strolling around the mesa, tasting
Hopi food, feeding candy to the naked, roly-poly babies, or bargaining
with visiting Navajos for rugs and silver jewelry. French, Spaniards,
Mexicans, Germans, Americans, and Indians jostled each other
good-naturedly. Cowboys, school teachers, moving-picture men, reporters,
missionaries, and learned doctors were all there. One eminent doctor
nudged the Chief gleefully and displayed a small flask he had hidden
under his coat. I wondered if he had fortified himself with liquor in
case of snakebite. He surely had! And how? He had heard for years of the
secret antidote that is prepared by the Snake Priest and his wife, to be
used all during the nine days the snakes are being handled. He traveled
there from Chicago to secure a sample of that mixture. He found the
ready ear of a Hopi youth, who supplied him with a generous sample in
return for five dollars. The doctor was satisfied, for the time being,
and so was the mischief-loving kid. He told us a few minutes later that
he had sold seven such samples on the Q.T. and that he was going to have
to mix up another brew! "What are you selling them?" I asked, trying to
be as stern as possible. "Water we all washed in," he said, and we both
had a good laugh.

At noon the snakes were taken from the big jars and washed in other
ollas of water. This is a matter of politeness. Since the snake brothers
cannot wash themselves, it must be done for them.

The middle of the afternoon found the crowd choosing places of vantage
for the Snake Dance, which would begin just before sundown and last
perhaps half an hour. Owners of houses were charging a dollar a seat on
their roofs, and they could have sold many more seats had there been
room for them.

Scarcely a person seemed to realize that they were there to witness a
religious ceremony and that to the Indians it was as sacred as could be
any High Church service. Shouting and cheering, they waited for the
dancers to appear.

Finally a naked Indian, painted white and black and red, with a lot of
strung shells draped over his chest, appeared, carrying the olla of
snakes. These he deposited in a hut built of willow boughs with a
bearskin for a door.

Following him came twenty priests painted as he was, each with a loin
cloth and a coyote skin hanging from the cloth behind. These went around
the circle seven times, which seems to be the mystic number used in all
these ceremonies. They chanted a weird, wor