Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/582

 fewkes] THE AL6SAKA CULT OF THE HOP/ INDIANS 523

that they represented male and female, and his sketches of them show ground for that belief. Each has a well carved head, from which arise two straight projections which will be spoken of as horns.

In his studies of the Hopi Indians the author has several times visited the shrine at Awatobi where these objects were once kept, finding it a depression in a large bowlder, which was formerly wailed up with masonry, making a shelf upon which the images stood. The entrance to this shrine faces the east, and the bowlder lies a few feet lower down on the cliff than the founda- tion of the old mission church of San Bernardino de Awatobi. By interrogating Indians regarding the images, he has found that they represent beings called Al6sakas y the cult of which, once practised at Awatobi, still survives in the rites of the modern Hopi pueblos. Many legends concerning Aldsaka have been collected, but only during the last few years has the author witnessed ceremonies connected with their cult. As a result of these observations a suggestion in regard to its significance is offered.

The distinctive symbolic feature of these images is the horns (did) above referred to, from which they take their name. There is a priesthood at Walpi called the Aaltft or Horn-men (to whom the name Aldsaka is also given), who are the special guardians of the cult and who perform rites which throw light on its nature. These AaltA, in their personifications of Alo'saAas, wear on their heads close-fitting wicker caps, 1 on which are mounted two large, artificial, curved projections made of buckskin, painted white, and resembling horns of the mountain sheep 11 which, in certain of their actions, the Aaltfi imitate.

1 See Fifteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, plate CX.

mountains which form the watershed between Ciila and Little Colorado rivers, and Castaneda speaks of seeing and following them after leaving Chichilticalli, probably in the White mountains. This animal was no doubt well known to the clans who lived in the southern parts of Arizona, before they migrated northward, and worship of it was the original form of the Aldsaka cult.
 * The mountain sheep or mountain "goat" was formerly abundant in the

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