Page:The Pima Indians.pdf/113

108  is probable that the conception, if not the mask itself, was imported from the southward along with the masked Navitco ceremonies, despite the assertion of its former owner to the contrary, because it represents a higher degree of skill in woodworking than any piece of carving that the writer has seen done by a Pima. It is of cottonwood, perforated for the insertion of horsehair eyebrows, chin whisker, and two tufts on the center of each cheek, and is ornamented by an interrupted scroll and other lines unmistakably intended to be decorative. The mouth contains a half dozen pegs, giving a very realistic representation of teeth.

Wand. There are two wands or ceremonial sticks in the collection (fig. 27). The longer is of greasewood, Sarcobatus vermicularis, the material prescribed for ia’kita, or ceremonial paraphernalia of this class. It is spotted with black and red paint. The shorter wand is of willow, spotted with red. Both were made to be held in the hand during ceremonies intended to bring rain, to cure disease, and for kindred purposes.



The metate is the most abundant of the stone implements of the Southwest, or, if arrow points exceed them in numbers, the former is at least the most noticeable. About nearly every ruin one sees the fragments of broken metates, in some cases to the number of several score, as at the ruin near Patagonia, in the Sonoita valley, where sixty