Grande, and their descendants now form a component of pueblos like 
Laguna, Sandia, and others. This fact in itself is indicative of resem- 
blances in ceremonials among these separated peoples, and when in 
studying the Snake dance of Sia and Tusayan we find many likenesses— 
not one or two resemblances in symbols and paraphernalia, but many 
resemblances in minute details—we rationally conclude that they are 
derivative and not of independent origins, due to a similar mind acted 
upon by a like environment. 

)American Authropologist, April, 1896, p. 134. Introduced by the ‘‘Cochiti somewhat more than 
thirty years ago.” 
309 
