In the Moqui Country [pp. 243-256]

I8 tIke -lloqui Country.
war against the enemies who had been
named, and it would be compulsory upon
every able-bodied man of the tribe to go
to battle.
Before the days of fire-arms the Moquis were armed exclusively with bows
and arrows and lances, in fact, not many
of them have guns now. In the old days
the lance points and arrow heads were
made of obsidian, but now most of the
war arrows have well-formed points of
iron or steel, and with long shafts accurately feathered, and hurled from their
strong bows, are indeed deadly weapons.
The Moquis know one all-wise and
g-ood spirit, Cottkinunliwa, "The Heart
of the Stars." They have also Balilokon, the great water snake, the spirit of
the element of water; and they see him
in the rains and snows, the rivers and
springs, the sap in the trees and the
blood in the body. The whole Moqui
heavens are filled, too, with katcina, ang,-els, or, literally, "those who have list ened to the gods." All of the great
dead men of the Moqui nation at some
time before they died saw katcina, and
received messages from them, and some
of the chiefs now living have seen them
too.
As is so often found in the religion of
a people who are low in mental develop ment, and in whose pitiful lives the hours
of trial, and privation, and sorrow are
much more numerous than the happy
ones, that the spirit of good though all wise is not all-powerful, so it is found
here. Cotukizniizc,a loves his children
and would send to them nothing but
good; but that he cannot always do, for
3'ali/oko,n is sometimes stronger than he,
and wills evil. Yet it would not be
right to call Balilokon the spirit of evil,
for he is by no means always so. When
he is pleased the mists and rains fall
gently, and the sap runs lustily through
plants and trees, giving them vigorous
growth; the springs and rivers are full,
but clear, giving abundance of good wa ter to the people and their flocks; and
the blood flowing in the veins of the
children of the tribe is the blood of
health. But Balilokon is sometimes angered and the rains come not at all, or
come in deluges that destroy; the rivers
are dry or are raging floods; the sap is
withdrawn from the plants and trees,
and they die; and the blood of the people flows through their veins but to poison.
There have been times when the anger of Ba/ilokon it seemed no ceremony
or prayer could appease. Then hundreds
of the people went down to death, and
one time, away in the dim past, so many
moons ago that their wisest one cannot
tell how many, he sent a great flood that
covered nearly all the earth, and but
very few of the people and not many of
the beasts were saved.
Ba/ilokon having it in his power to do
so much of good, so much of evil, is the
god most prayed to, and in whose name
almost all of the ceremonies are held.
We witnessed Lenabaki, the ceremony of the sprinkling of the sacred
meal. The grass was needing rain, as
for some weeks none had fallen, so the
priest blessed a great basket of the fin est meal, and on the floor of a large
room a cord of twisted sinews was
stretched. At one end was placed a
baho, no evil could come over that, and
the other end was guarded by the priest
and Cimo. Some time during the day
each one of the dwellers in the village
went in, and taking some of the meal,
raised it three times to the lips, then
sprinkled it along the string from the
feet of the priest to the babo, and asked
Balilokon to send them rain. And he
did, in a very few days.
The great snake dance of the Moquis
is also a ceremony in the worship of
Balilokon. In that dance, more wild
and frightful than the tininina, live
snakes, veritable rattlers, are passed
from man to man. Rarely is a dancer
bitten, and if one should be he would
receive no sympathy, for could there
1889.]