The Meeker herald., 1904-08-13
The Human Family at St. Louis.
Strange Peoples That Have Been Gath
cred Within the Worlds Fair.

OF mechanical devices, all more or
less familiar to persons even ordinar-
lily well informed the supply for the
amusement of the masses is almost
limitless at the great Worlds Fair
now mt the height of its beauty and
impressiveness at st. Louis. But
nothing pleases the intelligent WISH
tor more than the strange and Won
derful peoples from distant countries
or remote parts of our own fair land
whom the Louisiana Purchase Expo
sition, as it is called, has gathered
within the corporate confines of the
Mississippi valley. The most inter-
esting because the better known are
the tribes of North American Indians
concerning whom even the school
books of today have little to say, yet
study of whom will add considera-
BILE to anyone's stock of general in
formation. The best of these purely
human exhibits is to be found at the
Cliff Dwelers exhibit. n ot only are
sure of rare and curious origin, not
only are their manners and customs
without parallel in so-called Indian
lore, but they have without much
contact with the white man learned
the arts of peace to so fine an extent
that they are not only good jewellers
and silversmiths, excellent weavers
of rare blankets for which they de-
sign the strangest of patterns, but
they are fine actors, better dancers
and the best purveyOrs of the mys-
teries of sleight-of-hand now to be
seen at the Worlds Fair. AT the
Cliff Dwellers exhibit there are more
than three hundred of these remark
able inhabitants Of the painted desert
of the Colorado river in Arizona and
New Mexico. They call their home
the Painted Desert because the earths
of which the rocky soil and the hills
about them are composed have, I'M
der the action of the wind and the
rain during thousands of years put
on all the hues of the rainbow. De-
spite the beauty of this color scheme,
the home of the Moki, the Zuni and
the Pueblo Indians, the descendants
of the ancient Cliff Dwellers, is
desert. These Indians live in the
clefts of the rocks, hundreds of feet
above the surrounding country and
today occupy caverns that thousands
of years ago were the habitation of
the cave bear, the mountain lion, the
puma and the wolf
But the Cliff Dwellers and their
descendants We're always u peaceful
people and it is perhaps for this rea-
son that they still survive and with
them their ancient, wonderful arts
still flourish.
The most remarkable feature of
their diversional exhibit is their
snake dan ce in which ten to twelve
young men of tremendous strength
and endurance take part. This dance
is an invocation to Gitclie Manitou,
their deity for rain. During this
wild terpsichorean orgy, the dancers
charm rattlesnakes, cobras, gila
monsters and the terror of mankind,
the cobra di capella, or hooded snake
of the desert whose bite is death to
any white man in thirty seconds.
The Moki and Zuni priests and snake
dancers inoculate themselves with n
virus before entering upon the dance
only to be seen at the Cliff Dwellers
exhibit at the Worlds Fair and in
this way alone are they able to with
stand the consequences of sudden
assault of these vencmous reptiles as
the dancers carry them in their
mouths to the terror of their white
spectators. The snake dane, Mt the
Cliff Dwellers is today the one topic
of discussion among the visitors to
the great Worlds Fair at st. Louis.
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