Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/315

 268 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s„ i, 1899

Both Anote and Satele procured a few ears of differently col- ored corn and shelled them upon the rain-cloud picture, sprinkling the grains evenly over the meal design, and adding a few to the back of the Great Snake. Squash and melon seeds were likewise distributed in the same way. The vase from which the stone effigies and other images were taken was then placed near the base of the middle rain-cloud picture, and a large quartz crystal was added on the left. A conch, which the author presented to the chief, was placed on the right of this vase. Anote then swept the floor north of the fireplace, and as he sang in a low tone Satele drew a straight line of meal from near the right pole of the ladder across the floor to the middle of the altar. He placed along this line, at intervals, four feathers, and near where it joined the altar he stretched a string, with an attached feather, called the putabi* He then sprinkled a line of pollen along this trail of meal.

Anote's medicine-bowl was set just in front of the middle rain- cloud figure ; the clay pedestal with inserted upright feathers stood before the left, and a basket-tray with prayer-meal before the right rain-cloud figure.

Altar in the Tewakiva at Hano

The altar (plate XIX) in the Tewakiva was begun about 10 A.M. on the Assembly day, and was made by Pocine,* assisted by his uncle, Puftsauwi, both members of the Na?~i-towa> or Sand clan.

The preparations began with the manufacture of a clay effigy of the Great Snake similar to but larger than that made by Anote in the Mohkiva. The clay was moistened and kneaded on the floor, and then rolled into a cylinder about three feet long, blunt at one end and pointed at the other.

1 This was a four-stranded string of cotton, as long as the outstretched arm, measured from over the heart to the tip of the longest finger. It is supposed to be a roadway of blessings, and the trail of meal is the pathway along which, in their belief, the benign influences of the altar pass from it to the kiva entrance and to the pueblo.

was studied by the writer a week before the TUntai.
 * Pocine is a youth not far from seventeen years of age. His marriage ceremony-

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