in about half an hour, but that half hour is what brings the crowd—about the most thrilling and wide-awake performance that is offered anywhere in America. Though the Snake Dance takes place annually, all the villages do not hold it the same year. The most frequented presentations are those at Walpi, held in the odd years, as 1917, 1919, etc., and at Oraibi, the latter in the even years, as 1918, 1920, etc. The Snake Dance attracts largely through the horror awakened in most of us by reptiles, though it possesses many elements of majestic beauty, too. There are numerous other Hopi ceremonies whose dominant feature to the white onlooker is simple beauty; for instance, the picturesque Flute ceremony held at springs below the mesas, and then along the ascending trails to the mesa-top accompanied by songs, the music of native flutes and the scattering of flowers. This ceremony, which is also the dramatization of a legend[59] as well as an invocation for rain, alternates with the Snake Dance, being held at about but not at the identical time with it, and always at other pueblos than those holding the Snake Dance. This permits attenders at one to witness the other also. Then at all the pueblos there are the autumnal Basket Dances of the women, and in spring and summer the many beautiful Katchina Dances. Katchinas are the deified spirits of the Hopis’ ancestors, and are intercessors with the greater gods for divine favors for the Hopis. They are supposed to reside amid the San Francisco Peaks, where the home of the Sun god is, the great dispenser of blessings. Their annual visits (Indians of the pueblo impersonating the gods) are the occasions of much merry-making, of songs and processions, and dances in mask and gay costumes. Each god has his distinctive mask and dress, and the queer little wooden “dolls” (as the traders call them, though “Katchina” is the better word), which the visitors find in Hopi houses are careful representations of these, made for the children of the household to familiarize themselves with the characteristic aspect of each divinity. “These dances,” to quote Mr. Walter Hough, whose excellent little work, “The Hopi,” should be read by every intending visitor, “show the cheerful Hopi at his best—a true spontaneous child of nature. They are the most characteristic ceremonies of the pueblos, most musical, spectacular and pleasing. They are really more worthy of the attention of white people than the forbidding Snake Dance, which overshadows them by the elements of horror.”