The three motives which lie at the bottom of Pueblo Indian ceremonies (quite wrongly miscalled dances by American onlookers) are: the desire for rain, which brings fertility and hence abundant crops; for the cure of illnesses, more often in case of epidemic disease; for success in war. How natural are these desires may be judged from the first of them, by anyone who has travelled even a little in Arizona or New Mexico, and who will certainly reëcho in his own heart the prayer for rain. To drive along a shadeless road and notice on the one side green stretches of corn or of alfalfa, while on the other are nothing but desert wastes in which cactus and sage alone can live, is the most graphic object lesson of what a moderate supply of water achieves. I recall a region near Bernalillo (the Tiguex of Coronado) where a pitiful bunch of cattle was staggering over a great area, on which not even a blade of parched grass could be seen, while a dry arroyo tantalized them with a suggestion of where water ought to be. On the other side of that sterile ditch were other cattle and horses, plump and glossy, wading deep in luscious herbage. Such an experience gives one sympathy for a people who recognize in water the nourisher of all life, and who adore the spirits that live in fountains, lakes, and rivers. But much sympathy will hardly help us to interpret the ordered form of any ceremonial we may be allowed to watch. If it is borne in mind, however, that every Pueblo ritual, however named, is fundamentally a prayer for rain, since without water there can be no increase of life, all observation and study will be simplified.

The staple food of the Indians, in this infertile land, is maize, which, because it was so preëminently their staff of life, is universally known as “Indian corn.” It does not suffer from the long, dry summers, and requires almost no care. Bancroft writes of it:

No wonder, then, that corn dances figured equally with the snake dances as prayers for rain, throughout the Indian country.[226] This cult was further developed by a selection of colors to harmonize with the six regions of the world. Since the colors for direction as given by Mrs. Stevenson for Zuñi agree with the names of the original Corn clans of Ácoma, I venture to use her designation:

The visitor will see in every home neat piles of the corn in all these colors.

All authorities are agreed that North American ceremonialism reached its apogee in the southwestern Indian, and that the hopelessness of getting any one of them to unravel for the American its inner significance is profound. Yet the rites, far more than traditions or myths, will, if ever fathomed, probably be found to hold the key to their beliefs and to the secret of their daily life.

Alexander classifies the rites as follows:

1. The smoke offering, constituting a kind of ritualistic definition of the Indian’s cosmos.

2. The sweat-bath or purification, which is likewise the spiritual aspect of a healing rite.

3. Fasts and vigils for inducing visions.

4. Shamanistic rites that may inspire and possess the human agent of divinity.

5. Communal ceremonies or “dances,” of which the white visitor never sees the sacred and probably most significant part, but only their dramatic expression. For example: eight days of most secret and exhausting ceremony precede the snake dance, which the white man may witness as a spectacle, just as in a theatre, on the ninth day.

6. The ceremonial rites in honor of the ancestral dead, or of those more recently departed whose good-will and active help are desired.[228]

This custom suggests to the student of comparative rituals the Parentalia of the Roman religion, not of course a conscious correlation, but the common instinct of very unlike races to honor or appease their forefathers. It may add interest to state also Kroeber’s conviction that the so-called ancestor worship among the Pueblos bears not the slightest relation to that of the eastern Asiatic belief. If we translate the K’at’sina cult as of the “ancients,” we must understand by that word the dead of all time, including those of last year.

He who can sympathetically understand the import of an Indian ceremonial will alone solve the mystery of what has been bequeathed by immemorial ancestors and of what reigns supreme to-day. To guard their ritual is the jealous care of the older generation. Not only is secrecy imposed by the ruler of their fraternities, but it is in fact their last weapon, whether of defence or of revenge, against the unwarrantable abuse of power and privilege which white over-lordship has wielded over its so-called “wards.” It is as if the Indian said:

One who has lived long among them told the writer that he had learned most from watching and listening to some old men who had come to look at a symbolic design made by a young Indian artist. For a while there was silence; then one man began to point out certain things, then another and another spoke, adding details, forgetful of their white friend silent in the background, till a long and complex tale had been quite unconsciously revealed to the listener. A familiarity born of years of sympathetic study of their traditions and folk-lore must be acquired before anyone can dare say he sees the deeper significance of their ceremonials. Like the dances of all primitive races, those of the Pueblos are essentially religio-sociologic in character, and present very subtle intricacies. Nothing “happens.” Everything is started by some personal agency, and everything has sex, and all is dramaturgic.[229] Dr. Fewkes is unquestionably right in saying that “the explanation of these observances, while the most fascinating and most valuable study, is most liable to error.”[230] “Back of every Indian ceremony is a story, and for every possible adventure of tribal life” there are tales and songs which are a part of daily existence, but which are especially celebrated by the festal “dances.” It follows that the Indian religion is a dramatic one, full of action and color that express to the lay mind hidden truths, just as in early Christian days the painted story on church walls was a picture Bible for those who could not read.

Mary Austin says that most songs are for “occasions,” and that so blended are movement, melody, and the muffled beat of the tombé that “the Indian will say indifferently, ‘I cannot sing that dance,’ or ‘I cannot dance that song.’ They are as much mingled as the water of a river with its own ripples and its rate of flowing.”[231]

There are various aids to all ceremonies, such as the sprinkling of the sacred meal, and the use of pollen in prescribed ways. The ceremonial pollen is gathered from hundreds of plants according to very rigid rules. But the chief method of bringing man into harmonious relations with “those above” is through fasting,[232] self-castigation, and prayer, a discipline followed by bodily purification. The well-being of man is so dependent upon water that its use, both actual and emblematic, was apparently made in very early days an established part of all religious ceremonies. Perhaps nothing more amazed the Christian missionaries than to find the Indian, in order to free himself from sin and make himself fit to appeal to his gods, using the rite of sprinkling the face and head with medicine water, very closely akin to “holy baptism.” The weekly sweat-bath, the frequent head-washing with soapsuds made from yucca roots, and the purging induced by emetics are strictly enforced before or after almost every ritual, and have probably been a prime source of physical healthfulness in the pueblos.[233]

It follows that the lustration of snakes at Hopi before the snake dance is a logical part of that ceremony, for the snakes are the “elder brothers” of their clan, and since they are brought in from the field, covered with dust, their cleansing is an essential preliminary to their totemistic share in the dance. After taking the snakes back to the fields, the men on their return to the pueblo go through the vomiting, or inward purification, before sharing the feast that ends the ceremony of several days.

There are ceremonial hunts, as well as those for the gaining of essential food, and the races at their fiestas were not merely an expression of athletic prowess or primarily a struggle for individual supremacy. Indeed, the adult Indian seems to do nothing purely for fun.

Since Ácoma has succeeded better than most of the pueblos in preserving her ancient way of life, it is far more difficult to penetrate her ritual than that of any other. We are told by Lummis of the impression, at the time of the great festival, of a mystery in the surrounding air—of an alert anticipation or watchfulness for magic, good or evil—and how in hidden crannies of her most inaccessible cliff one may find plume sticks, because “the feathers of the eagle’s breast symbolize to the natives that, as the eagle soars by means of these feathers into the very eye of the sun, so may their prayers ascend to the sacred precincts of ‘Those Above.’”

We know of three important ritual celebrations at Ácoma: namely, the Fiesta of San Estévan, patron saint of the mission and now of the pueblo, on September 2; that of All Souls’ Day; and the winter solstice rites, commingled with Christmas. A fourth that occurs at the time of the summer solstice, on San Juan’s Day, June 24, is in most pueblos an occasion of serious and elaborate ritual, but at Ácoma it is so much more like a madcap race and game that it is described in the chapter on games. All festivities are announced by the town crier some days in advance. It is worth noting that, though the days for both of the solstice ceremonials are appointed by the head cheani, called together by the war captains, it is evident that they are determined by the observation of the sun’s “turning back” in June, from which moment six moons are counted. In fact, the only reckoning of time is by the moons from solstice to solstice. In some tribes each month has its poetic name, derived from the appearance of the moon.

Of all investigators, the one who has best succeeded in giving us some hints about their present ritual customs and beliefs is Dr. Parsons.[234] All who are interested in making more than the most superficial acquaintance with Ácoma rituals should consult her printed articles.[235] Professor Espinosa has also collected a valuable number of folk-tales and anthropological data. To these two sources the writer acknowledges her great indebtedness for the facts given in this section of the study. Dr. Parsons went to Ácoma in January, 1917, accompanied by a native Zuñi who knew her well and who had relatives at Ácoma. Even with such an introduction, and though she was hospitably entertained by an Ácoma household, she had “to contend against extreme distrust of the whites,” and with much difficulty finally differentiated herself from “the ordinary picture-taking tourist.” But their special aversion was to any representative of the national government “from whom every ceremonial or detail of life is to be hidden.” So that even after they had begun to trust Dr. Parsons, the story-teller of the moment would break off suddenly at a critical point to be reassured that none of what he had said would be forwarded to Washington. Of a second visit in 1918, Dr. Parsons says, by way of preface, that “information is so difficult to get that, fragmentary as it is, it should be presented,” both for its own value and because the only way to learn something from the Pueblo Indian is to know something beforehand.

Before mentioning the public ceremonials, it is well to note in passing certain individual rites, classed as “crisis ceremonialism,”[236] by which is understood the transition from one stage of life to another. Birth, adolescence, the initiation into fraternities, marriage, funeral and mourning, each has its ordered recognition by definite rituals. One not shared by white people, called “ceremonial friendship,” is a beautiful relation between two persons who have become fast friends but have no kinship of blood. Always a voluntary choice, it may begin in very early childhood, or at any later period; it is most frequently seen between two men, much more rarely between two women, and not seldom between a man and a woman. In the last case, it constitutes a relation of brother and sister with no possibility of marriage, nor would either dream of marrying into the clan of the other. Saukin is the Ácoma word for friend. In Zuñi these friends are called kihe, and there is a solemn ceremony performed to consummate it. Dr. Parsons could not be sure of the same custom at Ácoma, but she saw a woman make a present of a bowl to a Zuñi visitor to whom she had previously given a meal. “We are now friends,” said the Ácoma woman—although Zuñi claims never to make kihe with other pueblos.

Espéjo in 1580 mentioned the snake dance at Ácoma, but did not say anything about the snakes being carried in the mouth as at Walpi, which is so extraordinary a sight that he could hardly have overlooked it; and Mrs. M. C. Stevenson[237] in her vivid and important account of the snake ceremony of the Queres pueblo at Sía, expressly says that the Sía priests held the snakes in their hands. The Hopi, in fact, assert that the Queres never have put the serpents in their mouths, as they themselves do. In 1895 several Snake and Antelope priests at Hopi told Fewkes that portions of the snake ceremonial still survived at Ácoma, but he could not confirm this from anyone acquainted with Ácoma rituals.[238] In 1918, according to Dr. Parsons, there was but one Snake clansman left at Ácoma, and I was told in 1922 that he had since died. On September 2, the feast day of the patron saint of Ácoma, a dramatic representation is given of the coming of St. Stephen to New Mexico.[239] Visitors are apparently made more welcome at this time than at any other during the year. The church is wide open for prayers in early morning, and then there follows a religious service. After this comes the drama, and then a long programme of dances, foot races, and other games.[240] The ceremony is chiefly pagan but here, as everywhere in the Indian country, the name of the saint is given whose day coincides in the Christian calendar with that of the ancient fiesta—another adroit adaptation of the early padres.

The celebration of All Souls’ Day at Ácoma and Laguna is unquestionably an inheritance of early Catholic training, albeit at Zuñi Dr. Parsons was told that it was a ritual of their own race, and not one engrafted from any other. At nightfall in Ácoma on November 1 or 2[241] the informant of Dr. Parsons “guessed” that parties of possibly as many as ten boys go about the streets calling out “Tsalemo, Salemo,” at the same time ringing a bell. This custom, according to Professor Espinosa, is a purely Spanish one, and the words used as they beg for food are an Indian corruption of the first words of an “invocation undoubtedly taught their ancestors by Spanish padres: ‘Tsalemo, Saremo, Oremo, Soremo.’”[242] The boys are given food, and other food is taken to the cemetery and placed at the foot of the wooden cross standing there, near which the war chiefs are on guard. By next morning all the food has disappeared. Dr. Parsons[243] speaks of the “Mexican prayer: Padre Spirito Santo, Amen” as part of the celebration, but, according to Professor Espinosa, “these Indian vocables are regular phonetic developments of the first three words of the Catholic ceremony: por la señal.” The current familiar pronunciation is pol la seña. Professor Espinosa gives the whole prayer as the Indian mumbles it, with the Spanish words below, as follows:

The celebration in December is longer, and in certain respects more elaborate, than either of the others, though it is less like a pageant than the fiesta of St. Stephen, and, as has been said elsewhere, it is a curious complex of pagan and Christian customs. The whole celebration is known in Mexican as fiesta del Re, but in Keresan it is Koachansiwatsask. It is preceded by the warrior dance called hoinawe. Dr. Parsons was not allowed to witness the preparation of the songs composed for the occasion, which took place in the estufas. The men were summoned to the dance by officers, who walked through the three avenues, crying out their summons.

Beginning on December 16, the church bell is rung every morning at nine o’clock, and mass is said by the sextana. Everyone counts the days until the 22nd when there is a grand rehearsal of the dances at night in the clan house of the Sun. From then until the 30th there are continual dances and exchanges of gifts. On Christmas day the so-called “Comanche dance,” in which costumes like those of that once-dreaded enemy are worn, takes place in the church at the foot of the altar. This dance must be of Spanish origin, for a similar ceremony takes place in Seville cathedral before the altar on December 8 for the celebration of the Immaculate Conception, and again at the Feast of Corpus Christi. The open plaza called Kakati, where a cross-street runs from North Row to Middle Row, supplies the stage for all outdoor dances. No whites are allowed to see the masked dances at Ácoma or Laguna, although these take place in the open plaza. The dance Dr. Parsons did see was maskless, to celebrate the installation of officers, and was called “unfinished.”[244]

From the 26th to the 29th, Comanche dances in which children may take part are frequent in the plaza. The Kachale come out, and there is the pasku, or butterfly dance. Meanwhile, the Kasik and his “brothers” and “uncles,” that is, the younger and older members of the Antelope clan, meet in their house a group of ten, probably the principales. (This house was back of the estufas, and Dr. Parsons did not ascertain whether it was the clan house or a ceremonial house.) Here was held the discussion about the men eligible for election on the following day, when all the men meet in the Komanina (a long house near the church, where the officers hold court).[245] So anxious was Dr. Parsons’s host to have her leave town at a certain time, before the dances were finished, that she felt sure there was some ritual too sacred for her profane eyes.

This merely suggestive sketch of the ceremonials which are to the Indian the most intimately important occupation of his life may be closed with a summary by Mrs. Stevenson, who says:

When, therefore, the Christian missionaries made the astounding and appalling announcement to the native dwellers that they were under the awful doom of eternal punishment, they aroused, by adding a supernatural terror, a superhuman determination in the breast of the Indian to rid his land forever of the blasphemous invaders. When this proved impossible to effect by force of arms, they apparently yielded to “conversion,” but only to cherish the more sacredly their old rites and beliefs, so that, gradually fusing the two more or less, they have to-day an inextricable complex of ritual.

What does the American government think it is likely to gain by a suppression of these moral and social laws, with their ancestry of centuries?