The Tusayan ritual

by Jesse Walter Fewkes

Altar of the Antelope Priests in the Snake Dance.
Plate LXXI.

Seated about this altar for seven consecutive days the Antelope priests daily sing sixteen songs to consecrate prayer sticks, which are later deposited in shrines to the rain gods. These prayer bearers consist of two sticks painted green and tied together midway in their length. At the point where they are bound is fastened a small packet of sacred meal, while to the same is also bound a feather of the wild turkey. This feather is aptly chosen, for the turkey is associated in their mythology with a time or place when the surface of the earth was muddy, and as they say the black tip of the feather was colored by the turkey dragging his tail in the black mud. To this prayer bearer is likewise attached two herbs—one male, the other female—plants which love the water. There are many other prescribed details in the manufacture of this prayer stick with which I will not weary you, but there is one point which may be of interest. The prayer bearers or prayer sticks of the first day are made as long as the longest finger of the left hand, and are carried to four shrines of the cardinal points, each of which is about 7 miles from the pueblo. The length of these prayer sticks diminish each day, and in the same ratio the distance of the shrines decreases. On the last of the seven days the prayer stick is the length of the ultimate joint of the middle finger, and the shrines in which they are placed are just outside the town. The intent of the prayers and songs intrusted to these prayer sticks is for rain. The courier who carries them each day is an important priest, and his explanation of why he proceeds in certain ways in his duty may interest you.

He runs swiftly through the whole circuit except when kneeling at the shrines, and is barefooted and naked, that the rain gods may notice him and respond with equal haste to the prayers which he bears. He loosens his hair and lets it hang down his back, symbolic of the way in which he believes the rain gods carry the falling rain which his hair symbolizes. He makes the far circuit on the first day because rain gods dwell far away beyond all cultivated fields. He runs in a circle that all the rain gods may see him. The priests hope the rain deities may notice their courier who bears their offerings to the shrines, and that each day they may come nearer. Hence, on each succeeding day the courier travels on a shorter circumference. It is thus they wish the rain clouds to approach nearer and nearer and pour down their contents on their houses and fields, that the dry river beds may be swollen with water and all farmers hear the pattering rain.

Consider one of the many episodes about the altar in the consecration of the prayer offering. Smoking, as is well known, was in Precolumbian times a ceremonial custom among the aborigines of the Southwest, and in the ritual of the present pueblos every great rite opens and closes with a formal smoke. The pipe lighter is an important functionary, next in rank to the chief, and in passing the pipe certain prescribed usages are always followed and terms of relationship exchanged. The sixteen songs of which I have spoken are divided into two groups of eight each by a unique observance—the smoking of the great cloud pipe. In this ceremony four different kinds of herbs are loaded into a conical pipe, and at a signal the pipe lighter passes a live coal to the chief, who places it in the larger end, kneels down behind the altar, places the larger end of the bowl in his mouth and blows four long whiffs through the pipe upon the sand picture of the altar. The smoke thus formed is called the rain cloud, which it symbolizes, and the act a prayer to bring the rain.

Let us consider the final public event of the Snake Dance, that so often described, when the snake priests handle venomous reptiles, apparently without fear, in the presence of spectators. This uncanny proceeding has the same intent as the secret rites of which we have spoken—a ceremony for rain. The reptiles are believed to be elder brothers of the priests, and they are gathered from the fields on four successive days to participate in the ceremonies. It is believed that these reptiles have more power to influence supernatural beings than man, and as the acme of the whole series of nine days’ observances they are thrown in a heap on the ground in a circle of sacred meals, and the chief of the antelopes says a prayer to the struggling mass, after which they are seized by the priests and carried to the fields commissioned to intercede with rain gods to send the desired rains. In fact, the whole series of rites which make up the snake celebration is one long prayer of nine days’ duration, filled with startling components the details of which would weary rather than instruct you.

Let us, therefore, turn to another component of the Tusayan ritual which occurs each year in the month following that in which the Snake Dance occurs, the ceremony of the women priests for the maturation of the corn. I refer to the September rites called the Lalakonti, celebrated by a priesthood of the same name.

The ceremony for growth of the crops, which is practically for the harvest of maize, is directly the outgrowth of those climatic conditions which have made the Tusayan people agriculturists. A failure of this crop means starvation, and maize is far from a spontaneous growth in those desert sands. Hence the elaborate nature of the appeals to the supernatural beings which control this function. This great ceremony is naturally of special concern to women, the providers. The corn is the mother, the corn goddess the patron deity of women; the women are chiefs in this their special ceremonial. In turning over the mass of details which have been recorded concerning the festival of the Lalakonti it has seemed to me that I could not better illustrate the points which I especially desire to develop than to explain the altar used by these women priests in this ceremony.

The altar[^[11]] is erected in a subterranean secret chamber entered by a ladder through the middle of the roof; and around this altar are performed many rites the intent of which is an appeal to the gods of growth for abundant harvests.

[11]. For description of the Lalakonti altar, and ceremonials performed about it, see American Anthropologist, April, 1892. Washington, D. C.