=Flute Ceremony and Tradition=

This Flute ceremony is one of the loveliest and most impressive in the
whole Hopi calendar. And because it is one which most clearly
illustrates this thesis, some detail of the ceremony will be given.

From the accounts of many observers that of Hough[25] has been chosen:
"On the first day the sand altar is made and at night songs are begun.
Within the kiva the interminable rites go on, and daily the cycle of
songs accompanied with flutes is rehearsed. A messenger clad in an
embroidered kilt and anointed with honey, runs, with flowing hair, to
deposit prayer-sticks at the shrines, encircling the fields in his runs
and coming nearer the pueblo on each circuit. During the seventh and
eighth days a visit is made to three important springs where ceremonies
are held, and on the return of the priests they are received by an
assemblage of the Bear and Snake Societies, the chiefs of which
challenge them and tell them that if they are good people, as they
claim, they can bring rain.

[Footnote 25: Hough, Walter, Op. cit., pp. 156-158.]

"After an interesting interchange of ceremonies, the Flute priests
return to their kiva to prepare for the public dance on the morrow. When
at 3:00 a.m. the belt of Orion is at a certain place in the heavens, the
priests file into the plaza, where a cottonwood bower has been erected
over the shrine called the entrance to the underworld. Here the priests
sing, accompanied with flutes, the shrine is ceremonially opened and
prayer-sticks placed within, and they return to the kiva. At some of the
pueblos there is a race up the mesa at dawn on the ninth day, as in
other ceremonies.

"On the evening of the ninth day the Flute procession forms and winds
down the trail to the spring in order: A leader, the Snake maiden, two
Snake youths, the priests, and in the rear a costumed warrior with bow
and whizzer. At the spring they sit on the south side of the pool, and
as one of the priests plays a flute the others sing, while one of their
number wades into the spring, dives under water, and plants a
prayer-stick in the muddy bottom. Then taking a flute he again wades
into the spring and sounds it in the water to the four cardinal points.
Meanwhile sunflowers and cornstalks have been brought to the spring by
messengers. Each priest places the sunflowers on his head and each takes
two cornstalks in his hands and the procession, two abreast, forms to
ascend the mesa. A p