Between the little painted prayer sticks in the big rock at Walpi, the long mesa on the horizon, and the captured fighting creature in the cage at Polacca, is an interesting connection. Rain, rain, is always the prayer on every desert Indian’s lips. When the spring freshets are finished, and the land lies exhausted under the metallic glow of an August sun, life itself hinges on breaking the drought. Because the eagle is the bird which reaches nearest to Heaven, and hence is most apt to carry his prayer to the gods, the Hopis make excursions to that distant mesa where eagle’s nests are still found, and bring back a young eagle. This they keep in captivity until the time approaches for the Snake Dance, which is really a dance for rain, the snake being the ancestor god of the Walpi people. Then they kill the eaglet, not by a gun or an axe, but without shedding its blood, they gently stroke its neck until it is numb and in a stupor. Then they wring its neck, and pluck out the downy feathers to wing their prayer sticks to the gods above. [Illustration: YOUNG EAGLET CAPTURED FOR USE IN THE HOPI SNAKE-DANCE CEREMONIES.] Inextricably woven with the legends of the Hopi, and especially those inhabiting Walpi, is the Snake myth, which began when a chief’s son living north of the Grand Canyon decided to learn where the Colorado River went. His father put him in a box, and thus he reached the ocean, where the Spider Woman (the wise-woman of Hopi mythology) made him acquainted with a strange island people who could change at will into snakes. Passing through all the various tests imposed on him, with the help of the Spider Woman, the young man was given a bride from the Snake people. They wandered until they came finally to the foot of Walpi, and here the Snake woman gave birth to many children, all snakes. Some of these bit the Hopi children; therefore the chief’s son and his wife returned all the snake offspring to her people. On their return the Walpi folk permitted them to live on top of the mesa, and after that time the woman’s children took human form, and were the ancestors of the Snake clan today.