Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/103

 Hopi Basket Dances. 9 1

maskette over the upper face. She had a blue woven jacket and a white kilt reaching below the thigh. The leg and arm on one side was painted yellow ; on the other side green. The arms and legs were banded in black. She wore a tablet on her back, and a fox- skin was attached to her belt behind. In one hand was a prayer- stick ; in the other a foxskin.

She led a pair of women dressed almost alike and resembling the leader, except that they wore bands about the head, with a symbolic ear of corn over the forehead. At each end of this object three feathers were attached, and from the band arose a framework, at the apex of which were feathers and other objects.

Each of these two women carried a bow and arrows and a small package of corn husks. " They began in the main floor of the kiva by tossing the husk package toward the ladder ; then shot their arrows at it. They then picked it and their arrows up, and thus casting the package before them and shooting at it, performing this act once or twice, they reached the circle of dancers in the court. They tossed the package into the middle of the circle and shot at it ; then, entering the circle, they each shot their two arrows in the air, after which they returned to the kiva. They are called Wauhitaka . . . and their act of shooting is said to typify lightning striking in the cornfield, an event which is regarded as the acme of fertiliza- tion." Meanwhile a girl was mixing little nodules of sweet corn- meal and water in the kiva, and as the Wauhitaka returned each took a trayful and returned to the circle of singing women and cast the nodules one by one among the spectators, by whom they were eagerly taken.

While there is a general similarity in the acts of these two women and those of the basket throwers, there is but a remote likeness in the coronets which they wear.

RELATION OF THE BULINTIKIBI TO THE HOPI RITUAL.

There is a dance occasionally performed at Sitcomovi or Hano, but not at Walpi, in which women participants wore board tablets on their heads. This dance, called the Bulintikibi, is different from any other in the Hopi calendar, and its relation to the ritual has hitherto been problematical. I am now convinced that it is an extra Tusayan ceremony brought to the East Mesa by Tewan clans and still kept up by the descendants of those who introduced it.

Bulintikibi is, as its name signifies, the butterfly dance, but not, as might be supposed, a personation of the butterfly. It is rather the Butterfly clan dance, just as the Tcilatikibi is the dance of the Snake clan, the Sio Katcina a Zuni Katcina, or the Humis Katcina a Katcina derived from Jemez, — the name of the observance, in other

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