The Winter Solstice Altars at Hano PuebloFewkes, Jesse Walter
Religion
The Winter Solstice Altars at Hano Pueblo
Fewkes, Jesse Walter
Hopi Indians -- Religion; Indian mythology -- North America; Indians of North America -- Arizona
After these prayer offerings had been completed, Anote placed on the
floor a blanketful of moist clay which he further moistened and
kneaded, fashioning a part of it into a cylinder about a foot and a
half long, and two inches in diameter. This object was made blunt at
one end and pointed at the other. The image represents _Avaiyo_, the
Tewa name of _Palülükoñ_, the Great Serpent. He added to the blunt
end, or head, a small clay horn,[27] and inserted a minute feather in
the tip of the tail. He fashioned into a ball the clay that remained
after making the effigy of the serpent, patting it into a spherical
compact mass about the size of a baseball. This, called the _natci_,
later served as the pedestal to hold two eagle-wing feathers, and was
placed at the kiva hatch each day to inform the uninitiated that
ceremonies were in progress.
Having finished the effigy of the Great Serpent and formed the clay
cylinder to his liking, Anote made on the western side of the floor of
the kiva a ridge of sand, a few inches high and about two feet long,
parallel with the western wall. While making this ridge he sat between
it and the kiva wall. Having patted this sand ridge to the proper
height, he removed from their wrapping of coarse cloth, four sticks,
each about two feet long. These sticks, dingy with age, were tied in
pairs, and were called _poñya-saka_, "altar ladders." They were
inserted in the ridge in pairs, one on each side, and between them was
placed in the sand a row of eagle feathers. As these were being put in
position by Satele, Anote sang in a low tone, the song continuing as
the other parts of the altar were arranged.[28] Anote was frequently
obliged to prompt his associate regarding the proper arrangement of
the objects on the altar.
Satele next drew a line of prayer-meal before the ridge of sand, and
from it, as a base line, made three deep semicircles representing
rain-clouds. These were drawn as simple, elongated outlines, but
immediately the chief sprinkled meal on the floor over the space
enclosed by them. The curved edges of the three rain-cloud symbols
were then rimmed with black sand or powdered coal. About twenty short,
parallel lines, representing falling rain, were next drawn on the
floor with cornmeal, and alternating with them the same number of
black lines. Satele then placed upon the rain-cloud symbols, skeleton
puma paws, two for each rain-cloud. At the apex of each symbolic cloud
a stone fetish of a bear was deposited, and by the side of each an
arrow-point or other stone object was laid.
The clay effigy of the Great Snake was next placed back of the
rain-cloud symbols, with the head pointing southward. As this effigy
lay on the floor, Anote made on it, with meal, representations of eyes
and teeth, then drew two lines of meal about the neck for a necklace,
and two other parallel lines about the tail. Black powder was then
evenly sprinkled along the back of the effigy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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