11.For description of the Lalakonti altar, and ceremonials performed about it, see American Anthropologist, April, 1892. Washington, D. C.
11.For description of the Lalakonti altar, and ceremonials performed about it, see American Anthropologist, April, 1892. Washington, D. C.
11.For description of the Lalakonti altar, and ceremonials performed about it, see American Anthropologist, April, 1892. Washington, D. C.
Plate LXXII.The Lalakonti Altar.
Plate LXXII.The Lalakonti Altar.
Plate LXXII.The Lalakonti Altar.
Four Effigies of the Lalakonti Altar.
Four Effigies of the Lalakonti Altar.
Four Effigies of the Lalakonti Altar.
Plate LXXIII.Symbolic Figures of Rain Clouds on Tile used in Snake Dance.
Plate LXXIII.Symbolic Figures of Rain Clouds on Tile used in Snake Dance.
Plate LXXIII.Symbolic Figures of Rain Clouds on Tile used in Snake Dance.
There are two upright slats, painted with symbolic designs, among which the figures of the rain cloud and falling rain and the lightning which accompanies the rainstorm are most prominent. Back of the altar are sticks serving as symbols of the lightning, the zigzag onesrepresenting the forked and the straight the sheet lightning. Two coronets, one on each side of the altar, are worn by two of the chiefs and they are made in the form of rain-cloud symbols, semicircles from which parallel lines representing falling rain are drawn. Here, therefore, we see several rain symbols in prominent places. But the ceremony in which this altar is used is primarily one for the growth of corn; let us examine the objects in it with that thought in mind.
Four effigies or idols between the uprights of the reredos represent the following personages: The one to the right is the goddess of growth. She carries in her belt prayer offerings for abundant harvests. At her feet is an effigy of the corn mountain, colored with different colored corn, since all kinds of corn are under her control. In her left hand she has a small jar of holy water, since corn can not grow without moisture. The figure at her left is the patron goddess of the society who celebrate growth ceremonials, the ancestral deified totem of the fraternity. At her left is the corn goddess, since corn is the one cereal whose growth is desired. This figurine bears on her head the symbol of the ear of maize. No field of corn may be harvested without the protection of the warrior in a country harassed by enemies, and the fourth effigy represents the god of war, whose effigy naturally has a place on this altar. The white meal which is sprinkled on the heads of all the idols represents the prayers of the faithful, for as each priest approaches the altar she breathes her prayer on sacred meal and scatters it on the heads of the effigies. These prayers are for a good harvest, a successful crop and abundant rains.
There are three objects in front of the images which are the badges of the priests, called the “mothers.” In advance of these, spread on the floor, is an elaborate picture, made of different colored sands, representing on one side the Earth Goddess, and on the other the Watcher, or little War God. Connected with the altar is a bowl with terraced rim, used as a medicine bowl, and a single upright ear of maize with a feather, a kind of standard, which is placed at the pathway of the kiva to warn uninitiated persons not to intrude on the mysteries which are performed about the altar.
The influence of arid climatic conditions is shown in the character and intent of symbols. The conventional figure of the rain clouds and falling rain is depicted more than any other on various paraphernalia of worship. It is painted on the altars, drawn in sacred meal on the floor of his sacred rooms, or kivas, embroidered on ceremonial kilts. The priest wears it on his marks and paints it on the body. It is an omnipresent symbol.
By a natural connection it is often replaced by figures of animals or plants associated with water. The frog and tadpole appear when the rain is abundant, and for that reason the priest paints the figures of these animals on his medicine bowl, or places effigies of it on the altar. In certain rites he makes clay balls, in which he inserts small twigs,which he believes will change into tadpoles, and deposits them along dry water courses for the same reason, that rain may come. So shells from the great ocean are likewise esteemed as bringers of water, and fragments of water-worn wood are carefully cherished by him for a like purpose. The dragonfly which hovers over the springs, the cotton-wood which grows near the springs, the flag which loves the moist places, becomes a symbol of water. Water itself from the ocean or from some distant spring, in his conception, are all powerful agents to bring moisture. There can be but one reason for this—the aridity of his surroundings. Not alone in pictoral symbols does he seek to bring the needed rains. The clouds from which rain falls are symbolized by the smoke from the pipe in his ceremony, and he so regards them. He pours water on the heads of participants in certain ceremonials, hoping that in the same way rain will fall on his parched fields. Even in his games he is influenced by the same thought, and in certain races the young men run along the arroyos, as they wish the water to go filled to their banks.
To our ways of thinking these are absurd ways in which to bring the rain, but to a primitive mind it is a method consecrated by tradition and venerated from its antiquity.
Symbolic figures of maize, the national food of the Hopi Indians, are no less common on ceremonial paraphernalia than those of rain. Maize is painted on the masks of sacred dancers and represented by effigies on altars. It gives names to several supernatural beings. Every babe, when 20 days old, is dedicated to the sun and receives an ear of corn as its symbolic mother. The badges or palladia of religious societies are ears of corn wrapped in buckskin—symbolic, no doubt, of the time when seed corn was the most precious heritage and preserved by the chiefs. The foremost supernatural being in the Tusayan Olympus is the Corn Maid, who is figured on food bowls, baskets, and elsewhere.
It can hardly be necessary for me to adduce more facts in support of the hypothesis that these two elements of the Tusayan ritual which reflect the climatic surroundings are ceremonials for rain and those for the germination, maturation, and abundance of agricultural products. The necessities of life have driven man into the agricultural condition, and the aridity of the climate has forced him to devise all possible means at his control to so influence his gods as to force them to send the rains to aid him. Wherever we turn in an intimate study of the ceremonials of the Tusayan Indians we see the imprint of the arid deserts by which they are surrounded, always the prayer for abundant crops, and rains for his parched fields.
When one makes the Tusayan ritual a special study he finds it wonderfully complicated in the development of details. No Hopi priest lives who understands the meaning of all these details, nor does he care for an explanation of them. There are two fundamental factors, however, which he can comprehend, and these are always on his lips when an explanation of the ritual is solicited. We cling to the rites ofour ancestors because they have been pronounced good by those who know. We erect our altars, sing our traditional songs, and celebrate our sacred dances for rain that our corn may germinate and yield abundant harvest.
The town crier calls at dawn from the house top the following announcement, which is the key to the whole explanation of the Tusayan ritual:
“All people awake, open your eyes, arise,Become Talahoya (child of light), vigorous, active, sprightly.Hasten clouds from the four world quarters;Come snow in plenty, that water may be abundant when summer comes.Come ice and cover the fields, that after planting they may yield abundantly;Let all hearts be glad;The knowing ones will assemble in four days;They will encircle the village dancing and singing their lays * * *That moisture may come in abundance.”
“All people awake, open your eyes, arise,Become Talahoya (child of light), vigorous, active, sprightly.Hasten clouds from the four world quarters;Come snow in plenty, that water may be abundant when summer comes.Come ice and cover the fields, that after planting they may yield abundantly;Let all hearts be glad;The knowing ones will assemble in four days;They will encircle the village dancing and singing their lays * * *That moisture may come in abundance.”
“All people awake, open your eyes, arise,Become Talahoya (child of light), vigorous, active, sprightly.Hasten clouds from the four world quarters;Come snow in plenty, that water may be abundant when summer comes.Come ice and cover the fields, that after planting they may yield abundantly;Let all hearts be glad;The knowing ones will assemble in four days;They will encircle the village dancing and singing their lays * * *That moisture may come in abundance.”
“All people awake, open your eyes, arise,
Become Talahoya (child of light), vigorous, active, sprightly.
Hasten clouds from the four world quarters;
Come snow in plenty, that water may be abundant when summer comes.
Come ice and cover the fields, that after planting they may yield abundantly;
Let all hearts be glad;
The knowing ones will assemble in four days;
They will encircle the village dancing and singing their lays * * *
That moisture may come in abundance.”
I have limited myself to showing that the arid climatic conditions are reflected from the rites of one tribe of Indians, and it would be instructive to see whether these facts are of importance from the comparative side. There are other equally arid regions of the globe where we might justly look for the same results if this climatic condition is as powerful in the modification of cults as implied. There are marked similarities in the climate of Arabia, of Peru, and of Assyria, and as a consequence startling resemblances in their rituals. But there are many differences; and we thus detect that our analyses of causes has not been complete or ultimate, for we have limited it to but one powerful element in the modifications of ceremonials.
Environment is a complicated nexus of influences, organic and inorganic, threads of which we can successfully trace a certain distance, but which eludes as we go further. There are many effects where causes remain to be discovered, and many climatic influences on cults have yet to be clearly discerned.
A few words more and I have done. Theories among civilized men, like things among savages, may become fetishes. It would be lamentable if environment should become a word to conjure with, or if we should use it to cover ignorance of that which we can not explain. I have tried to show that one highly complicated ritual is so plastic that it responds to climatic conditions, but there are elements in it due to some other unknown cause. Because climatic conditions explain certain modifications in human culture the tendency would be to strive to make it do duty in explaining all. Such a generalization is premature and unscientific. The theory that differences of species of animals and plants were due to climatic influences may have satisfied the early students of evolution before Charles Darwin pointed out the law of natural selection. Environment is a factor which profoundly affects animals, but a struggle for existence in which the fittest survive is a law of evolution.
So environment is a potent influence on the culture of man, but there are laws, as yet not clearly made out, back of it which control the evolution of man.
When in the struggle for existence the fittest came to be measured by degrees of intelligence, and no longer by superiority of bodily structure, climatic conditions were still powerful to modify and stimulate thought. The increase in intelligence due to these agents did not develop a new species, for, to whatever heights he rises, man still remainsHomo sapiens. If, then, the specific identity of all individual men on the globe to-day is true, the superstitions which we have studied are errors of minds like our own, but imperfectly developed and modified by environment. In her mistakes, said the great naturalist Geoffroy St. Hilaire, nature betrays her secrets. By a study of erroneous working of the mind and their probable causes we can discover the nature of mind. Below all ceremonials among all men, savage or barbarous, may be traced aspirations akin to our own since they spring from our common nature. Until some philosopher shall arise who can so analyze environment as to demonstrate that the great religious teachers of man, who, suddenly appearing, have stimulated the race to great bounds in progress, were solely the products of surroundings, we may believe that there is another most potent influence behind environment controlling the development of culture. Throughout all history man, from his own consciousness, has recognized that controlling influence to be higher than environment, and no science nor philosophy has yet succeeded in banishing the thought from his mind.
Transcriber’s Notes:Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.Typographical errors were silently corrected.Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.