TUSAYAN TRAYS.
Our party from the kiva stand before this line of men, and the bald-headed priest harangues them in words I cannot understand. Then across the other end of the plaza a line of women is formed, facing the line of men, and at a signal from the old Shaman the drums and the whistles on the terraces, with a great chorus of singers, set up a tumultuous noise, and with slow shuffling steps the line of men and the line of women move toward each other in a curious waving dance. When the lines approach so as to be not more than 10 or 12 feet apart, our party still being between them, they all change so as to dance backward to their original positions. This is repeated until the dancers have passed over the plaza four times. Then there is a wild confusion of dances, the order of which I cannot understand,--if indeed there is any system, except that the men and women dance apart. Soon this is over, and the women all file down the ladder into the kiva and the men strip off their masks and arrange themselves about the plaza, every one according to his own wish, but as if in sharp expectancy; then the women return up the ladder from the kiva and climb to the tops of the houses and stand on the brink of the nearer terrace. Now the music commences once more, and the old woman who was painted in the kiva during the night throws something, I cannot tell what, into the midst of the plaza. With a shout and a scream, every man jumps for it; one seizes it, another takes it away from him, and then another secures it; and with shouts and screams they wrestle and tussle for the charm which the old woman has thrown to them. After a while some one gets permanent possession of the charm and the music ceases. Then another is thrown into the midst. So these contests continue at intervals until high noon.
In the evening we return to Oraibi. And now for two days we employ our time in making a collection of the arts of the people of this town. First, we display to them our stock of goods, composed of knives, needles, awls, scissors, paints, dyestuffs, leather, and various fabrics in gay colors. Then we go around among the people and select the articles of pottery, stone implements, instruments and utensils made of bone, horn, shell, articles of clothing and ornament, baskets, trays, and many other things, and tell the people to bring them the next day to our rooms. A little after sunrise they come in, and we have a busy day of