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 than the initiated priests. Thus the many observances which come around from time to time in two years are quite a tax on the memory of the adepts.

The ceremonial year of the Moki is divided equally by two great events, the departure of the kachinas in August and their arrival in December. The kachinas are the spirits of the ancestors whose special pleasure it is to watch over Tusayan. When the crops are assured they depart for Nuvatikiobi, "the place of the high snows," or San Francisco Mountain. After their departure come the Snake and Flute dances, among others, and all the dances up to the return of the kachinas are called "nine days' ceremonies," while the joyous kachina dances are known as the "masked dances."

All who become acquainted with the Mokis learn to respect and like them. Fortunate is the person who, before it is too late, sees under so favorable aspect their charming life in the old new world. 1em

The Snake dance is an elaborate prayer for rain, in which the reptiles are gathered from the fields, intrusted with the prayers of the people, and then given their liberty to bear these petitions to the divinities who can bring the blessing of copious rains to the parched and arid farms of the Hopis. It is also a dramatization of an ancient half-mythic, half-historic legend dealing with the origin and migration of the two fraternities which celebrate it, and by transmission through unnumbered generations of priests has become conventionalized to a degree, and possibly the actors themselves could not now explain the significance of every detail of the ritual. The story is of an ancestral Snake-youth, Ti′yo, who, pondering the fact that the water of the river flowed ever in the same