Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/318

 fewkesI WINTER SOLSTICE ALTARS A T HA NO 269

Four clay balls were made at the same time. One of these later served as the base of a standard {natci) which was subse- quently placed each morning on the kiva hatch to warn the un- initiated not to enter. The other three were placed back of the altar and supported the sticks called the altar-ladders, which will be considered later.

Pocine outlined with meal on the floor a square figure which he divided into two rectangular parts by a line parallel with the northern side. He used meal of two colors — white for one rec- tangle, and light brown or pinkish for the other. Having made the outlines of the rectangle with great care, he carelessly sprinkled the enclosed spaces with the meal, hardly covering the sand base upon which the figures were drawn. He then added four triangu- lar figures in meal on the south or front side of the rectangular symbols. These images represented rain-clouds, and were alter- nately white and brown. 1 To the tips of these triangular rain-cloud figures he appended zigzag continuations with lozenge-shaped tips representing the lightning of the four cardinal points. A stone spearpoint or arrowhead was laid on each lozenge-like tip of the zigzag lightning. 1

The two men, Pocine and Puflsauwi, next raised the snake effigy and bore it to a position back of the rectangular meal figures on the floor. They deposited it in such a way that its head pointed southward. Having set the snake effigy in the position which it was to retain throughout the ceremony, Pocine sprinkled a black powder along the back of the image, while his uncle inserted several kernels of corn in the blunt end to repre-

��1 The triangle among the Hopi is almost as common a symbol of the rain-cloud as the semicircle. It is a very old symbol, and is frequently found with the same meaning in cliff-houses and in ancient pictography.

3 It was found in studying the four lightning symbols on this Tewa altar that sex is associated with cardinal points as in the Walpi Antelope altar. The lightning of the north is male, that of the west female, the south male, and the east female. The same holds with many objects in Hopi altars ; thus the stone objects, icamahia, of the Antelope altar follow this rule. In the same way plants and herbs have sex (not in the Linnean meaning), and are likewise associated with the cardinal points.

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