The Sacrificial Element in Hopi Worszhi.

187

THE SACRIFICIAL ELEMENT IN HOPI WORSHIP.

IN his well-known work in which he discusses the evolution of

primitive culture, Dr. E. B. Tylor devotes one of the closing chap-
ters to rites and ceremonies. In order to show how intimate the
lower phases of religions are with the higher, from an ethnographic
standpoint, this profound scholar has selected groups of religious
rites, all of which "have early place and rudimentary meaning in
savage culture, all belong to barbaric ages, all have their representa-
tives within the limits of modern Christendom." These elements
are "prayer, sacrifice, fasting, and other methods of artificial ecstasy,
orientation, lustration." The writer, believing there is no better
test of a theory than to indicate its weakness or strength when
applied to special instances, not employed in its support or construc-
tion, has sought in the following pages to show that certain compo-
nents of Tusayan rites are corroborative of the general theoretical
views on rites and ceremonies advanced by Tylor in the work above
quoted, and from these ceremonies has chosen sacrifice, an essential
element of all worship, in its special application to a comparatively
unmodified cluster of American Indians.
In none of the variants of sacrifice among primitive men, which
have been adduced by others, has attention been drawn to instances
where this element takes exactly the same form as in the Tusayan
ritual; yet notwithstanding this fact, the place which sacrifice occu-
pies in the Hopi system, and the relation which this variant bears
to prayer, are apparently similar to those which others have indi-
cated. The feeling known as worship, which in races of advanced
culture has come to be restricted to man's attitude towards divinized
beings, can hardly be said to have a like limitation in the thoughts
of primitive man. In fact, among a people whose supernatural
beings are anthropomorphic, the human and superhuman elements
grade imperceptibly one into another, and we could hardly expect
difference in treatment. So-called gods, with anthropomorphic per-
sonalities, are naturally treated as men of transcendent powers, and
powerful men are reverenced as gods. The line of demarcation is
difficult to discover. A youth needs but to don a mask in a sacred
dance, and he becomes a god; a king among peoples not wholly
barbarous is regarded a god, and approached as if he were such.
Ceremonial worship began not in acts distinctly limited to super-
naturals, but as an application of the mode of man's dealing with
other men to the method of influencing anthropomorphic crea-
tions.
When the Spaniards discovered the Tusayan Indians, in the mid-
I88 7ournal of American Folk-Lore.
die of the sixteenth century, the essential features of their religion
had developed, although it is probable that several components of
their composite ritual have been added since that time. The legends
of this people distinctly state that each cluster of families, now
called a pueblo, is formed by composition, or has resulted from a
drifting together of families or larger groups, each of which con-
tributed certain ceremonials. In that way the ritual became com-
posite; a mosaic of rites, one or more portions of which were added
by incoming families.
The general character of each of these additions was similar, but
each was, in a sense, distinct or a unit. The resultant union of
these components was, therefore, a congeries of small family reli-
gions of the same general character.
Let us isolate one of these families to discover the religious char-
acter of one of the component units.
The accepted belief in each cluster is that the family originated
from an ancestral pair, son and daughter of the sky god, and earth,
not created by a fiat of a Great Spirit, but born from the womb of
earth, as infants are born, or as animals are generated. These two
ancestors are the cultus hero and his wife, from whom members of
that family are supposed to be descended. They became tutelary
or totemic personalities (gods), and in reverence for them rites and
ceremonies developed, patterned on the same type as secular acts
of respect to elders. Spirits of the ancients still live somewhere;
and as elders are esteemed, these deceased beings are reverenced
or worshipped. They are regarded as members of the clan, and are
represented by effigy or symbol in festivals. Early religion, in short,
was not differentiated from that regard for elders which results from
paternal or maternal family government.
As these several families consolidated, each component preserved
its own patriarchal system, and thus we find them to-day, existing
side by side, each family jealously preserving from knowledge of
others its secret rites, and equally unwilling to intrude on those of
other families. In its structure, therefore, the present Hopi ritual
may be regarded as an aggregation of several family rituals, just as
the pueblo is populated by inhabitants of several phratries, formerly
separated.
As the families bringing these characteristic rites came to Tu-
sayan from different directions, naturally there is a variation in their
character. This is likewise seen in the composite Hopi language,
which has words akin to many distinct forms of speech in the South-
west. Certain families, as the Water House, and Squash, came
from the far south, bringing the cult of the Plumed Serpent, and
many words of Nahuatl roots; others from the east brought kin-
ships to eastern peoples, and so on.
 The Sacrificial Element in Hofi Worshifi. I89
Sacrifice, as an element of worship, is a familiar one with the Tu-
sayan Indians, and even offerings of human beings, should occasion
demand, were formerly not alien to their thoughts. Happily, how-
ever, with this gentle people those sanguinary offerings, so common
in Mexico among Aztecs, have no place in the present ritual, and
survive only in legends. One of the best known instances in pueblo
verbal records of human sacrifices is that which recounts how to
appease an angry god who flooded the ancient world, a child of the
chief was thrown into the angry waters, which immediately subsided.
If we may trust other tales, the same idea of human sacrifice, very
much modified, may give an explanation of certain repulsive acts
reported to have taken place during early wars with Apaches and
Utes, when in warrior celebrations of victory captives were sacri-
ficed. The idea of a chief offering himself as a person to be sacrificed
for his people was, I believe, the dominant one in the mind of the
Oraibi chief, a few years ago, when the United States troops arrested
their leading men. In I892 I witnessed in the pueblo of Sitcomovi
a Katcina dance, during which a dog was brought into the plaza
by the Clown Priests, and brutally killed in the presence of the
spectators. At that time one of their number personified Masauih,
a God of Death, and as he smeared himself with the blood, it occurred
to me that this might be an unusual sacrifice to this dreaded being.
While I have heard from the priests no direct statement to that
effect, it has always seemed to me that the treatment of rabbits sub-
sequently to their death in rabbit hunts may be interpreted as a some-
what modified survival of animal sacrifices. One of the most obscure
rites among the Moki Indians is the burial of those eagles which
have furnished them with plumes for ceremonial purposes. I know
the cleft in the rock where the carcases of such birds are placed,
and have seen the prayer offerings in it, but am in doubt whether
this Tusayan variant of the "Burial of the Wren " is an example of
animal sacrifice or not.1
But animal sacrifice, or the offering of life, is unusual, and when
it does occur is highly modified. The Hopi are an agricultural folk,
and their offerings to the gods are such as a people of this caste of
mind would naturally make. Living in an environment where there
is little game, and being not preeminently warriors, they derive their
food from the soil, not by chase or predatory forays upon their
1 There is archaeologicalevidence of the sacrifice of birds,
especially the turkey,
in some of the older Arizona ruins. It has been suggested that the almost
universal use of the feather on pueblo prayer-sticks may be in some way con-
nected with sacrifices of birds, but the almost universal adoption of feathers in
ceremonial usages among widely different peoples calls for a more general expla-
nation.
 90o yournal of American Folk-Lore.
neighbors. They therefore offer to their gods that which they most
highly prize. Using the familiar simile, that in the infancy of reli-
gious ideas man probably approached his supernatural beings as their
anthropomorphic nature implied, or with much the same spirit as
he would treat men more powerful than himself, I suppose he made
use of the same methods in both instances. He asked what he
wished, and placed before the god his gift as an offering or a symbol
of homage. The request when addressing a supernatural being we
call prayer; his offering we know as a sacrifice. In its early form
there was nothing exceptional in this course of action, nothing out
of harmony with the simple intercourse of man with man. The
anthropomorphic conceptions which we call gods were to the primi-
tive men simply more powerful human beings, with perhaps zoomor-
phic or other characteristics.
I have shown in a previous article that those supernatural beings,
called by us gods, are represented by the Hopi in three ways: by
living men, women, or children; by graven images, and by symbolic
pictures. On comparative study it will be found that these methods
could be well illustrated by samples chosen from widely different
geographical localities among people in this lower stage of culture.
This threefold mode of personification is illustrated in those
instances where the god is sacrificed, and in Central American and
Mexican rituals we have documentary evidence to show that the
first two, and probably the third, were adopted. We have women
and children dressed as gods, and then sacrificed, in several rites;
and in at least one ceremony dough images are treated in the same
way. These sanguinary sacrifices are too horrible to describe, and
I will mention but a few to show the use, among the Aztecs, of the
first method of personification, in sacrifice. In the month Hueiten-
zilhuitl, according to Serna, they sacrificed a woman, who personated
Xilome,l Goddess of Corn; in Tecuilhuitontli, a girl representing
Huitzotuhuhuatl, Goddess of Salt; and in Ochpanitzli a woman who
represented Toci, or grandmother Tetcoinam, mother of the gods,
and in Teotleco they killed the robust youth who personified the
god who came to the village in this festival of the return of the
gods. But in the festival Tepeilhuitl they adopted the second or
less sanguinary method, and sacrificed effigies of wood covered with
dough with human faces in memory of those they worshipped.
In one of the legends of the Patki people there is an account of the
offering of a youth and a maid to Paliliikofi, the Great Plumed Ser-
pent, who had flooded the earth. " The elders consulted, and then
selected the handsomest youth and fairest maid, and arrayed them
1 Suggestively like to Hopi gods and goddesses are these beings of the Aztec
Pantheon, the Goddess of Corn, Salt, Mother of Gods, War God.
 The Sacrificial Element in Hopi Worship. I9i
in their finest apparel, the youth with a white kilt and paroquet
plume, and the maid with a fine blue tunic and white mantle.
These children wept and besought their parents not to send them
to Paliiliikofi, but an old chief said, 'You must go; do not be
afraid; I will guide you.' And he led them toward the village
court, and stood at the edge of the water, but sent the children
wading in toward Paliiliikofi, and when they reached the centre
of the court, when Paliilikofi was the deity, the children dis-
appeared. The water then rushed down, and from this cavity a
great mound of dark rock protruded. This rock mound was glossy
and of all colors; it was beautiful, and, as I have been told, it still
remains there."1
The personificationof the god by any of the three methods enu-
meratedgives us a somewhat different idea of the characterof idol-
atry as ordinarilyconsidered. It seems to me that we have been too
ready to apply the theory that images used by primitive or even
somewhat advanced men in their cultus are regarded by them as
gods, and too prone to overlook the testimony which they them-
selves might furnish bearing on this point. On interrogatingmany
so-called idolatrouspersons, we may find that they believe a super-
naturalbeing resides in an image, but as many others regard these
images as simple symbols. Travellers are accustomed to consider
that the simple existence of images necessarily means idolatry with-
out questioning those who use them in regard to their belief con-
cerning them, and it is a significant fact that the deeper we pene-
trate into this subject the less evidence we find that the idol itself
is worshipped. The recognition that the image represents or is sym-
bolic of a supernaturalbeing has naturallyled to the theory that the
god temporarilyor permanentlyresides in the figurine. This expla-
nation is not open to objection as a theory, but may well be chal-
lenged if it is claimed to be the belief of all peoples who use images
in worship, and certainly is not supported by evidences drawnfrom
the statements of primitive worshippers. There are probablyall
shades of opinion among the Hopi in regard to the nature of their
idols, and while the thinking men regard them as symbols, and rev-
erence them for their antiquity, others believe that the supernatu-
ral being which the image personifies may temporarilyinhabit the
idol. The use of images in worship is in itself no sign of low cul-
ture, and is unknown among some of the most degraded races of
men. Tylor well says: " Idolatry does not seem to come in uni-
formly among the highest savages; it belongs, for instance, fully to
the Society Islanders, but not to the Tongans and Fijians. Among
higher nations its presence or absence does not necessarily agree
1 Thirteenth Annual Report Bureau
of of American Ethnology, p. 188.
I92 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
with particular national affinities or levels of culture - compare the
idol-hating Parsi, or the idolatrous Phoenician, with his ethnic kins-
man the Israelite, among whose people the incidental relapse into
the proscribed image-worship was a memory of disgrace. . . . The
ancient Vedic religion seems not to recognize idolatry, yet the mod-
ern Brahmins, professed followers of Vedic doctrine, are among the
greatest idolaters in the world."
The cultus of Hopis and Zunis is of about the same general char-
acter, and yet, I am told, with the exception of images of the War
Gods, anthropomorphic idols are not as common with the latter as
with the former. I presume there may be many similarities in the
regard which the Hopi and Zufi have for the Corn Maids, yet I find
no account of idols of such personages in Cibola.
I have been struck, in comparison of the Zufi ceremonials with
those of Tusayan, with the relatively great importance in the former
of the Priesthood of the Bow, and the insignificance of a like warrior
society, the Kalektaka, among the latter. This difference in the
power of this priesthood in the two pueblo areas accounts, I believe,
for many differences in their ceremonials, and explains certain things
otherwise incomprehensible.1 With the exception of one or two
warrior celebrations in winter, the Kalektaka are rather insignificant
at Walpi; their chief is unobtrusive, and dreadful star-chamber accu-
sations and punishments of supposed sorcery by this society are
unknown.

Images of gods, so constant in Tusayan altar paraphernalia, are,

I should judge, rare or unknown, certainly undescribed, among
neighboring Navahoes; yet that fact, if such it be, could hardly be
seriously urged to prove that the former are more idolatrous than
the latter.
We cannot, in other words, broadly assert that the use of images
in altar paraphernalia necessarily means a proneness to image-wor-
ship, or indicates anything more than a highly developed symbolism.
This symbolism is powerful among peoples with or without images;
in the former case probably greater facility in expression has given
it prominence, but there is no attendant change in the attitude of
the minds of the two peoples towards their supernatural conceptions.

TUSAYAN FIGURINES CALLED DOLLS.

Images of Katcinas are carved out of wood in three great Hopi
ceremonials called Powamf, Paliiliikofiti, and Niman. These are
presented to little girls, and are used as dolls, but, like so many
1 The absence of the packet of meal, and the presence of bow, arrows, and net-
ted shield on the paho of this society, is in line with what might be expected.
 The Sacrificial Element in Hopi IWorship. I93
religious objects which in the progress of evolution have become
playthings, these graven images have a sacred meaning which
survives in their place, time, and method of manufacture.
The name which is applied to these objects is tihu, or personifica-
tion, and they are sometimes spoken of as prayer offerings. They
are simulacra of gods, and were in olden times made as substitutional
sacrifices to the gods, much the same as the dough images in the
Nahuatl ritual. Even now small tihus may sometimes be found
deposited in shrines, showing that the religious feeling which
prompted their manufacture is not extinct. In order to show the
character of the feast of little idols in Nahuatl ceremonials, I have
gathered a few descriptions of them from early Spanish writings.
The festival to which I refer is called Tepeilhuitl, and occurs directly
after the celebration of the return of the gods or Teotleco. At
Tusayan they are manufactured at both Powama and Paliiltikofti,
the two ceremonials after the return of the gods. The general
characters of the festival of the little idols are described by several
Spanish authors, as Sahagun, Clavagero, and others. One of the least
known of these descriptions is that by Serna, which I quote: " El-
decimotercio, que llamaban Tepeilhuitl, empezaba a 3 de Octubre
y luego al 4 hacian una fiesta a los mas altos y eminentes montes:
hacian en esta fiesta unas culebras de palo 6 de raices, y labrabanles
con su cabeza, y pintibanles: hacian tambien unos trozos de madera
tan gruesos como la mufieca, largos, que llamaban ecatotontin, aire-
cillos: a estos palos y a estas culebras vestian 6 cubrian de masa de
Tzoali, y vestianlos a manera de montes, ponianles sus cabezas de la
misma masa con rostros de personas en memoria de los que se
habian ahogado, 6 muerto, sin poderlos quemar, y otras muchas
ceremonias." 1
I offer the following free translation of the above: "The
thirteenth month, which they call Tepeilhuitl, began on the 3d of
October, and immediately on the 4th they hold a festival to the
nearest and highest mountains: they made in this festival some
snakes of sticks or roots, which they furnished with heads, and deco-
rated with paints: they likewise made sections of wood as great
as the wrist, and long, which they called ecatotontin, 'airecillos.'
They clothe or cover these sticks and these serpents (effigies) with
dough made of Tzoali, and dress them in manner of mountains,2 and
put on them heads of the same dough with features of persons in
memory of those who have drowned themselves or died without
being burned, and perform many other ceremonies."
1 Serna, Manual de Ministros de Indios, p. 9I.
2
The Spanishtext is obscure: Style of mountains; or possibly,muertos,dead,
mannerof the dead.
I94 7ournal of American Folk-Lore.
To this I will add the following mention of this ceremony from
Tylor: "At the yearly festival of the Water Gods and Mountain
Gods, certain actual sacrifices of human victims took place in the
temples. At the same time, in the houses of the people there was
celebrated an unequivocal but harmless imitation of this bloody
rite. They made paste images, adored them, and in due pretence of
sacrifice cut them open at the breast, took out their hearts, cut off
their heads, divided and devoured their limbs."
One of the causes of complaint which Hopi traditionists claim
their ancestors had against the Spanish padres is that the priests
condemned and forbade the manufacture of the tihus or dolls. The
warmth with which this grievance is mentioned is significant, for it
is reasonable to conclude that if these figurines had no deeper mean-
ing than simple playthings for children, neither the Spanish fathers
would have objected to their manufacture, nor the Hopi taken the
prohibition so much to heart. Evidently the signification of these
images was mutually understood to be a religious one, hence on the
one side zeal to root out the custom of making them, and on the
other tenacious adherence to ancient usages. The Spanish priests,
fresh from Mexico, were no doubt familiar with the manufacture of
similar images in the pagan rites of Nahuatl peoples, and, recogniz-
ing the same in Tusayan, tried to force the ancient Hopi to abandon
it. In other words, it is probable that the tihu or doll was re-
garded as an idol, and perhaps was at that time used as such, but
now, as so commonly happens in the history of religious parapher-
nalia, has degenerated to that stage in its decline when it has be-
come a toy or plaything. It still retains certain characters which
stamp it as a survival, as shown by its symbolism, and by ceremoni-
als in which it is made. Possibly this decline in its dignity may
have resulted from the influence of the padres; perhaps this was its
condition when the Spanish priests came among the pueblos; but
in some former stage it was a symbolic or substitutional sacrificial
offering. In the hideous sacrifices practised by the warrior Aztecs,
the sanguinary priest killed a human victim before the idol of the
War God, and, tearing out the palpitating heart of the unfortunate,
thrust it into the face of the idol. This offering was food for the
god. The gentle, agricultural Hopi have the same idea in mind,
and still feed their stone image of the War God with food, but in a
way far different. There stands in one corner of the house of In-
tiwa, the Katcina chief, one of the mildest priests of Walpi, a stone
idol of the War God, in the mouth of which he or his family at times
place fragments of corn bread, or mutton stew, as food. The idea
of feeding a stone image is the same in both instances, but it is
1 Primitive
Culture, vol. ii. p. 405.
 The Sacrificial Element in Hopi Worship. I95
differently carried out. In this widely spread custom of feeding
images of gods we have one of the very numerous variants of sac-
rifice by a symbolic emblem which could be traced among the prac-
tices of widely different peoples of both continents; showing that
the mind of man works in strictly parallel grooves in similar stages
of culture, but environment determines to a large extent the details
of the acts or the manifestations of expression.
Near several trails which lead from the plain up the precipitous
sides of the East Mesa to the pueblos on its summit, the visitor may
see small irregular piles of stones or fragments of firewood. These
collections may be called shrines, and are dedicated to a supernatural
being much dreaded by the Mokis. On returning from a day's
labor in his fields, or from an excursion to distant mesas for fire-
wood, the weary Indian, toiling up the trail, will often be observed
to throw a small stone upon such a pile, or to add a stick of wood
from the burden he bears. Or when departing from the pueblo a
similar act is performed, accompanied by a few inaudible words as
he passes the shrines.
This, I suppose, is one of the simplest forms of prayer and sacri-
fice; the latter, more after the nature of homage to the Earth God,
and as an offering, can hardly be regarded as more than symbolic in
nature, for it has no value in itself either to giver or receiver. Pos-
sibly, however, the stone thrown upon the pile is a substitute for
something which had worth, of which it is no more than a simple
symbol.
In the celebration of the making the new fire, an elaborate cere-
monial which occurs among the Hopi Indians in November, we find
a peculiar form of sacrifice. The details of this interesting festival
have been described elsewhere,1 and it is to the nature of the offer-
ings to the fire which I ask attention.
After the new fire has been kindled, with ceremony, in the kiva,
and, fed with fuel, blazes into a flame, the chiefs of the different
societies who participate in the rite drop into it, with a prayer, pine
needles attached to strings, ostensibly as offerings to the God of Fire.
Here no doubt we have a symbolic sacrifice; but to interpret what
the pine needle represents, or why it should be chosen, is beyond
my power.
Is it a parallel with the brazier or ladle of copal so constant in
Aztec rites; or is it a substitution of the pine needle for the pitch of
the pine-tree ? Or rather is it the recurrence of the idea of burn-
ing incense to the god which occurs so often in primitive religions ?
I am inclined to interpret it by answering the last question in the
affirmative, and find some support to the conclusion that the idea of
I Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. History.
i96 yournal of American Folk-Lore.
a sweet smell to gratify the god reappears in the Hopi ritual, from
another form of burning fragrant herbs.
Passing over, for the time being, the act of smoking in the Hopi
ceremonial system, let us consider a special form of it in the secret
rites of the Antelopes, when the great rain-cloud pipe is smoked on
the altar. In the course of that rite the Antelope chief, having
loaded his pipe with prescribed herbs, blows great puffs of smoke
on the sand picture, as elsewhere described. One or more of these
herbs are very fragrant, and the rain-cloud smoke from them fills
the room with a very sweet odor. If the idea of incense were not
so widely spread among primitive religions, we might regard this
as no more than a coincidence, and suppose that the herbs when
burnt happened to be sweet smelling; but as it is so often cropping
out in primitive rites, why call it exceptional or devoid of signifi-
cance among the Hopi ?

PRAYER-STICKS AS SACRIFICIAL OBJECTS.

By far the most constant offering made at times of prayer by the
Hopi Indians is the sacred meal, which I interpret as a substitution
form of sacrifice. Meal is the highly prized food which is bartered
for other valuable objects in their trade one with another. If a
sacrifice is primarily akin to a gift or symbol of homage, if early
man approached his gods in much the same frame of mind as he did
more powerful men, then it is quite comprehensible that an agricul-
turalist should make use of the products of his farm as an offering.
By that natural law of substitution, everywhere illustrated in primi-
tive worship, an offering of meal is reduced to its minimum; and
while the name sacrifice becomes inappropriate, the idea remains
represented by a symbol. Once reduced to a symbol, it takes on a
new direction in development, and in many of its uses the sacrificial
idea is wholly obliterated or obscured. Thus the object which was
once a real offering representative of value becomes simply a prayer-
bearer. The priest takes a pinch of sacred meal in his hand, holds
it to his mouth, prays upon it, and sprinkles his idols or pictures
of the gods addressed. Or he throws the meal to the sun, or in a
hundred or less other modifications uses the meal with or without
the accompanying prayer. The act of sprinkling the sacred meal
becomes a prayer, figures made with meal have occult powers, and
so on in a most intricate ramification known in detail only by the
initiated. Special methods of its use call for special interpretations,
but the fundamental idea from which they all sprung was sacrifice.

We have in the so-called nakwakwoci, or feathered string, a sim-

ple offering in which new elements are introduced, but, as before,
the idea of sacrifice may probably be primitive in this as well.
 The Sacrifcial Element in Hopi Worship. I97
No satisfactory interpretation of the prominent part which the
feather plays in the paho 1 has yet been suggested, and as far as my
queries have gone I could obtain little light from the Hopi priests
on this point.
It has been suggested that the feather as used in prayer offerings
is an example of substitution, which is so common in the religious
rites of lower classes. If a substitution, that for which it is substituted
would naturally be a bird. If, as may naturally be suspected, this
substituted object has become simply a symbol, it would be quite
within the bounds of reason to consider the thing symbolized as a
bird.
There is apparent evidence that the prayer-stick is used as a
peace-offering or symbol of homage between chiefs, which shows
how close the feeling of worship or intercourse with supernaturals
and the dealing of man with man are in the Hopi mind. When an
embassy was sent to another tribe for aid, the prayer-stick was an
essential offering from one chief to another. This is definitely stated
in the legends of the invitation the Hopi sent to the Tanoan war-
riors, whose descendants now inhabit Hano. In ancient mortuary
customs a prayer-stick was placed with the dead, for the soul to use
on its return to the home of shades. When a cultus hero visited a
god, he carried a propitiatory prayer-stick. Probably the same feel-
ing prompted the Hopi mind in dealing with other men or with an-
thropomorphic gods. We call the latter worship; it is reverence,
but hardly sufficiently differentiated to require a different word
when directed to gods or men.
Judged in the light of what is known of other primitive religions,
it appears that the interpretation of the paho as a sacrificial object
is not strained, although in its present use it may have, in some
instances, lost its original meaning.
It is closely connected with the prayer, and if not interpreted as
an offering, either gift or symbol of homage, it seems difficult to
refer it to any other element in primitive religion. It is, in fact, no
new thought to interpret the prayer-stick as an offering or sacrifice,
and as such it has been treated in my various publications on the
Hopi ceremonials.
Although the character of the paho among the different pueblos
is not known as well as I hope it may be by more extended studies,
1 In none of the forms of paho which I have seen from Zufii are corn husk
packets of sacred meal tied to sticks, and the same absence is noted in the Koresan
pahos from Sia figured by Mrs. Stevenson. The pahos made by the Hano chiefs
in the Sumykoli and other ceremonies are also destitute of packets of meal.
Sumykoli is a foreign ceremony, and Hano is peopled by descendants of Tanoan
parentage, whose pahos never have the meal packet.
I98 Journal of American Folk-Lore.
we have information concerning prayer-sticks of Sia, as described by
Mrs. Stevenson, of Zufii, and of the Tanoans living at Hano in Tu-
sayan. As far as these have been figured and described, we find that
none of them have packets of sacred meal tied to them, as is almost
universally the case in true Hopi pahos. If, therefore, as appears to
be the case, the Tusayan prayer-stick is the only one which has the
packet of meal tied to it, the theory that the pahos are sacrificial
meal-offerings, which appears so evident in Hopi offerings, breaks
down on comparative studies of the pueblo ritual, or requires bolster-
ing with some new theoretical supposition.
In the light of an offering or sacrifice of maize may be viewed the
acts which transpire in the fields when corn is roasted in great pits
which are made in the ground for that purpose. When these pits
are opened a priest takes one of the ears of roasted corn and holds
it in turn to the gods of the cardinal points, as has been elsewhere
described.

But we have this offering of an ear of corn in a more symbolic

way. There are pahos upon which, in place of a packet of meal, a
picture of an ear of corn is drawn. One of these is used in Naac-
naiya, and is figured in my account of this ceremony. Here, evidently,
we have an offering of the simulacra of corn in the form of a symbol,
which no doubt accomplishes the same as a packet of meal in ordi-
nary prayer-sticks.
Offerings of food take many different forms in Tusayan rites, one
of the best known of which is that to the dead, placed in bowls
on the graves of the deceased. So reticent are the Hopi in regard
to mortuary customs, that I have been unable to obtain from them
an intelligent reason for this practice; and if I had, I am not sure
that it would be a correct one, for this custom is of world-wide
distribution. We must look for the meaning of this mortuary act,
not to one group of men who may have an explanation warped by
their special temperament, but to a comparative study of all mani-
festations in their variations, which are many, and apparently pro-
foundly different.
It is wholly consistent with the treatment of his gods by primitive
man, as if they were more powerful human beings, that as an act of
homage before a feast, the Hopi lays a little food aside, and later
places it in a shrine or home of the gods. So in that great festival,
the departure of the Katcinas, or ancestral deities, before the partici-
pants' feast, food is given to the dead - the "early dead," those who
died long ago.
At the time when the clan sit down to their feast, when they are
at work building a house for one of their number, no one eats before
 The Sacrificial Element in Hopi Worship. I99
the future owner of the house has taken portions of the variousfood
to be consumed,and placed them in a niche in the unfinishedwall.
There are many other variations which might be quoted of priests
offering fragments of food as symbols of a feast. The worshipper
enjoys the feast, but the being who is worshipped is supposed to
be satisfied with the symbol, which, if it has less substance to ap-
pease hunger, fulfils the idea of sacrifice in the mind of the one who
offers it.
In order to indicate the characterof a complicatedform of prayer-
sticks among the Hopi, I have chosen the so-called blue paho of the
Antelope priests in the Snake Dance. These consist of two sticks
of equal length, and are best known in the Walpi celebration,where
they are painted green, with black points, and are tied together with
strands of cotton string spun in the kivas. A small packet of corn
meal, tied in a corn husk, is appended midway in the length, and a
turkey tail-feather is tied to the opposite side. Two prescribed
herbs are likewise tied to the paho.
In some of the other pueblos the paho made by the Antelope
society in the Snake Dance, while similar in general appearance to
that made at Walpi, has, unlike it, a facet with eyes and mouth
painted upon it.
The paho of the Flute society is double, like that of the Antelope,
but has a ferrule cut in both sticks about midwayin their length.
This double prayer-stick has likewise a facet on the end of one of
the component sticks. The pahomade in the summer solstitial sun-
worship ceremony is double, with a facet cut on the end of one of
the sticks which compose it.
The double snake-whip used at the Middle Mesa pueblos has a
corn-huskpacket of sacred meal appendedto it, and has many points
of resemblanceto a double-stickpaho, by which nameit is sometimes
called.
A number of different forms of single-stick pahos are made in
Tusayan ceremonial. These differin length, color,and other particu-
lars. A single specimen of a paho in form of a cross was made by
the Antelope priests in the Snake Dance of I893, as elsewhere
described.
The Snake pahos are black, the length of the forearm,and have
corn-huskpackets, herbs, and corn husks tied at the extremity. The
cotton string which binds them is girt by four parallel black lines.
Small twigs with feathers tied at intervals may be placed in this
group.
CORN PAHO.
The prayer-sticks just described bear packets of prayer meal
symbolic of a meal offering, but there are others in which an ear of
200 yournal of American Folk-Lore.
corn takes its place. In most of these a symbol or design repre-
senting an ear of corn serves the purpose. Such an offering I have
called a corn paho, probably best illustrated in the paraphernalia of
the Flute ceremony. Each of the girls personating the Corn Maidens
in this rite carries in her hand a wooden slat continued into a ter-
raced extension at one end, and with a handle at the other. Upon
the flat surface of this object a symbol of an ear of corn is painted,
and to the handle a packet of sacred meal is tied.
Somewhat like these Flute corn pahos are the slats adorned with
highly conventionalized designs, and decorated with symbols of
maize, borne by the women in the October ceremony called the
Mamzrauti.
The so-called Kwakwantu, a warrior society, make in the New Fire
ceremony a flat paho on which is drawn a figure of an ear of corn,
as elsewhere described.
The belief that the true meanings of primitive rites and cere-
monials are carefully guarded by the priesthoods is not wholly
warranted by intimate studies. The performance of rites is the
main thing; the explanation so subordinated, that in many, perhaps
the majority of cases, the meaning has been lost. The priests give
little attention and have little curiosity to know why certain acts
are performed in ceremonial worship. They have certain priestly
functions because their predecessors had before them, and rarely do
they trouble themselves, cognoscere rerum causas. The ritual is the
important, the myth the subordinate element. This is a condition
of things parallelled elsewhere in primitive worship.
As the performance of rites is the main duty of the Tusayan
priest, so it matters little what opinions he may entertain about the
legends of cosmogony or theogony. Practically he regards it of so
little importance that dogma plays no part in his worship. As
pointed out by Professor Robertson Smith in his account of the
religion of the Semites, "The myths connected with individual
sanctuaries and ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of
the worship; they served to excite the fancy and sustain the interest
of the worshipper; but he was often offered a choice of several
accounts of the same thing, and, provided that he fulfilled the ritual
with accuracy, no one cared what he believed about its origin.
Belief in a certain series of myths was neither obligatory as a part
of true religion, nor was it supposed that, by believing, a man
acquired religious merit and conciliated the favor of the gods. What
was obligatory was the exact performance of certain sacred rites
prescribed by religious tradition."
While possibly the question whether ritual preceded myth or vice
versa may not be satisfactorily answered, it is true that rites are held
 The Sacrificial Element in Hopi Worship. 201

in much higher esteem than belief in mythology among the Tusayan

Indians. No great emphasis is laid among them on dogma; belief
in mythological beings is not obligatory, but performance of rites is
prescribed.1 This is, I believe, what would be expected, if in its early
stages the treatment of supernatural beings was wholly anthropo-
morphic. Man approached his gods as he would men under similar
circumstances; he made compacts with them, asked their aid, and
paid them homage precisely as he would if they were men.
Each pueblo, when discovered, was governed by a council of old
men, and the office of governor of the village is probably a late
evolution. Each chief of the council has his own sacerdotal rites
bequeathed to him to perform. He recognizes the tutelar super-
natural of his society, but a supreme deity exists no more in his
religious than in his political system. There apparently never was
a supreme chief over all the Tusayan villages, much less over all the
pueblos. The different towns may have acted in union for a certain
object, but they never gave up the control to one leader. Thus
the cults of each phratry developed independently, and environment
made the lines of their evolution parallel.
J. Walter Fewkes.
Attention must, however, be called to the fact that I have studied the Tu-
sayan cults mainly from the ceremonial side, and possibly, had my studies been
more along the line of beliefs, other conclusions would have been formed.
VOL. x. - NO. 38. 14