new houses at the bases of the cliffs, particularly at the First and Third Mesas—a reversal to first principles; for when Don Pedro de Tovar, a lieutenant of Coronado, with Padre Juan de Padilla (of whom we heard at Isleta) and a few soldiers, visited in 1540 this province of Tusayan, as they called the country, they reported the Hopis dwelling at the foot of the mesas. It was only later, probably after the Pueblo Rebellion of 1680, that the towns were rebuilt upon the mesa summits where we now find them. The sites of two former Walpis may still be traced below the First Mesa together with the ruins of an ancient Franciscan Mission, some of whose timbers, they say, form part of the existing pagan _kivas_. The Hopi never took kindly to missionary effort by the whites. Every _padre_ among them was murdered at the time of the Rebellion, and they would never tolerate another. Even kind Padre Garcés (of whom we shall hear in a subsequent chapter) the Oraibians kept sitting outdoors in a street corner for two days, and then evicted him from their town. In 1700, one pueblo whose inhabitants showed a hospitable feeling to the preaching of a persistent friar, was attacked by neighboring Hopis, set on fire and such of the inhabitants as were not killed, were carried to other towns. Of that pueblo—its name was Awátobi—you may see some ruined remnants yet about 9 miles southeast of Walpi.[58] The attraction that draws most visitors to the country of the Hopi Indians is the famous Snake Dance held annually in August. The date is a movable one and not known positively until 9 days in advance, when the information may be had of the Santa Fe railway officials, who make it a point to be posted. This remarkable ceremony, in which live snakes, a large proportion of them venomous rattlers, are handled by the dance participants as nonchalantly as if they were kittens, is in fact a prayer for rain, in which the snakes (never harmed or their fangs extracted as is sometimes ignorantly supposed), are intermediaries between the people and the gods of water. It is moreover the dramatization of a Hopi myth concerning the origin of the two clans—Antelope and Snake—who perform the ceremony. The myth has to do with the adventures of a young man who, impelled by curiosity to know where the river waters went, made a trip on a hollow log down the Colorado to its mouth. There he had many dealings with the Snake people, in whose ways he was instructed by the friendly Spider Woman. Finally he married the Snake chief’s daughter, and brought her to his own country. The first children of this union were snakes, which the Hopis drove away, but the next were human, and these, the ancestors of the present Snake Clan, came to Walpi to live. The entire ceremony continues throughout 9 days, and is conducted secretly in the underground _kiva_ until near sunset of the last day. Then the priests dramatically emerge into the upper air, and the dance with the snakes occurs. It is all over