THE SKETCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3487, 11 January 1921, Page 51

THE SKETCHER.

DANCING WITH RATTLESNAKES. PROPITIATING THE INDIAN RAIN GOD.

Unique among barbaric customs is the snake-dance of the Moki Indians in northeastern Arizona, witnessed recently by two score of American ethnologists ana archeologists gathered to study the customs and traditions of this out-of-the-way tribe. The enake-dance is held by the Mokis each year during the last days of August to propitiate their rain-god. Rain is the most essential element to ensure success in Moki agriculture, and it comes but capriciously in the desert region where these Indians live. Hence this dance is the most important of all their festivities, the rites and ceremonies connected therewith being of a religious character, though the occasion also partakes of the nature of a social function. The Mokis have scarcely been touched by civilisation, and so all the ceremonies of the snake-dance are carried out to-day just as they were ages before Columbus sailed from Spain, for the Mokis are an ancient people. The most startling feature of the snake-dance is the reckless handling by the entirely unprotected participants of hundreds of live rattlesnakes as the dance progresses. No dancer ever dies from being bitten on these occasions, though it is said that the reptiles often coil and strike at their captors. Scientists who have investigated the matter say the priests and those participating in the dances have a certain manner of handling the snakes, and further, that when the dance is over, the dancers drink a mysterious fluid which renders the venom harmless. In an article in the Dearborn Independent, H. G. Tinsley furnishes a description of the Moki snake-dance, from which we quote the following :

The date of the Moki snake-dance is determined by an old medicine-man in the tribe. When during August the sun at its setting glints the sacred rock that stands before the door of the tribal kiva, the old medicine-man, Honi, mounts the highest point at either Walpi or Oraibi and solemnly gives notice that sixteen sunsets hence the solemn snak# ceremonies will take place. He ends by invoking all to begin immediate preparation for the occasion. The women are to bake for a tribal feast, to dress themselves and their children in their best garments, and the men are to perform their several parts in the, ceremonies.

A certain number of young men, appointed for the purpose, start out at next dawn to perform their part of the preparation for the dance. They are jakulali (snake-gatherers). They roam over the desert with a forked stick in one hand and a bag made of skins in the other. They know where to look for rattlesnakes, and sometimes they get more than two hundred serpents in a week. They plant the forks of their sticks over the neck of the recumbent snake, and by an adroit movement throw the reptile into the bag. The serpents are brought to the pueblo and turned over to the old snake priests. Six days after the official announcement of the annual snake ceremonies mysterious rites among twenty-eejjpen of the foremost men in the Moki tribe begin in a chamber hewn into the rock down below the pueblo. This is the kiva, the holy of holies in the Moki belief. Dr J. Walker Fewkes, of the Smithsonian Institution, is the only white person who has ever entered the kiva, and he says that the ceremonies there consist in washing the serpents captured and brought there by young men. The old men engage in barbaric incantations, and chant appeals to the serpents to bear messages of devotion and friendship to the powers that rule the rain clouds. The snake priests wear nothing to protect themselves from the reptiles’ fangs. Each day they wash the rattlesnakes, sprinkle sacred cornmeal on the serpents’ heads, and deposit the creatines in jars. Meanwhile, the Moki housewives cook and bake in preparation for the event of the year—the snake-dance on the plaza of the pueblo. The gaudiest tribal finery is brought forth and made ready. White and Navajo Indian visitors come across the desert to see the public ceremonies, and for a week all Mokiland bustles and buzzes.

At the setting of the sixteenth sun from the official announcement by old Horn", the snake-dance takes place. Late in the afternoon the spectators arrange themselves in vantage spots overlooking the plaza where the dance is performed. ' Some two thousand five hundred persons are generally on hand to see the ancient marvellous ceremony. The roofs of the squat stone houses are crowded. Moki children with scarcely a stich on them sit along the cornices with their brown legs hanging down. There are cowboys from all over the territory, reporters from newspapers, scientists from the cities, and hundreds of Indians in brilliant and quaint costumes. It is a rare scene—“one fit for a Salon picture,” said an enthusiastic artist. The white people laugh, the dogs and children make tumult, while every one awaits the opening of the dance. At just about six o’clock, when the sun is dropping into the yellow desert away to the west, some one calls, “Here they come.” Instantly there is silence. Everybody knows that the antelope men—young, athletic snake-dancers—are at last issuing from their stone chamber. The braves are scantily clad, and on each leg is a small terrapin shell, in which are placed small pebbles, which rattle as the warrior moves, and make of him, in sound at least, a human rattler. The dancers are smeared with red, white, and black paints. Around each brow is bound a flaming red handkerchief, the upper forehead being nainted a deep black, and the lower half with black and white bands. The hand forms in a circle and a sack of serpents is brought forth and is placed in the branches of a cottonwood shrub, known as the kisi, just where it has stood

on Moki dance days for countless generations. A chief, hideously painted, opens the sack, and as each brave marches past thrusts his naked arm within and jerks from it several writhing serpents, which he hands to the buck. The shake-dancer bends and seizes the snakes by their middle with his teeth, while he holds one or two serpents in each hand. The serpents rattle, hiss, and struggle while the human captors, gesticulating and stamping, join in a solemn rhythmic movement in which, after each man has been supplied with, serpents, the whole band is soon participating. The Moki women and the several hundred Moki bucks who do not participate in the dancing at first sit in mute awe. As the dance proceeds, the red-skinned spectators start a low humming, which gradually develops. Louder and louder rises the din of discordant voices until the women become wildly excited and leap to their feet. Meanwhile the dance goes on. The dancers glisten with perspiration and the paint on their bodies runs down their bare backs and leg 3. Some of the older ones, to show their prowess with venomous reptiles carry three and five rattlesnakes about with them. They weave the snakes about their heads; they coil them in huge balls and toss them up and down; they twine them about their necks and tuck them between the belts of their kilts and their nude waists, and carry them, held at the middle, in their mouths. All this time they are hopping about the sun-baked plaza. Now they circle about the kisa with their burden of serpents in their hands. Then at a signal by old Kopali, the snake chief, the dancers form in threes, and, with the snakes wriggling for freedom in their hands, they march backward and forward. Another signal and they form in a row and toes the serpents to and fro. Then the dance starts anew. More circling, marchings, and counter-marchings in ones, twos, and threes. Occasionally a reptile wriggles itself loose from an Indian’s hand. It is, however, instantly picked up like so much rubber hose. ' The enake-dance lasts about fifty minutes. At its close, the Indian spectators have risen to their feet, and are weaving their arms and bodies back and forth in time to the rapid chorus they are shouting over and over again. The dancers are dripping with perspiration. The white visitors are dazed at the incredible scene. No one who has not seen it would believe these men can be so thoroughly indifferent to the serpents’ venom. Several of the dancers reel and stagger, but catch themselves as they gyrate with the tangled snarl of serpents in their hands. Suddenly, at a signal from wrinkled Kopali, the dancing ceases, and the high snake priest advances to an open place. He solemnly sprinkles meal in a ring, denoting all compass points to which serpent messengers are to convey the Moki petitions. At another signal the rattlesnakes are thrown in a heap within the circle. Meal is hastily thrown upon the wriggling heap, while a guttural invocation is pronounced. In a moment each of the dancers snatch several of the serpents in his hands and starts at full speed for the narrow trail which leads down from the mesa to th.: plains below. There the s gruesome burdens are thrown upon the sands and permitted to go their way in peace. The dance is over, hut there’s another scene. When the athletic dancers have come running back to the plaza, they hasten to the sacred kiva, where they remove all the trappings of the ceremony. Then they come out and drink freely from a bowl of mysterious decoction of herbs brewed only by Salako, the oldest snake woman in Mokiland. Then the Mokis go home in silence. They have performed the most important service in their lives and have propitiated the rain-god as sacredly as they know how. Their wives and sweethearts wait

upon them and wash them of their paint. On the morrow the pueblo feast takes place, and the new greencorn and melons are eaten without stint.

A MODERN FILIBUSTER. AMAZING ADVENTURES OF A RUSSIAN GENERAL. Because of the dearth of heroic deeds, and, indeed, of any real fighting in the many wars which have followed one another in Eastern Europe since the Russian Revolution (writes H. Robertson Murray in the Graphic), accounts of the operations have been lacking in human interest. Yet the- chaotic state of affairs has given men of filibustering proclivities a unique opportunity. One of the most remarkable of these men is General Boulak Balakhovitch, now commanding a so-called White Russian contingent fighting for the Poles. Although he is still quite a young man, born of a well-known family in the Witebsk Government, he began his military career as a sub-lieutenant on the staff of General M ichinko in the Japanese War. At the outbreak of the Great War he distinguished himself as a subaltern. During the revolution he lived in Petrograd in retirement. But at the beginning of 1918 he blossomed forth as a Soviet ■commissary and commander of a Red cavalry regiment of 400 horses. The advance of the Germans into Esthonia changed his views, so after negotiation he passed over with all his regiment to the service of the invaders. The peace of Brest-Litovsk found him carrying on a guerilla warfare, ostensibly against the Bolsheviks, in the forests of Esthonia. By this time his army had swollen to about 4000 men. He was nominally attached to the White. Army of General Rodziankoff, and raised his force to 9000. When Rodziankoff was driven back by the Reds, Balakhovitch abandoned him. He established himself in Pskoff, proclaimed himself Governor-General, hanged everybody who opposed him, and made a fortune. In August, 1914, Rodziankoff, having received reinforcements, advanced again into Esthonia, while at the same time

General Judenitch arrived from Finland. With the assistance of the Entente, the north-western army was formed, and Judenitch invited Balakovitch to join him, offering him the past of Brigadier-General of the Fourth Infantry Division. Meanwhile Judenitch demanded from Balakhovitch an explanation of his rule at Pskoff. Balakhovitch Tefused to comply, whereupon Judenitch sent a commission to judge him, and General Arsenieff to take command of his army. Balakhovitch left Pskoff, negotiated with the Reds, and Pskoff fell to the Bolsheviks. He then retired for a while to his wife’s estates in Esthonia, retaining the services of some 600 of his officers and men.

In September it was learned that Balakhovitch was planning an attack on Judenitch’s staff at Narva. By the efforts of the Britisli Military Mission the Esthonian Government was induced to an armoured train to stop the filibuster. The matter ended in a parley, Balakhovitch. declaring that he was determined to punish Judenitch. He finally consented to retire to Dorpat. After Judeniteh’s failure against Petrograd, some 1500 of Balakhoviich’s men returned to him. Esthonia made peace with the Reds, and Balakhovitch promptly offered his services to the White Russian Government. But before abandoning Esthonia he entered Reval one night, arrested Judenitch, packed him into an armoured train, with which he had now provided himsSlf, and carried him off, declaring that he was going to surrender his captive to the Reds. The Esthonians despatched an armoured train after that of Balakhovitch, overtook ft, released Judenitch, and arrested his captor. He was brought to Reval, but was set at liberty, when he passed over with all his soldiers to White Russia. In White Russia he at once quarrelled with General Wasstovsky, who had appointed himself Premier, and then offered his services to the Lett Government. But the Letts had too little money to buy so formidable an ally; so Balakhovitch tried his luck ” with the Lithuanians, with whom he remained until the sorely pressed Poles agreed to the high price he put on his proferred cooperation with them. By this time Balakliovitch’s army had dwindled to some 160 men. A lump sum of money, however, advanced bv the Poles, enabled the filibuster to revive the allegiance of the majority of his old followers. Since then, with a force of about 3000 men, Balakhovitch has been operating in his own way in the Brest-Litovsk region. His army increases with every batch of Red prisoners taken. His method of impressing new recruits with his idea of discipline is to assemble all those who have volunteered to join him, shoot down a good proportion of them in full view of the others, and then tell the onlookers that that is the way he wilj punish them if they fail in faithful service. A young officer in Balakhovitch’s army told me how the General, in one of his usual bouts of intoxication, ordered him with only 15 Cossacks to take a village occupied by about 2000 Reds. The officer knew it was of no use to remonstrate. On approaching the village he and his sergeant paused to consider the situation. They were at their wits’ end, when the sergeant proposed that he and the officer should disguise themselves as Red officers and ride forward into the village. This they did, entering the village as if in a panic, shouting out “Balakhovitch is coming.” This was enough for the Reds. They fled to a man. Then the sergeant galloped hack and sent a messenger to Balakhovitch, saying that the village had been occupied and imploring him to send reinforcements before the Reds should learn of the ruse and return. Balakhovitch sent no reinforcements. The officer knew he could not hold the village, wherefore he returned in fear and trembling to his commander. The latter was not at all put out. Grandiloquently, he said, “You have obeyed o>y order, that is enough!” And he presented the officer with a few thousand Polish marks to go and enjoy himself in Warsaw.