One of the most characteristic modern decorations employed by the Hopi, especially as a symbol of fecundity, is the butterfly or moth. It is a constant device on the beautiful white or cotton blankets woven by the men as wedding gifts, where it is embroidered on the margin in the forms of triangles or even in more realistic patterns. This symbol is a simple triangle, which becomes quite realistic when a line is drawn bisecting one of the angles. This double triangle is not only a constant symbol on wedding blankets, but also is found on the dadoes of houses, resembling in design the arrangement of tiles in the Alhambra and other Moorish buildings. This custom of decorating the walls of a building with triangles placed at intervals on the upper edge of a dado is a feature of cliff-house kivas, as shown in Nordenskiöld's beautiful memoir on the cliff villages of Mesa Verde. While an isosceles triangle represents the simplest form of the butterfly symbol, and is common on ancient pottery, a few vessels from Sikyatki show a much more realistic figure. In [plate cxxxiv], f, is shown a moth with extended proboscis and articulated antennæ, and in d of the same plate another form, with the proboscis inserted in a flower, is given. As an associate with summer, the butterfly is regarded as a beneficent being aside from its fecundity, and one of the ancient Hopi clans regarded it as their totem. Perhaps the most striking, and I may say the most inexplicable, use of the symbol of the butterfly is the so-called Hokona or Butterfly virgin slab used in the Antelope ceremonies of the Snake dance at Walpi, where it is associated with the tadpole water symbol.
Fig. 270—Outline of [plate CXXXV], b
The most beautiful of all the butterfly designs are the six figures on the vase reproduced in [plate cxxxv], b. From the number of these pictures it would seem that they bore some relationship to the six world-quarters—north, west, south, east, zenith, and nadir. The vase has a flattened shoulder, and the six butterfly figures are represented as flying toward the orifice. These insect figures closely resemble one another, and are divided into two groups readily distinguished by the symbolism of the heads. Three have each a cross with a single dot in each quadrant, and each of the other three has a dotted head without the cross. These two kinds alternate with each other, and the former probably indicate females, since the same symbols on the heads of the snakes in the sand picture of the Antelope altar in the Snake dance are used to designate the female.[139]
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY—— SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. CXXXV
VASES WITH FIGURES OF BUTTERFLIES FROM SIKYATKI
