When the altar is completed the ho´naaite and his associates stand before it and supplicate the presence of the pai´ätämo and Ko´pishtaia, who are here represented by images of themselves, these images becoming the abiding places of the beings invoked. After the prayer, the ho´naaite and his vicar sit upon their folded blankets near the fireplace, where a low fire burns, and with a supply of tobacco and corn husks content themselves with cigarettes until the opening of the evening ceremony.
By 9 o’clock the Snake society was joined in the chai-än-ni-kai (ceremonial chamber) archaic, Su´ᵗ-sĕr-ra-kai by the Kapĭna, it being the prerogative of the hónaaite of one organization to invite other societies to take part in his ceremonies. They formed in line, sitting back of the altar; the hónaaite being in the rear of the central slat figure, which symbolized the hónaaite of the cult society of the cloud people. The other members were seated in the rear, as near as could be, of the corresponding symbolic figures of the cloud and lightning people. A boy of 8 years of age, who lay sleeping as the writer entered the room, was aroused to take his position in the line, and a boy of 4 years, who had been sleeping upon a sheepskin, spread on the floor between two of the women, was led from the room by one of them, as he had not entered the degree when he might hear the songs and see the making of the medicine water.
Bureau of Ethnology.
Eleventh Annual Report. Plate. XIII
Drawn by Mary Irvin Wright.
GAST LITH. CO. N.Y.
HÄ´-CHA-MO-NI WITH PLUMES ATTACHED.
The women formed right angles with the line of men, four sitting on the north side of the room and four on the south side. The elder female member sat at the west end of the line on the north side of the room. The men wore breechcloths of white cotton; the hónaaite and the ti´ämoni wore embroidered Tusayan kilts for breechcloths. The hair was done up as usual, but no headkerchief was worn. The boy and men held oh´-shi-e-kats (gourd rattles) in their right hands and hi´-shä-mi (two eagle plumes) in the left.
The women were attired in their black wool dresses, the calico gown being discarded, and red sashes, wearing the conventional cue and bang. The neck and arms were exposed and the feet and lower limbs were bare. Each woman held two wands of turkey plumes in the right hand, and both men and women wore numerous strings of coral and kohaqua beads with bunches of turkis (properly earrings) attached pendent to the necklaces.