THE TUSAYAN RITUAL. 693 



Tusayan without witnessing a religious festival of great complexity 

 and prescribed precision, which is repeated every year at the same time. 1 



From this complicated series I will choose two great ceremonials to 

 illustrate the two most important phases of the influence of aridity. 

 These two occur in consecutive months, August and September, are 

 both celebrated in extenso, and will for that reason give a fair idea of 

 the nature of the elaborate components. Both are characteristic of 

 Tusayan, although represented in a somewhat modified form in other 

 pueblos. 



The first is called the Snake Dance, the second the Lalakonti. The 

 one is performed by male priests, the other by female; the former an 

 elaborate prayer for rain, the latter for growth and an abundant har- 

 vest of maize. Both in their respective way illustrate the modifica- 

 tions developed by the climatic conditions. So complicated are they, 

 however, that I must limit myself to the barest sketch of some of their 

 more striking features. 



No better ceremony could be chosen to illustrate the effect of the 

 arid environment than the well-known Snake Dance, the most weird 

 rite in the Tusayan calendar. This dance occurs every summer on 

 alternate years in five of the Tusayan villages, and although a dramati- 

 zation of an elaborate sun-serpent myth is so permeated by rain cere- 

 monials that it has come to be an elaborate prayer for rain. 



The worship of the serpent occupies a most prominent place in the 

 ritual of all barbarous people where each environment has stamped it 

 with special significance. . Among the Tusayan Indians there are most 

 complicated rites of ophiolatry, in March, 2 where six effigies of the 

 Great Plumed-headed Snake are exhibited in the secret rooms in con- 

 nection with symbols of the sun, in a strange dramatization. These 

 ceremonials, however, have to do with the fertilization of maize and 

 might well be chosen to illustrate rites which pertain to the necessities 

 of agricultural people. 



It is to that ceremony 3 where reptiles are carried fearlessly by the 



1 For analysis of the Tusayan calendar, see Provisional List of Annual Ceremonies 

 at Walpi. Internationales Archiv fiir Ethnographic, Bd. VIII, Heft. V and VI. 

 Leyden, Holland. 



- The Paliiliikonti ; A Tusayan ceremony. Journal of American Folk Lore, 

 October-Decemher, 1893. 



s For an account of the Snake Dance at Walpi, see Journal of American Ethnology 

 and Archeology, Vol. IA 7 ; Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. I have elsewhere 

 pointed out the small part which the Great Plumed Serpent plays in this ceremony, 

 and the absence of fetishes or idols of this personage in the secret portions of the 

 ceremony. The only symbol of the plumed snake which is found is on the kilts of 

 the snake priest. As nearly as I can judge of its place in tbe components of primi- 

 tive supernatural concepts, it seems to be an example of animal totemism and 

 ancestor Avorship in which special powers to bring the rains are believed to belong 

 to the reptiles, descendants, like the living participants, of a snake mother. The 

 conditions are so often paralleled in the beliefs of other primitive people that there 

 seems to be no exception among the Hopi. Cf. King, op. cit., Vol. I, pages 165-207. 



