SC I EN C E -Supplement. 



FRIDAY, JUNE 4. 1886. 



AN INDIAN SNAKE-DANCE.' 



The worship of the serpent has been so closely 

 connected with the mythologic systems of so 

 many primitive peoples, and has exercised so 

 large an influence on religion, that any facts bear- 

 ing on the subject must be of interest. It has 

 even been said that this form of worship was 

 more widely and universally distributed than any 

 other. In Egypt, at the dawn of history, serpent- 

 worship had already assumed the highest impor- 

 tance. Among the Phoenicians and in ancient 

 Persia the serpent was worshipped as an evil 

 deity, and also at a later period among the Ger- 

 man tribes of the north ; and the same myth may 

 be traced in a modified form in the legendary 

 history of the Greeks and Romans. Among the 

 Hebrews there existed a strong tendency to this 

 form of worship, — a tendency which, though 

 repeatedly crushed out by the hand of power, as 

 often re-asserted itself ; and so late as eight hun- 

 dred years after Moses it was prevalent in one of 

 its grossest forms, for we read in 2 Kings xviii. 4, 

 "He removed the high places, and brake the 

 images, and cut down the groves, and brake in 

 pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made : 

 for unto those days the children of Israel did burn 

 incense to it." With the Chinese the serpent is a 

 " symbolic monster, dwelling in spring above the 

 clouds to give rain, and in autumn under the 

 waters." It is in this connection, i.e., in connec- 

 tion with rain, that the performance that I am 

 about to describe, occurred. In India the serpent 

 was regarded as the great evil spirit, and Krishna is 

 represented as crushing its head beneath his heel. 



To come nearer home, the myth was very 

 widely distributed among the North American 

 tribes at the time of the discovery, in many of 

 them in the form of pure ancestor-worship, but 

 in others not so connected. It was common 

 among the mound-builders, as is shown by the 

 number of mounds of the serpent-form still ex- 

 isting, and by the prevalence, in mound relics, of 

 more or less conventionalized representations of 

 the rattlesnake. A recent report of the bureau 

 of ethnology contains illustrations of a number of 

 shell-gorgets, described and figured by Mr. W. H. 

 Holmes, which are engraved to represent snakes. 

 Nowhere, I think, was the influence of this 



1 Read before the Washington anthropological society. 



myth more pronounced than in ancient Mexico ; 

 and nowhere, I may add, is it more involved or 

 its meaning more obscure. As the tendency of 

 modern investigation is to show the existence of 

 a remarkable similarity between the ancient Mexi- 

 can civilization and the pueblo system of our own 

 south-western territories, any facts in regard to 

 serpent - worship among the latter must be of 

 especial interest. 



During the early part of the past field-season 

 we were engaged in the investigation of some 

 ruins near the Moki Pueblos, and were so for- 

 tunate as to be in that neighborhood at the time 

 of the 4 snake-dance ' of those Indians. We wit- 

 nessed this interesting performance twice, — once 

 at Mashongnavi, one of the middle towns of the 

 Moki confederacy, on the 16th of August ; and 

 again on the next day at Wolpi, one of the east- 

 ern towns. The two dances are essentially the 

 same, the only difference being in the greater 

 number of performers at Wolpi, and in the paint- 

 ing of the body. I have selected the Mashongnavi 

 dance for description, because it has never been 

 described, and had never, to my knowledge, been 

 seen by whites before our visit : while that of 

 Wolpi has been witnessed by many interested 

 persons, several of whom have published, or are 

 about to publish, their accounts. 



During several days, before the date fixed for 

 the dance, we frequently met parties of Indians 

 hunting for snakes. The men were perfectly 

 naked, with the exception of the breech - cloth, 

 and each one carried a long red buckskin bag to 

 contain the reptiles, and a feather wand, de- 

 scribed later on. As the dance occurs in August, 

 when the temperature during the middle of the 

 day is almost unbearable to a white man, the airy 

 costume of the hunters is a decided advantage to 

 them. Several hunters carried forked sticks. 



The snake-hunting occupies four days, one day 

 being devoted to each of the cardinal points of the 

 compass. There is said to be also a supplementary 

 search on the last day, in order to capture any 

 snakes that may have been overlooked previously. 

 About noon of each day groups of hunters visited 

 the several springs lying in that day's section, in 

 order to bathe and rest themselves, and to deposit 

 in crevices in the rocky wall of the spring or 

 reservoir a baho, or prayer-stick, — a small round 

 piece of wood half an inch or less in diameter and 

 three or four inches long, generally painted in 

 green and white, and with a feather from the 



