22 
lift it to the mouth, fastened to it 
with their teeth, about six or eight 
inches from the reptile’s ugly head, 
and with the huge snake hanging 
from their jaws they hippity-hop 
around the snake rock, time and 
again. 
Mind you there are six or eight in- 
ches of the business end of this dead- 
ly snake free to act, free to strike 
into the Indian’s face, and many do. 
However the dancers do not try to 
be bitten, in fact they try not to be. 
They dance in pairs and an attendant 
whisks feathers in the snake’s face 
to tickle it and prevent it from biting. 
But often the snake will drive its 
fangs into the Indian’s cheek, another 
Indian will unhook the snake, and the 
bitten man will continue to dance on 
as if nothing had happened. 
After about so many turns around 
the court, the Indians will swing their 
heads, give the snake a snap, open 
their jaws and deposit them in a 
writhing mass on the rocks, while 
they get fresh snakes, and it is up to 
the attedants not to let these snakes 
run into the crowds. If the rattler 
coils they will never grab him, but 
tickle him or prod, him to strike, and 
the instant he lengthens out then they 
grab. One Indian will sometimes 
have a half dozen of these huge 
snakes at a time, and I have seen 
many a rattler in this country from 
three to six inches through, 
This is about all there is to the 
dance—just grabbing a great, writh- 
ing reptile, puttng it in the mouth, 
dancing around with it, dropping it, 
getting a fresh one, and occasionally 
being bitten. But only those who have 
seen the big, deadly diamond desert 
rattler, can fully appreciate these bar- 
baric rites. 
It is often printed that one Indian 
will hold a snake and purposely let 
it strike the bare breast of his part- 
ner, but those I have talked with, 
who have seen several of the dances, 
say this is not in any way true. 
The fangs are not withdrawn from 
these snakes, this is established. They 
are as deadly at these dances as when 
sleeping on the hot sand. The secret 
is in the medicine the Indian drinks, 
an herb that counteracts the deadly 
poison—and the Indian has kept that 
secret for about four hundred years 
that Americans know of. 
On three sides of this dance rock or 
court are the Indian houses or cere- 
monial rooms, and on one side there 
is a perpendicular descent of many 
feet—just a straight drop down, and 
without any railing or protection 
whatever. 
I was shown the spot where an In- 
NORTHYSHORE BREEZE 
dian girl fell over this bluff and was 
killed and mangled on the rocks be- 
low. 
Four years ago at the dance there 
was a large crowd, many Navajos be- 
ing present. ‘he girl was standing 
on the very edge of the bluff, and 
when the dancers let go of the snakes 
one huge fellow started directly for 
the girl, and in trying to avoid being 
bitten, she fell over the bluff and was 
instantly killed. 
Up to a few years ago but very few 
white men ever saw the rattlesnake 
dance, but today the Moquis are get- 
ting wise, they are beginning to ad- 
vertise and to combine business with 
religion—they are beginning to com- 
mercialize the dance, beginning to 
welcome the white men and sell them 
the choice seats for 75 cents per, The 
Moqui is about the last man on earth 
vw tall for tue white man’s ways and 
influence, but he is falling. Roose- 
velt was a great ad for the show, and 
hundreds of tourists are expected at 
the next meeting. Make your reser- 
vations early. 
I expected to see the usual marks 
of degeneracy among the Moquis, but 
I did not. In Zuni, I saw sights one 
could hardly believe, as_ results of 
intermarriage, but at that pueblo the 
1600 people have lived in one house 
for so many hundreds of years that 
they are all more or less relatives. 
There I saw perfect albinos, with 
pink cheeks, red eyes and white hair, 
full blooded Indians, and I saw luna- 
tics, deformed Indians, and no end of 
strange freaks. But nothing of the 
like in the Moqui villages, although 
they are as ancient as any pueblo in 
America. This I account for because 
the villages are scattered, and the 
tribes mix more or less with their 
neighbors on the east—the roving 
Navajos. 
I had long heard that the Moquis 
had the handsomest girls and the ug- 
liest old squaws in the southwest, but 
I could not find the beauties. 
However beauty is from custom 
and viewpoint. They say the Indians 
think our women are hideous. A 
freighter said after one became ac- 
customed to the Moqui belles they 
were as handsome as white women. 
The girls and women have a most 
peculiar way of doing up their hair, 
and that gives them an odd appear- 
ance to unaccustomed eyes. Unmar- 
ried girls wear it in a big ring, about 
the size of a sauce dish, over each ear. 
This indicates they are single, while 
the married squaws wear it in a roll 
over the ears. And the fashion in 
Hulpi land never change. 
Health, you see it everywhere. The 
~teeth. 
holds nothing. —Proverb, 
girls are perfect specimens of devel- 
opment, of trained development, 
and the men are like iron. It is said 
it is not uncommon to find Indians 
who have lived one hundred years 
and over. 
And I found among the Moquis so 
many living examples that raise the 
Dickens with our modern rules of hy- 
giene and science of sanitation, . 
There are probably hundreds of In- _ 
dians on this reservation who never 
have and never will take a bath, and 
yet we down-and-out white men go 
to him at the last resort, live hig life — 
and get well. 
Their homes are filthy, and during — 
cold weather they close up and cord 
7m without any ventilation. Yet they 
are the finest specimens of health and _ 
endurance in our country. 
Probably there was never a tooth- 
brush on the reservation, yet men and _ 
women have beautiful and perfect. 
I have seen men whose wrin- _ 
kles and hair indicated extreme age, 
with almost perfect teeth. And never 
a dentist opened a Moqui mouth, . 
No appendicitis, rheumatism, spinal — 
meningitis, or any of our fashionable 
diseases. No surgeons, operations or 
hospitals. And none are needed, 
Yet the Indians are horribly dirty 
-—positively filthy. I never rub up 
against them. Nearly all of them 
have body lice, big fat “seam squir- 
rels,’ bred from filth. When they get 
too thick, and bite too fierce, they will _ 
wet their clothes and rub their bod- 
ies with sheep dip. . 
The southwest reservations are 
strange lands, inhabited by strange 
people. 
Just think, in four days one can go’ 
back to the days before the conquest, 
he can go to a land where the people 
live just like they lived before Colum- 
bus ever thought of a western con-- 
tinent, back before history, before 
iron, The land is almost in the center 
of our great United States. Any per- 
son who can stand a little roughing, 
can see. It is a safer locality than 
the streets of our cities. 2 
Yet how pitifully few of us ever 
see the wonders at home, and how 
many of rush across the big drink 
to ancient Pompeii and other less in- 
teresting places abroad? \ 
America is just as old as any old 
corner of our country, and Arizona, 
New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Cali- 
fornia and Old Mexico are litera lly 
crowded with wonderful and ancient 
museums. 
Who takes an eel by the tail, or a 
woman at her word, soon finds | 
