Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/100

 88 Journal of American Folk-Lore.

Six maids with elaborate headdresses and five others with simple tillets of yucca on their heads participated in this dance.

The six maids were clothed in white ceremonial blankets, with girdles and moccasins. Their headdresses consisted of a band, wound with different colored calico, fitting over the head like a crown. There were attached to this band, one over each ear, two representa- tions of horns made of slats of wood curved and painted. Several feathers from the eagle's breast (pibhii) were attached to the front of this band, and at the rear were long feathers arranged vertically and fan-shaped. These girls had likewise a bunch of variegated feathers tied to the back of the head, and a bright spot of vermilion color was painted on each cheek.

Each of these six maidens carried in her hands a basket made by the Kohonino Indians and obtained from them by the Hopi in trade.

The other maids, five in number, wore ordinary dark blue or black blankets, without mantle or moccasins. Their faces had been rubbed with meal, and across the cheeks and nose from ear to ear a curving black line was drawn with powdered shale. They had a simple fillet of yucca fibre in place of the more elaborate headdress of their companions, and in one hand they carried a rattle, in the other an ear of corn, with a string of bread-cakes of different forms. These eleven maids formed in line, the five alternating with the six, and danced before a group of women of the Mamzrau Society, who sang in chorus to the beating of a drum. Each basket bearer held her basket by the rim in both hands in front of her, and about vertical, the concave side facing outward. In dancing there was a slight alternate movement of the feet with slow gestures of the basket in cadence. The bread-cakes which the five maids carried were in the course of the dance distributed among the men spec- tators. The headdresses of the six maidens reminded me of those worn in the Lalakonti, and the introduction of baskets is also similar in the two performances. It is therefore possible that this dance is a Kohonino variant, in the adoption of which secret ceremonials, altars, etc., have been lost.

It is an interesting point that this Kohonino basket dance is intro- duced as an episode of the dance called the Mamzrauti instead of in the Lalakonti. This may be theoretically explained on the sup- position that clans of the Kohoninos have some relation with those of the Mamzrauti Society.

We often find in collections of Hopi dolls specimens with charac- teristic symbolism which are called Kohonino Katcina.

A comparison of the symbolism of this doll with that of the head- dress of the six maids in the dance described above shows that both represent the same being. Thus the head of the so-called Kohonino

�� �