Collection › The Lutheran Pioneer (St. Louis) › Vol. 49 (1927) › Page 182

The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1927, Page 182

Concordia Seminary Library, St. Louis (scholar.csl.edu/lutheran_pioneer/49)

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

182

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

where the dance was to be held a little after eleven
o’clock, they had been preceded by 1,500 white men,
women, and children. By sheer good fortune they
still found one good place of vantage near the sacred
rock about which the dancers were to march during
the ceremony. The court where the dance was to
take place was quite small and enclosed on one side
by a high cliff and on more than two other sides by
the houses of the Indians. For five hours Mr. Bell’s

and the purpose of their entertainment at the hands
of the snake priests was that they might go to those
gods and tell them to send rains, so the crops might
mature.

It is said that these snakes are bathed, soothed
with turkey feathers, and sprinkled with warm corn
meal — sacred meal. lt is supposed that out of
gratitude for their fine treatment at the hands of the
priests they will make a favorable report to the rain

A Group of Hopi Indians.

party waited in almost breathless suspense, while
Indians, taking advantage of the opportunity,
pressed through the crowd and offered for sale every-
thing, from ice cream and soft drinks to fresh fruit
of various kinds.

The snake-dance of the Hopi is simply an ex-
tended and elaborate prayer for rain. For nine days

previous to the dance the priests had been royally.

entertaining the snakes, among them also not a few
tattlers, down in the gloomy depths of their sacred
kia, i F

_ The Hopi believe that snakes are the messengers
_ Of the rain gods, who dwell in the center of the earth,

gods and thus reward their hosts for the entertain-
ment accorded them.

At the center of one side of the court an altar,
or booth, of cottonwood limbs had been constructed.
Before it a bearskin had been hung, and flush with
the ground there was a board about two feet long
and six inches wide.

First appeared a tall, well-built priest with a flat
stick, to the end of which was tied a long cord. He
whirled this around very rapidly, making a strange,
weird sound — the old Hopi call to battle.

Then appeared the antelope priests, who circled
before the altar four times, stamped upon the board,

/