Identifier: cu31924028656738 (find matches)
Title: American Indians : first families of the Southwest
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Huckel, John Frederick, 1863-1936 Harvey, Fred
Subjects: Indians of North America
Publisher: Kansas City, Mo. : F. Harvey
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ep mesa, carrying water from thesprings far down in the valley. The men go miles for wood and sometimes keeptheir herds at some distance from their mountain homes. The squaw shown in the illustration is of the Tewa village in northeasternArizona. She wears a blanket and when she affects moccasins the soles aremade of ox-hide, with leggings of buckskin. Ear pendants are often made of small,thin wooden blocks, ornamented with turquoise mosaic. The maidens dress theirhair in two whorls, in imitation of the squashbloom, their symbol of purity. Themarried women wear theirs in two plaits, one on either side of their head. Thewomen tend to corpulency and age rapidly; the girls are married at 15 or 16.Bachelors and spinsters are rare. The Hopi are a kind, peaceful people—their very name signifies peace.Theft is rare and murder unknown; in fact crime is so unusual that they seem tohave no punishment except for sorcery. They surpass all other Indians in potterywork. Digitized by IVIicrosoft®
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Digitized by IVIicrosoft® The Indian Who Understands Rattlesnakes That a people should have engaged for centuries in a ceremony known as thesnake dance, in which the celebrants not only handle poisonous serpents, but eventake them between their teeth, naturally suggests a state of barbarism close to thelowest degradation. And yet the Hopi, the Indians of the snake dance, havebeen among the most peaceful of the American tribes, thrifty and industrious andof unusually high moral standards. The snake dance is held every year in some of the villages and it is in fact aprayer for rain. Four days are spent in hunting snakes. As a coiled rattlesnakeis spied, a pinch of sacred meal is cast upon the serpent, and a prayer addressedto it. Then the Indian waves the snake whip—a stick with two long buzzardfeathers at the end—slowly over the reptile and as it coils he seizes it and slips itinto a buckskin sack. The reptiles are taken to the kiva and there transferred tothe snake jars. On the n

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