Fig. 26. Mask of yucca.
paintings, and lecture on them to their pupils, pointing out the various important points, and thus, no doubt, saving mistakes and corrections in the medicine-lodge. The water-color copies were always (as the shamans knew) kept hidden at the forbidden season, and never shown to the uninitiated of the tribe.
104. Masquerade.—In the rites, men appear representing gods or other mythic characters. Sometimes such representations are effected by means of paint and equipment only, as in the case of the akáninili, or messenger of the mountain chant,314 who is dressed to represent the prophet Dsĭ'lyi Neyáni as he appeared after the Butterfly Goddess had transformed him; but on other occasions masks are added to the dress, as in the rites of the night chant. In this there are twenty-one masks,267 made of sacred buckskin,13 for representatives of the gods to wear, besides a mask of yucca leaves14 trimmed with spruce twigs (fig. 26), which the patient wears on one occasion. The buckskin masks, without plumes or collars, are kept in a sack by the shaman, and he carries them on horseback to the place where the rites are to be performed: there
