NATURE 



429 



THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 1SS5 



THE SNAKE-DANCE OF THE MOQUIS OF 



ARIZONA 

 The Snake-Dance of the Moquis of Arizona; being a 



Narrative of a Journey from Santa Fe, New Mexico, 



to the Villages of the Mogul Indians of Arizona, S^c. 



By John G. Bourke, Captain Third U.S. Cavalry. 



(London : Sampson Low and Co., 1S84.) 



THE Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona have 

 this general name from living in towns (Spanish 

 pueblo, from Latin populus"). Near a river, or oftener on 

 the top of a steep-cliffed mesa or table-rock, may be seen 

 these picturesque communal settlements, with their close 

 rows of flat-roofed dwellings, walled with stone and mud, 

 rising in terrace above terrace reached by wooden outside 

 ladders, the whole forming a fortification strong enough 

 to resist a sudden attack of the Apaches or Navajos of 

 the plains, whose ravages in old times led the ancestors 

 of the present Moqui, Zuni, and other Pueblo tribes to 

 resort to their peculiar architecture. Though these 

 peoples were brought more or less under Spanish rule 

 from the sixteenth century, and had to conform more or 

 less to the Roman Catholic Church, the general barren- 

 ness and inaccessibility of their region saved them from 

 being Europeanised to the obliteration of the native 

 culture, like the nations of Mexico proper. In the 

 Pueblos the archaic system of society, framed on 

 maternal descent and exogamy, is still in full vigour, 

 while the complex native religion seems almost as per- 

 fectly preserved as if the missionaries had never made 

 the Indians wear silver crosses to their necklaces and 

 march in procession to church on Corpus Christi. Thus 

 it has come to pass that now, when the country has become 

 United States territory, and the traveller bound for San 

 Francisco passes close under the mud-walls of Laguna, 

 there is made accessible to anthropologists a remarkable 

 phase of barbaric society among a mild and intelligent 

 people, where its study can be followed into the minutest 

 detail. A few years ago, Mr. Cushing's papers in the 

 Century Magazine, describing his life in Zuni, excited 

 wide interest. Now we have another instalment of 

 Pueblo literature from Capt. Bourke, the officer selected 

 by Gen. Sheridan to examine the manners and customs 

 of the Indians of the South- Western Territories, and who 

 in August 1 88 1 went with a party to see one of the great 

 rites of the Moqui religion, never before witnessed by a 

 white man. 



On his way to the Moqui towns, Capt. Bourke paid a 

 visit to the Pueblo of Santo Domingo. Here the Indians 

 profess to be Catholics, but (as the cura of the parish last 

 year admitted to the writer of the present notice) they 

 keep their old religion too. This comes out in the 

 description of the festival Capt. Bourke's party were 

 present at, where the procession-dance was performed by 

 men with bodies painted pink and white, and wearing 

 only the cotton kilt of their forefathers, while the women's 

 headdresses were thin wooden tablets of Zuni make, cut 

 in the step-pattern which in Pueblo art conventionally 

 Vor . xxxi. — No. 802 



represents the rain-clouds, for the coming of which to 

 fertilise their arid country the ceremonies of Pueblo 

 religion are one unceasing prayer. The clowns had the 

 same prominent position as in the Zuni dances sketched 

 by dishing ; naked all but the old Mexican maxtli around 

 their loins, and painted all over in black and white stripes, 

 with tortoise-shells rattling at their knees, and their hair 

 tied in with corn-shucks, they pranced hither and thither 

 among the dancers. The whole purpose of the dance has 

 been so far changed that it has become a procession 

 bearing offerings to the shrine of St. Dominic, but even 

 here the clowns are allowed their old licence, and chaff 

 the Saint himself quite familiarly. There seem to have 

 been more secret rites which the visitors were not allowed 

 to see ; indeed, when Capt. Bourke and Mr. Moran 

 attempted to descend, note-book in hand, by the ladder 

 through the sky-hole into one of the estufas — that is, the 

 large cellar-chambers which serve as temples and council- 

 houses — they were seized and ignominiously " fired out " 

 by the yelling crowd below. A few days later, however, 

 when they reached the rocky mesa on which stand the 

 three Moqui Pueblos of Suchongnewy, Hualpi, and Hano 

 or Tegua, to visit which was the object of their journey, 

 Capt. Bourke found his way so well prepared by Mr. 

 Cushing, that he was allowed the utmost liberty in 

 examining everything connected with the snake dance, 

 the great event around which all social and religious life 

 naturally centred at the time. 



A few days before, the young men had been out to the 

 north, west, south, and east to collect snakes, and in one of 

 the estufas Capt. Bourke found the whole catch stowed 

 away in three great earthenware ollas. Next day the 

 reptiles were to be seen turned out in a writhing mass, 

 while two very old men lying on the ground were " herd- 

 ing " them : whenever a snake tried to wriggle away, they 

 sat up, and with their eagle-feather wands gently brushed 

 it till it turned back to the heap. These snakes were of 

 several kinds, but mostly rattlesnakes, and youths came 

 down the ladder from time to time bringing others, up to 

 five feet long, wriggling in their hands. When the time 

 approached for the ceremony, the visitors were politely 

 got away to sit on a terrace-roof, where they could com- 

 mand a view of the procession, close to the sacred rock 

 in the plaza or square, near which was planted in the 

 ground a Cottonwood sapling, apparently as a symbolic 

 sacred tree ; between the two stood a miniature conical 

 lodge covered with buffalo hide, imitating in shape the 

 tepi of the Sioux, and strongly suggesting a past time 

 when the ancestors of the Pueblos may have lived as 

 roving hunters on the prairie. The house-tops were 

 crowded with women and naked children waiting for the 

 procession. A noise of whirring and rattling, and there 

 came forth from the arcade an old man sprinkling water 

 on the ground, another carrying a basket of the sacred 

 meal, men and boys with rattles, and another old man bear- 

 ing a ceremonial bow, and whirling around his head a flat 

 slip of wood fastened to a cord, in which we may recog- 

 nise the "bull-roarer" known alike to the sacred rites of 

 Australians, Kafirs, and ancient Greeks. Then came a 

 party of dancers with their bodies [painted green-black 

 and faces blackened down to the upper lip and pipe- 

 clayed below, with kilts of painted cotton, coyote-skins 



