266 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899
middle finger, and was painted black with green pigment at the blunt end. On one of the two sticks which compose this prayer offering, there was cut a facet which was painted green with black dots representing eyes and mouth. The stick without the facet was called the male, and upon it a ferrule was incised.
The two sticks were bound together with two cotton strings in two places, but no packet of prayer-meal was appended as in Hopi prayer-sticks (pa/ws). 1 A string with a terminal feather was attached to that which bound the two sticks together. Anote likewise made many feathered strings called nakwakwocis, and Satele fashioned two prayer-sticks ; all of these were laid in a basket-tray on the floor.
After these prayer offerings had been completed, Anote placed on the floor a blanketful of moist clay which he further moistened and kneaded, fashioning a part of it into a cylinder about a foot and a half long, and two inches in diameter. This object was made blunt at one end and pointed at the other. The image represents Avaiyo, the Tewa name of Paliiliikon, the Great Serpent. He added to the blunt end, or head, a small clay horn, 8 and inserted a minute feather in the tip of the tail. He fashioned into a ball the clay that remained after making the effigy of the serpent, patting it into a spherical compact mass about the size of a baseball. This, called the natci, later served as the pedestal to hold two eagle-wing feathers, and was placed at the kiva hatch each day to inform the uninitiated that ceremonies were in progress.
Having finished the effigy of the Great Serpent and formed the clay cylinder to his liking, Anote made on the western side of the floor of the kiva a ridge of sand, a few inches high and about
1 The corn-husk packet of meal seems to be wanting in Zufiian, Keresan, and Tanoan prayer-sticks, but it is almost universally present in those of the Hopi. The Tanoan prayer-stick is called o'dope.
- A cephalic horn is an essential organ of the Great Snake, and is always repre-
sented in pictography and on graven or other images of this being. Note the similar- ity of his Tewa name to the Spanish word abajo % " below."
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