[Trembling till he could hardly stand, Kwasa, at a sign from the priest, extended his arms until the bowl was directly above the opening] in the slab and under the swinging head of the hollow effigy above. Then through the tube came the seeds, first the yellow and white corn, then the beans, the squash and melons, greenish cotton seeds and rich-smelling brown grains of wheat. At last, when the bowl was nearly full, there was poured down the colored corn for the sacred meal, rounding and covering the rest.
Then Mosu motioned Kwasa to stand to one side, while Wiki was called forward and given a similar bowl. Delighted at his friend’s good fortune, Kwasa hardly heard the muttered congratulations that greeted him as he stepped back into the circle. But stealthily fingering his belt he patted the three red and white canes, telling himself that his own luck and Wiki’s had been unchangeably entwined since the day they had tossed the dice in the court.
But he had not time for more than a fleeting thought even for such momentous things, for something else was happening above the sipapuh. This time the attendant at the hatchway of the kiva poured through the snake effigy into the sacred bowl a small stream of water, signifying that thus would the snake deities of the clouds bless the planted seeds.
At another sign from Mosu, Wiki stepped back into the circle, and Kwasa came forward to distribute to each person a handful of the Kawa-blessed seeds. Then, taking a short stick tipped with stiff turkey feathers, Mosu sprinkled the water from Wiki’s bowl to the six cardinal points, north, east, south, west, the zenith and the nadir.
And the ceremony of the Blessing of Seeds was over.
Kwasa was glad to get out of the stifling air of the kiva and follow the rest up the ladder into the court above, where the final great rain-prayer rite was to be performed. In this he had no part, though he still retained his mask and personated the pawik (duck) katcina in the great circle that made the background for the principal actors.
Into this circle marched the long line of Snake and Antelope priests, participants in this supreme drama of the year. Very awe-inspiring they looked, their bodies rubbed with red paint, their blackened chins rimmed with a broad line of white and their bare arms glittering with barbaric ornaments. To a sort of hissing chant they marched about an improvised sipapuh which had been located in the broadest part of the court, shaking their rattles and stamping their feet upon the slab as they passed. Four times they made the circuit, as in the ceremony in the kiva, then suddenly breaking into groups of three they rushed to the bush-covered kisi near the end of the circle. A group stopped for a moment before this shrine, and in a moment proceeded, the foremost priest, one of the Snake Clan, carrying in his mouth a squirming snake. The Antelope priest who followed him, in an apparent frenzy of excitement, waved a feathered prayer-stick to and fro to attract the reptile’s attention, but the snake only coiled the more tightly about the head and shoulders of the carrier. One after another each group paused at the kisi and secured one of the wriggling reptiles.
Round and round they marched, and then, at a sign from Mosu, an attendant suddenly darted forward and outlined a circle on the floor with sacred meal. Into this the snakes were dropped, to be sprinkled with meal as they fell. A wild scramble ensued, and in a few minutes the snakes were recaptured by the third priests of the groups, who darted across the court and down the niche stairway to replace the reptiles in their native dens. From there they would carry the prayers for rain to the deities of the clouds, the lightning and the thunder, who would thus be brought to bless the crops and insure abundance for the coming year.