The Great Plumed Serpent who has control of all the waters of the earth and who frequents the springs, once, as the legend goes, caused a great flood and was appeased only by the sacrifice of a boy and girl. (See Myths.) The home of this monster was in the Red Land of the South, whence some of the Hopi clans came. Dr. J. Walter Fewkes believes that the great serpent of Mexican and Central American mythology is this same being, which shows the debt of the Hopi to the culture of the south. Now the _Kachinas_ throng the pueblos and a perfect carnival reigns with the joyful Hopi. There is a bewildering review of the hosts of the good things and bad, interwoven with countless episodes. Songs of great beauty, strange masked pageants, bright-tinted _piki_ and _Kachina_ bread attract powerfully three of the senses, and the Hopi enjoy the season to the full with the knowledge that the growing crops thrive toward perfection in the fields below the mesa. The _Kachinas_ are the deified spirits of the ancestors, who came from San Francisco Mountains and perhaps from the Rio Grande and other places, to visit their people. Their name means the "sitters," because of the custom of burial in a sitting posture, and they resemble "The watchers sitting below" of _Faust_. They are believed to guard the interests of the Hopi and to intercede with the gods of rain and fertility. Their first coming is in December at the Soyal ceremony, and others continue to come till August when the great Niman, or Farewell _Kachina_, is celebrated with songs, dances, and feasting. These deified spirits, or _Kachinas_, are personated by Indians who sometimes go outside the town, dress themselves in appropriate costume, present themselves at the gate, and are escorted through the streets with great fun and frolic. Every few days there is a new arrival and a fresh festival. Each year there is something new, and the Indians rack their inventive genius to produce the most startling masks and costumes. The _kachinas_ admit of any character in the extensive Hopi mythology. Almost any character from a clown to a god can be introduced, and there are songs belonging to each. Every male Hopi takes some part in the _kachinas_, and all dates and distances are cancelled when these dances are in progress. The _kachina_ dances promote sociability among the pueblos. The Walpi boys, for instance, may give a representation of a _kachina_ at a neighboring pueblo in return for a like expression of good-will on some other occasion. It goes without saying that there is a friendly rivalry among the pueblos, each striving to give the best dance. Like his white brothers, the Indian works harder at his amusement than at almost anything else.