Kivas usually are empty places. Bare and cold, unless filled with eye-stinging smoke from firebrands, I had not found them inviting on my rounds of the mesas. I had held councils in them when making the first steps against factional religious persecution. Again I had sat in them, chatting with the makers of costumes and drums, smoking their bitter and powerful tobacco—afterward wishing sincerely I had not. Most often the kiva is the club for retired old men of the tribe, lonely, feeble fellows, where they curl up to drowse and sleep, or where they weave some ceremonial scarf. It is not good form to idle in the neighborhood of kivas when the feather-plumes are displayed, and one very distinguished gentleman, who has been referred to as “the great Caucasian marvel,” was most thoroughly bawled out by the chief Snake Priest for seeking to introduce himself without first requesting leave. The ladder ended on a stone platform, raised above the main kiva-floor. In the corners of this platform stood large clay jars, and greeting us, albeit silently, from the corners and about the jars, were snakes. Not just a few snakes that had wandered out of their pottery containers, but congested wads of snakes, piled carelessly in the corners of the kiva, and with nothing to prevent their leaving when the spirit moved them. However, they were now quiet, somnolent, save for beady eyes and an occasional slithery movement that caused one to watch his step. At the upper end of the kiva was an elaborate sand-painting after the fashion of the Navajo, no doubt another adoption, of foreign origin. A sand-painting is a mosaic-like picture of Indian symbols and fetishes, worked out in colored sands. This was surrounded or fenced by peeled wands, placed close together on end. And at this ceremonial altar stood, practically nude, two of my schoolboys, bronzed lads of about sixteen, who had taken part that morning in the sunrise race. Under the ladder and on the main floor a number of older Indians were grouped, having close to them large bowls of clay holding water or other liquids. And these priests were arrayed for a ceremony. The sacred-meal pouches were in evidence. Soon a chant was intoned. The Hopi chants are primitive, but have in them an echo of Catholic litanies. I have seen a Hopi priest anoint with and toss the sacred meal just as his forbears saw the padres bless the people. The Hopi is an assiduous adapter. And while listening to the chanting, I have often expected to catch the response: “Ora pro nobis.” The padres were sacrificed to the desert gods in that red revolt of 1680, but their peaches dry each season on the pueblo housetops, and Hopi ceremonies carry an unconscious echo of the black-robes who taught the solemnity of ritual.