Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/107

 Hopi Basket Dances. 95

We find, however, that the manufacture of baskets is confined to the Middle Mesa and Oraibi at the present time. The basket dance is nowhere celebrated with greater elaboration than at Walpi, and yet the Walpi women are not basket-makers. This may be explained either on the theory that the industry has died out or that those clans of the Rain Cloud phratry, the women of which were basket makers, did not settle at Walpi.

In closing, I will call attention to the fact that we have on the East Mesa the following basket dances : The Lalakonti, introduced from the south by the Rain Cloud clans ; the Ozuakulti, a frag- mentary exhibition of the Awatobi basket dance ; some portions of an obscure Kohonino basket dance, and a dance of the same nature from the Tewan pueblos on the Rio Grande.

The Lalakonti is the harvest festival of the Rain Cloud phratry, once celebrated at Homolobi, Chaves Pass, and other pueblos of this group of clans, now performed in the Hopi villages as an annual celebration by descendants of the inhabitants of those ancient vil- lages and others whom they have admitted to membership. The basket throwers are personations of mythic ancestral mothers of the Rain Cloud clan represented in the kiva exercises by images carved out of wood. They are the Rain-Cloud-Corn Maids, cultus mothers of the Rain-Cloud, Corn, and other clans, called by their sacerdotal names, Lakone manas. In the " mystery play," or dramatization of the Snake-Antelope clans, the Snake woman's personification stands back of the altar on the left side, and the Snake youth on the other. In the Lalakonti idols are used for Rain-Cloud-Corn Maids in the secret observances, and girls take that part in the public dance. We might go over the other ceremonies and show similar person- ations, showing the importance given to the cultus heroine of each society in its ceremonies.

Like all Hopi rites, those of the Rain Cloud clans contain many survivals of an early totemism which are not understood by present priests. In this same Rain Cloud clan there are examples of pure zoototemism, as the exercises of the Bird Man before the effigy of the Great Snake in the winter solstice altar. 1 The prayers which repre- sent the present state of religion of this family are now very different from those when this zoototemism was first developed, but notwith- standing the change the archaic rites are still kept up. The only truthful explanation which the Hopi priests can give for performing the majority of their rites is that they were bequeathed to them by their ancestors. The majority of their explanations are simply their

1 This Bird Man I regard the personation of the Sun for reasons which have elsewhere been pointed out, and the exercises before the altar, the dramatization of the fertilization of the Corn Maid by the Sky god.

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