Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/325

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274 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST |n. «., i, 1899

The Kwakwantu society of the Patki clans among the Hopi are intimately connected with this Great Plumed or Horned Snake cult. In some parts of the New-fire ceremony, in which this society takes a prominent part, each member of the society carries in his hand a small wooden image of a horned snake. These images are called monkohus, some of the typical forms of which are figured in an article on the Naacnaiya. 1 The head of the snake and its horn are well represented in several of these wooden effigies.

Conclusions

The special interest attached to the Winter Solstice altars at Hano is in the fact that they are made by Tewa priests whose ancestors came to Tusayan about the beginning of the eighteenth century. The makers claim that their forefathers brought a knowledge of them from Tcewadi, in the upper valley of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, and that their relatives in the Tewa pueblos in the east still use like altars in their celebration at the TUntai.

Nothing, so far as known, has yet been published on the TUntai altars of the eastern Tanoan people, but ethnographers may yet find in the kivas of those villages material which will ren- der the above descriptions of comparative interest. The resem- blance of the Tilntai altars to that of the Patki and related families in the Walpi Monkiva at the Winter Solstice, is a very distant one. Both have snake effigies, but there is practically lit- tle else in common between them, or with the altar erected at the same time by the Pakab people in the Tcivatokiva. The Tilntai al- tars are characteristically Tewan, and, while homologous with each other, are different from any yet known from the Hopi pueblos.

1 Journal of American Folk-lore ', 1892, pi. 11, figs. 1-4. These mohkohus of the Kwakwantu society, representing horned snakes, should not be confounded with those carried by other societies, typical forms of which are shown in figures 5-8. In the article quoted it was not stated that the effigies with heads represent PaliilUkohs. The effigy on the massive club borne by the chief of the Kwakwantu also represents the Great Snake.

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