Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/586

 fewkes] THE AL6SAKA CULT OF THE HOP! INDIANS S 2 7

rected. This place is called a sipapti, and below it are thought to dwell the ancients. The prayers were addressed to the old men who have died. " Down below us they dwell," said an old priest. "There the ancients dwell," said he, patting the ground with his foot. " We are now praying to them." There are many facts which show the existence of ancestor worship among the Hopi, but the author never heard it stated more clearly by the priests than the night he accompanied the phallic societies 1 to the ancient site of Walpi in the celebration of the New-fire ceremonies in November, 1898.

The Bird-man in the SoyAluna

One of the most striking features of the rites of the Winter Solstice ceremony in the chief kiva is the personation, before an altar, of a Bird-man who is thought to represent a solar god. This episode at Walpi has been elsewhere described, 1 but as at Oraibi it immediately precedes certain rites directly related to the Aldsaka cult, a few notes on the personation of the Bird-man in the latter pueblo will be introduced.

About 10 P.M. on the day called Totokya, the chief day of all great ceremonies, this man, preceded by two others, passed into the kiva, his entrance being announced by balls of meal thrown through the hatchway upon the floor, falling near the fireplace. The two men seated themselves, one on each side of the ladder, which was grasped in one arm. The Bird-man who followed had his face painted white, and in his mouth was a whistle with which he continually imitated the call of a bird, probably the eagle. He

1 The two societies called the Talaufoamii and WnwiitcimtH are termed phallic because they wear on their breasts, arms, and legs, figures of human phalli, and carry in their hands realistic representations of the external female organ of genera- tion cut out of wood or watermelon rind. The former society was introduced from Awatobi by Tapolo, the chief of the Tobacco clan ; the latter by the Squash clans, now extinct in Walpi. Both these clans originally came from the banks of Little Colorado river near Winslow ; the Tobacco from Cakwabaiyaki, now in ruins at the mouth of Chevlon Fork. See Smithsonian Report for 1896.

'See American Anthropologist, vol. XI, p. 2u ; also American Anthropologist, N. S., April, 1S99.

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