These paintings of snakes are done for the purpose of having a good harvest of snakes. The women are not allowed to attend at this ceremony, as it is one of their strict secret dances.
A few notes of other ceremonial and religious uses of color are presented.
Capt. John G. Bourke (f) says that the Moki employ the colors in prayers—yellow for pumpkins, green for corn, and red for peaches. Black and white bands are typical of rain, and red and blue bands, of lightning.
In James’s Long (k), it is mentioned of the Omaha that the boy who goes to fast on the hill top to see his guardian spirit, as a preparation rubs his body over with whitish clay, but the same ceremonial among the Ouenebigonghelins near Hudson bay is described by Bacqueville de la Potherie (d), with the statement that the postulant paints his face black.
Peter Martyr (a) says the natives of the Island of Hispaniola [Haiti] when attending a festival at the religious edifice, go in a procession having their bodies and faces painted in black, red, and yellow colors. Some had feathers of the parrot and other birds, with which they decorated themselves. The women had no decoration.
Pénicaut’s Relation, A. D. 1704, in Margry (f), gives an account of decorations of the victims who die with the grand chief, or Sun of the Natchez. Their faces were painted vermilion, as the author says, “lest they by paleness should show their fear.” Though the practice may have thus originated as a mere expedient, red thus used would become in time a sacrificial color.
But the color red can not always be deduced from such an origin. It is connected with the color of fire and of blood. The Romans on great festivals painted the face of Jupiter Capitolinus with vermilion. They painted in the same way all the statues of the gods, demi-gods, heroes, fauns, and satyrs. Pan is described by Virgil in Ecl. X, line 27:
Pan, deus Arcadiæ venit, quem vidimus ipsi
Sanguineis ebuli baccis minioque rubentem.
These verses are rendered with spirit by R. C. Singleton, Virgil in English Rhythm, London, 1871, though the translator wrote “cinnabar” instead of “red lead” and might as well have used the correct word, “minium,” which has the same prosodial quantity as cinnabar.
Pan came, the god of Arcady, whom we
Ourselves beheld, with berries bloody red
Of danewort, and with cinnabar aglow.