Marching solemnly round a sacred stone, they begin by shaking rattles and waving snake-wands to which eagle feathers are attached. After some chanting, a number of women, dressed in white and red mantles, come forward and scatter corn-meal from baskets with which they are provided. Presently the head priest, followed by a number of male performers, marching two and two, come forward towards the sacred rock, carrying live snakes in their mouths and hands. Some of the Indians tickle the heads, necks, and jaws of the wriggling serpents to distract their attention from those who are grasping their bodies firmly between their teeth.
When the snake-carriers reach the further end of the space cleared for the dance they spit the snakes out upon the ground and, facing the sacred rock, stamp the left foot twice, giving forth strange sounds, half grunt, half wail.
For nearly an hour this mad dance of wriggling snakes, rushing figures, and clouds of whirling corn-meal continues and then the snakes are released, the symbolic dance is over and the performers resume their ordinary clothes and, presumably, their natural human proclivities. The origin of this dance lies in the belief that the Moquis are descended from snakes and is told thus by the natives:—
"Many years ago the Moquis used to live on the other side of a high mountain beyond the San Juan River in Colorado. The chief thought he would take a trip down the big river, so he made himself a boat of a hollow cottonwood log, took some provisions and started down. The stream carried him to the sea-shore, where he found some shells. When he arrived on the beach he saw a number of houses on the cliff in which lived many men and women who had white under their eyes, and below that a white mark on their cheeks. That night he took one of the women as his wife. Shortly after his return the woman gave birth to snakes, and this was the origin of the snake family or clan which manages the dance. When she gave birth to these snakes they bit a number of the children of the Moquis. The Moquis then moved in a body to their present villages and they have this dance to conciliate the snakes so they won't bite their children."[19]
Snake worship and ancestor or spirit worship seems here combined in the same rite, and the Moquis evidently believe in the transmigration of souls. The dancers belong to a Secret Society, a sort of Serpent Brotherhood.
The peculiar qualities said to distinguish departed relatives, reappearing in the form of snakes, from the ordinary reptiles are that they will frequent the huts, never eat mice and show no fear of man. "Sometimes," says Sir John Lubbock in his "Origin of Civilisation,"[20] "a snake is recognised as the representative of a given man by some peculiar mark or scar, the absence of an eye, or some similar point of resemblance."
The noiseless movement and the rapid action of the serpent, combined with its fascinating gaze and magnetic power, no doubt lead savages to view it as a possessor of wisdom and embodiment of spirits.
The Kobena and other Indians of Brazil perform masked dances in honour of their dead. They have a butterfly dance in which two performers represent large blue butterflies fluttering in the sunshine. Darting swallows are also mimicked by masked dancers, as well as vultures, owls, fish, jaguars, and, curiously enough, the sloth, in which dance a man hangs for a long time to the bough of a tree or the cross-beam of a hut. Another strange sight is the sandfly dance, in which a swarm of masked men make the air dark with their antics.
All these performances are based on certain magical formulæ. A mysterious force permeates the dancer, beneath his mask, and for the time being he has become a mighty animal demon or spirit, capable of unlimited powers.