Goodness,
unselfishness, truth-telling, respect for property, family, and filial
duty, are cumulative by-products of communal living, closely connected
with religious beliefs and conduct, but not their object. The Indian,
like other people, has found by experience that honesty is the best
policy among friends and neighbors, but not necessarily so among
enemies; that village life is only tolerable on terms of mutual safety
of property and person; that industry and devotion to the family
interest make for prosperity and happiness. Moral principles are with
him the incidental product of his ancestral experience, not primarily
inculcated by the teaching of any priest or shaman. Yet the Pueblos show
a great advance over many primitive tribes in that their legends and
their priests reiterate constantly the idea that 'prayer is not
effective except the heart be good.'"

[Footnote 18: Coolidge, Mary Roberts, The Rain-makers: Houghton Mifflin
Co., New York, 1929, p. 203.]

VIII. CEREMONIES; GENERAL DISCUSSION

* * * * *

=Beliefs and Ceremonials=

The beliefs of a tribe, philosophical, religious, and magical, are, for
the most part, expressed in objective ceremonies. The formal procedure
or ritual is essentially a representation or dramatization of the main
idea, usually based upon a narrative. Often the ceremony opens with or
is preceded by the narration of the myth on which it is based, or the
leader may merely refer to it on the assumption that everyone present
knows it.

As to the purpose of the ceremony, there are those who maintain that
entertainment is the main incentive, but the celebration or holiday
seems to be a secondary consideration according to the explanation of
the primitives themselves.

If there chances to be a so-called educated native present to answer
your inquiry on the point, he will perhaps patiently explain to you that
just as July Fourth is celebrated for something more than parades and
firecrackers, and Thanksgiving was instituted for other considerations
than the eating of turkey, so the Hopi Snake Dance, for instance, is
given not so much to entertain the throng of attentive and respectful
Hopi, and the much larger throng of more or less attentive and more or
less respectful white visitors, as to perpetuate, according to their
traditions, certain symbolic rites in whose efficacy they have
profoundly believed for centuries and do still believe.

Concer