By a natural connection it is often replaced by figures of animals or plants associated with water. The frog and tadpole appear when the rain is abundant, and for that reason the priest paints the figures of these animals on his medicine bowl, or places effigies of it on the altar. In certain rites he makes clay balls, in which he inserts small twigs, which he believes will change into tadpoles, and deposits them along dry water courses for the same reason, that rain may come. So shells from the great ocean are likewise esteemed as bringers of water, and fragments of water-worn wood are carefully cherished by him for a like purpose. The dragonfly which hovers over the springs, the cotton-wood which grows near the springs, the flag which loves the moist places, becomes a symbol of water. Water itself from the ocean or from some distant spring, in his conception, are all powerful agents to bring moisture. There can be but one reason for this—the aridity of his surroundings. Not alone in pictoral symbols does he seek to bring the needed rains. The clouds from which rain falls are symbolized by the smoke from the pipe in his ceremony, and he so regards them. He pours water on the heads of participants in certain ceremonials, hoping that in the same way rain will fall on his parched fields. Even in his games he is influenced by the same thought, and in certain races the young men run along the arroyos, as they wish the water to go filled to their banks.
To our ways of thinking these are absurd ways in which to bring the rain, but to a primitive mind it is a method consecrated by tradition and venerated from its antiquity.
Symbolic figures of maize, the national food of the Hopi Indians, are no less common on ceremonial paraphernalia than those of rain. Maize is painted on the masks of sacred dancers and represented by effigies on altars. It gives names to several supernatural beings. Every babe, when 20 days old, is dedicated to the sun and receives an ear of corn as its symbolic mother. The badges or palladia of religious societies are ears of corn wrapped in buckskin—symbolic, no doubt, of the time when seed corn was the most precious heritage and preserved by the chiefs. The foremost supernatural being in the Tusayan Olympus is the Corn Maid, who is figured on food bowls, baskets, and elsewhere.
It can hardly be necessary for me to adduce more facts in support of the hypothesis that these two elements of the Tusayan ritual which reflect the climatic surroundings are ceremonials for rain and those for the germination, maturation, and abundance of agricultural products. The necessities of life have driven man into the agricultural condition, and the aridity of the climate has forced him to devise all possible means at his control to so influence his gods as to force them to send the rains to aid him. Wherever we turn in an intimate study of the ceremonials of the Tusayan Indians we see the imprint of the arid deserts by which they are surrounded, always the prayer for abundant crops, and rains for his parched fields.
When one makes the Tusayan ritual a special study he finds it wonderfully complicated in the development of details. No Hopi priest lives who understands the meaning of all these details, nor does he care for an explanation of them. There are two fundamental factors, however, which he can comprehend, and these are always on his lips when an explanation of the ritual is solicited. We cling to the rites of our ancestors because they have been pronounced good by those who know. We erect our altars, sing our traditional songs, and celebrate our sacred dances for rain that our corn may germinate and yield abundant harvest.
The town crier calls at dawn from the house top the following announcement, which is the key to the whole explanation of the Tusayan ritual:
“All people awake, open your eyes, arise,
Become Talahoya (child of light), vigorous, active, sprightly.
Hasten clouds from the four world quarters;
Come snow in plenty, that water may be abundant when summer comes.