Finally all the snakes had been removed from our corners, and several inches of them made a moving carpet where had been the mosaic. There came a pause, a significant cessation of action, as if the priests had reached an unexpected, unforeseen part of the service. There was a quick consultation among the head-men. One of the boys, Edward, began looking around. He went to the nearest peg and removed some of the costumes, dropping a mask to the floor. He examined the mask. Then he went to another peg and performed this same search. And then he came straight toward me, at the end of the platform. “What is it, Edward?” I asked him. “We had sixty-five rattlesnakes, Mr. Crane,” he replied stolidly, “and now we count but sixty-four. Let me look through those dresses you are leaning against. That other one may be—” “Excuse me,” I said hurriedly, as I went up the ladder. XXI DESERT BELASCOS Of course all Indians should not be forced into the same mould. Let us try to give each his chance to develop what is best in him. Moreover, let us be wary of interfering overmuch with either his work or his play. It is mere tyranny, for instance, to stop all Indian dances. Some which are obscene or dangerous must be prohibited. Others should be permitted, and many of them encouraged. Nothing that tells for the joy of life, in any community, should be lightly touched. Roosevelt: A Booklover’s Holidays. When I first read this, I thought of and began to compare the different types of Indian dances and ceremonies I had witnessed: the Butterfly, Basket, and Corn dances, the Snake and Flute Dances of the Hopi; the Medicine Sings, and squaw dances, and the Ye-be-chai of the Navajo; the colorful pageants of the Pueblos, after Catholic Mass is celebrated on the name-days of their patron saints, and the fiesta begins; the memorial ceremony of the Mohave, and their cremation of the dead. And those slam-bang, whirlwind dances of the Sioux. Some of these were commemorative; some were fixed ceremonials; some were of little moment; some seemed nothing more serious than masquerades; some were filled with superstition and had just a touch of smoldering fanaticism under the veneer of paint and feathers. A few were social gatherings, a break in the monotony of existence, having in them “the joy of life.” And while all of the native dances should have thrown around them a thin line of supervision and restraint, many of them should be by no means “lightly touched.”