“The figurines are brought into the darkened room wrapped in blankets, and are set up near the middle of the kiva in much the same way as the screens. The kneeling images, surrounded by a wooden framework, are manipulated by concealed men; when the song begins they are made to bend their bodies backward and forward in time, grinding the meal on miniature metates before them. The movements of girls in grinding meal are so cleverly imitated that the figurines moved by hidden strings at times raised their hands to their faces, which they rubbed with meal as the girls do when using the grinding stones in their rooms.
“As this marionette performance was occurring, two bird effigies were made to walk back and forth along the upper horizontal bar of the framework, while bird calls issued from the rear of the room.”
The symbolism of this drama is intricate and curious. The effigies representing the Great Serpent, an important supernatural personage in the legends of the Hopi Indians, are somehow associated with the Hopi version of a flood; for it was said that when the ancestors of certain clans lived far south this monster once rose through the middle of the pueblo plaza, drawing after him a great flood which submerged the land and which obliged the Hopi to migrate into his present home, farther North. The snake effigies knocking over the cornfields symbolize floods, possible winds which the Serpent brings. The figurines of the Corn Maids represent the mythical maidens whose beneficent gift of corn and other seeds, in ancient times, is a constant theme in Hopi legends.
The effigies which Dr. Fewkes saw used were not very ancient, but in olden times similar effigies existed and were kept in stone enclosures outside the pueblos. The house of the Ancient Plumed Snake of Hano is in a small cave in the side of a mesa near the ruins of Turkinobi where several broken serpent heads and effigy ribs (or wooden hoops) can now be seen, although the entrance is walled up and rarely used.
The puppet shows commonly seen to-day in the United States are of foreign extraction or at least inspired by foreign models. For many years there have been puppet-plays throughout the country. Visiting exhibitions like those of Holden’s marionettes which Professor Brander Matthews praises so glowingly are, naturally, rare. But one hears of many puppets in days past that have left their impression upon the childhood memories of our elders, travelling as far South as Savannah or wandering through the New England states. Our vaudevilles and sideshows and galleries often have exhibits of mechanical dolls, such as the amazing feats of Mantell’s Marionette Hippodrome Fairy-land Transformation which advertises “Big scenic novelty, seventeen gorgeous drop curtains, forty-five elegant talking acting figures in a comical pantomime,” or Madam Jewel’s Manikins in Keith’s Circuit, Madam Jewel being an aunt of Holden, they say, and guarding zealously with canvas screens the secret of her devices, even as Holden himself is said to have done.
Interesting, too, is the story of the retired marionettist, Harry Deaves, who writes: “I have on hand forty to fifty marionette figures, all in fine shape and dressed. I have been in the manikin business forty-five years, played all the large cities from coast to coast, over and over, always with big success; twenty-eight weeks in Chicago without a break with Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a big hit. The reason I am selling my outfit is,—I am over sixty years of age and I don’t think I will work it again.” How one wishes one might have seen that Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Chicago! In New York at present there is Remo Buffano, reviving interest in the puppets by giving performances now and then in a semi-professional way with large, simple dolls resembling somewhat the Sicilian burattini. His are plays of adventure and fairy lore.
Then, too, in most of our larger cities from time to time crude popular shows from abroad are to be found around the foreign neighborhoods. It is said that at one time in Chicago there were Turkish shadow plays in the Greek Colony; Punch and Judy make their appearance at intervals, and Italian or Sicilian showmen frequently give dramatic versions of the legends of Charlemagne.
In Cleveland two years ago a party of inquisitive folk went one night to the Italian neighborhood in search of such a performance. We found and entered a dark little hall where the rows of seats were crowded closely together and packed with a spellbound audience of Italian workingmen and boys. Squeezing into our places with as little commotion as possible we settled down to succumb to the spell of the crude foreign fantoccini, large and completely armed, who were violently whacking and slashing each other before a rather tattered drop curtain. Interpreted into incorrect English by a small boy glued to my side, broken bits of the resounding tale of Orlando Furioso were hissed into my ear. But for these slangy ejaculations one might well have been in the heart of Palermo. A similar performance is described by Mr. Arthur Gleason. It was a show in New York, the master of which was Salvatore Cascio, and he was assisted by Maria Grasso, daughter of the Sicilian actor, Giovanni Grasso of Catania.
Italian Marionette Show Operated in Cleveland for a season. Proprietor, Joseph Scionte [Courtesy of Cleveland Plain Dealer]