The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-10-09
WIERD rfO0UI SNAKE DANCES.
Graphic Description Of One Of the Most Horrible Ceremo
mics Now Practced.

and their waists and carry
them, held at the middle, in
their mouths. All this time
they are gyrating about the sun baked
plaza Now they circle about with
their serpents in their hands. Now thew
90 forward and back, the same as the
pale-faces do in the quadrille Then,
at signal on tom-tom, the dancers
form in threes, and, with the snakes
Wr1Sgling III their hands, they march
backward and forward. Another beat
on the tOm-tom and they form in a
long row, and while they fondle the
snakes, the snake priest, an old, wrin-
Killed., white-haired Moqui, goes down
the line sprinkling sacred meal on the
rattlesnakes. Then the dance starts
anew. More Greetings, marchings and
counter-marchings by ones, twos and
threes follow for naif an hour longer
occasionally a reptile will Wriggle itself
loose from an Indians hand and fall to
the ground. 1t is instantly picked up
the Moqui apparently paying no atten-
ton as to how or where he seiZeS the
angry serpent. No pale-face visitor
ever knows whether a dancer is bitten
by serpent. The Moquis viii never tell
Of 1t afterward. The decoction, the in
gradients of which are unknown outside
of few Moquis, that the snake dancers
drink for two days previous to the
dances is said to make the men proof
against the serpents' venom.
Altogether the snake dance lasts
about so minutes. At the close the In
dian spectators have risen to their feet
and are waving their arms and bending
their bodies back and forth over and
over again. They are singing that now
has the master serpent been pleased;
that he has seen how his children in
the valley have been well treated and
that he will bless the Moq' people by
beneficent showers on the corlneids.'
The dancers are dripping and running
with perspiration and mingled red,
white and black paints. Two or three
bucks, weary and excited. can now
scarcely hold the maddened and with
ing SerpentS and the pale-face Specta-
tors who are gathered on the stone
catch their breath, as they
see the dancers clumsily pick up the
snakes, which are coiling to strike their
fangs into the bare legs and feet. No
one who has not seen it would believe
that these men could be so thoroughly
Indifferent to the venom of the rattle
snake. Several of the cider almost nude
dancers reel and Stagger, but catch
as they whirl about with
their tangled snarl of SerpentS in their
hands. The aged snake priest beats
beats may be heard above the din of
weird wailing The dancers form in
single file and throw the snakes in
heap. A score of women rush forward
and scatter meal on the horrid mass,
at the same moment making a fervid
In a second more the dane
ers indiscrirainately seize as many SER
penis as each can handle, and start on
a run like deer down the hard, beaten,
precipitous path to the sandy plain at
the edge of the pueblo. There the men
hastily kneel, and, with their bundles
Of serpents still lightly gripped in their
hands, they murnur a brief prayer.
Some of the men then run to the east,
others to the north, others to the south.
and the rest to the west, and all liber
ate the sarpentS on the desert. In a
the perSpiring men come run
ming back to the plaza. The dancers,
with the high snake priest, go into the
stone chamber, the kiva,
for a few minutes of worship. Then
they take an emetic, perhaps with the
purpose of Kidding themselves of any
poison from the serpents that may have
entered their systems during the cere-
monies. This done, the Moquis go to
their homes in silence. They have per-
formed the most important service Of
their lives. They have propitiated the
snake god, and they are content. Their
wives and SWeetheartS wait upon them
during the next few hours. They are
washed from their paint and they rest
upon newly-made pallets. On the NOR
row they are as well as ever, when
the public feast takes place, and the
green corn and melons are eaten with
)ut stint-NeW York Sun.