686 THE TUSAYAN KITUAL, 



It is, therefore, clear that the sedentary agricultural life of the 

 Tusayan Indian is the direct result of organic and inorganic surround- 

 ings. Forced from some reason unknown to me to live in a land where 

 animals were so few that he could not subsist from the products of the 

 chase, he found a possible food supply in plant life, and he accepted 

 the inevitable. He adopted the life which environment dictated, 1 and 

 accepting things as they were, worked out his culture on the only pos- 

 sible lines of development. He raised crops of maize, melons, and 

 beans, cultivated and harvested various grains, but at times when 

 other things failed found food in cacti and the meal of pifion nuts. 

 Accepting the inevitable, man's ritual became a mirror of that part of 

 his environment which most intimately affected his necessities. The 

 irregularity of the rains, and the possibility that the corn may not 

 grow, developed the ritual in the direction indicated. As long as the 

 processes of nature go on without change, no special rain or growth 

 ceremonials would develop. In a bountiful soil which never fails the 

 farmer, where the seed dropped in the ground is sure to germinate, and 

 the rains are constant, no ritual would originate to bring about what 

 was sure to come. But let natural processes be capricious, awake in a 

 XDrimitive mind the fear that these processes may not recur, let him 

 become conscious that the rains may not come, and he evolves a ritual 

 to prevent its failure. He is absolutely driven to devise ceremonials 

 by which to affect those supernatural beings whom he believes cause 

 the rain and the growth of his crops. The cults of a primitive people 

 are products of their necessities, and they become complicated as the 

 probability of their needs not being met are uncertain. The two needs 

 which sorely pressed the Hopi farmer were rain to water his crops and 

 the growth and maturity of his corn. My problem, therefore, is to 

 show by illustrations that the two components, rain making and growth 

 ceremonials, characterize the Tusayan ritual, as aridity is the epitome 

 of the distinctive climatic features of the region in which it has been 

 developed. 



There are, as before stated, certain elemental components of all cults 

 Avhich are as widespread as man, and apparently exist independently 

 of climatic conditions. These elements are psychical, subjective, and 

 occur wherever man lives in deserts, islands, forests, plains, under 

 every degree of latitude and temperature. A more profound philo- 

 sophical analysis than I can make may resolve even these into effects 

 of environment, but their universality would seem to show that they 

 are not due to the special climatic condition of aridity characteristic of 

 Tusayan. I do not regard it pertinent to my discussion to attempt to 

 explain their origin, but we can better appreciate the Tusayan ritual. 



The genus Homo, emerging from genera of animals, most of which 



'For a discussion of the relations between highest stages of culture in aboriginal 

 America and arid climate, see my article on Summer Ceremonials at Zuni and 

 Moqui Pueblos, Bulletin Essex Institute, Vol. XXII, Nos. 7, 8, 9. Salem, Mass. 



