The Hopi Indians

by Walter Hough

A bite from a venomous snake so rarely occurs that there is no eye witness, so far as is known, to such happening. The fangs are not extracted, nor are the snakes stupefied. Careful handling and the herding of the reptiles with others of their kind before the ceremony perhaps give the explanation.

The Snake Ceremony, whose wild scenes rack the nerves of the onlooker, is a prayer for rain and is based on a legend whose sentiment might be applauded if the other passive actors were not subject to an instinctive enmity. Snakes are blood brothers of the Hopi Snake clan.

The legend relates that a youth, having the curiosity to know where the waters flowed, embarked in a hollow log, closed except a small orifice, and went down the Great Colorado to its mouth, thus antedating the perilous feat of Major Powell by a long time! Here he found the Spider Woman, who prompted him in his dealings with the people living there. After many strange adventures, during which he was taught the rites now practiced by the Snake society, he won the daughter of a Snake chief and brought her to his country. The first fruits of this union were snakes, who bit the Hopi and who were driven away on this account. Later, children were human, and with them originated the Snake clan, whose wanderings brought them at last to Walpi; and tradition affirms that they were among the first arrivals there.

The Flute Ceremony, which alternates with the Snake-Antelope Ceremony, is most pleasing and interesting. Visitors to Hopiland in August of the proper year are always charmed with the dramatic performance and beautiful songs of the Flute society. In Walpi there is only one priesthood of the Flute, but in other pueblos of the Middle Mesa and in Oraibi there are two, one of the Blue Flute and the other of the Gray Flute.

On the first day the sand altar is made and at night the songs are begun. Within the kiva the interminable rites go on, and daily the cycle of songs accompanied with flutes is rehearsed. A messenger clad in an embroidered kilt and anointed with honey runs with flowing hair to deposit prayer-sticks at the shrines, encircling the fields in his runs and coming nearer the pueblo on each circuit. During the seventh and eighth days a visit is made to three important springs where ceremonies are held, and on the return of the priests they are received by an assemblage of the Bear and Snake societies, the chiefs of which challenge them and tell them that if they are good people, as they claim, they can bring rain.

After an interesting interchange of ceremonies the Flute priests return to their kiva to prepare for the public dance on the morrow. When at 3 A. M. the belt of Orion is at a certain place in the heavens the priests file into the plaza, where a cottonwood bower has been erected over the shrine called the entrance to the underworld. Here the priests sing, accompanied with flutes, the shrine is ceremonially opened and prayer-sticks placed within, and they return to the kiva. At some of the pueblos there is a race up the mesa at dawn on the ninth day as in other ceremonies.

On the evening of the ninth day the Flute procession forms and winds down the trail to the spring in order: a leader, the Snake maiden and two Snake youths, the priests, and in the rear a costumed warrior with bow and whizzer. At the spring they sit on the north side of the pool, and as one of the priests plays a flute the others sing, while one of their number wades into the spring, dives under the water, and plants a prayer-stick in the muddy bottom. Then taking a flute he again wades into the spring and sounds it in the water to the four cardinal points. Meanwhile sunflowers and cornstalks have been brought to the spring by messengers. Each priest places the sunflowers on his head and each takes two cornstalks in his hands, and the procession, two abreast, forms to ascend the mesa. A priest draws on the trail with white corn meal a line and across it three cloud symbols. The Flute children throw the offerings they hold in their hands upon the symbols and advance to the symbols, followed by the priests who sing to the sound of the flutes. The children pick the offerings from the ground with sticks held in the hand, and the same performance is repeated till they stand again in the plaza on the mesa before the cottonwood bower, when they sing melodious songs, then disperse.

The Flute legend, of which the ceremony is a dramatization, relates that the Bear and Snake people in early times lived along the Walpi. The Horn and Flute people came that way and halted at a spring. Not knowing whether other people lived in their neighborhood, they sent out a spy who returned and reported that he had seen traces of other peoples. The Flute people set forth to find them, and so they came to the Walpi houses, halting at the foot of the mesa and moving up the trail, as in the ceremony, with songs and the music of flutes.

The Walpi people had drawn a line of meal across the trail, closing it from all comers, and demanded whence the Flutes were going and what they desired. Then the Flute chief said:

“We are of your blood, Hopi. Our hearts are good and our speech straight. We carry on our backs the tabernacle of the Flute Altar. We can cause rain to fall.” Four times they challenged the Flute people as they stood before the line of meal and four times this reply was given. Then the Walpians erased the meal barrier and the Flutes passed into the pueblo, set up their altar, sang the cloud-compelling songs and brought the welcome rain. Then the Bear and Snake chiefs said, “Surely your chief shall be one of our chiefs.”