272 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899
After the stone objects had been arranged on the meal picture, a line of meal was drawn along the floor, from the right pole of the ladder to the altar. This line was drawn with great care, particular pains being taken to make it as straight as possible. There was no singing while this occurred, thus differing from the ceremony performed in the other Hano kiva. Four small feathers were placed at intervals along the line of meal. These, in sequence, beginning with the one nearest the ladder, were sikyatci, yellow-bird ; kwahu, eagle or hawk ; koyona f turkey ; and pociwd. Pocine sprinkled pollen along this line or meal trail.
There was then emptied from a canvas bag upon the rec- tangular meal figures a heterogeneous collection of objects, among which may be mentioned a bundle of gaming reeds, the humerus of a turkey, a whistle made of a turkey bone, and a zigzag wooden framework such as is used by the Hopi to represent lightning. 1
Back of the altar, leaning against the wall of the kiva, was set upright a wooden slat, notched on both edges and called tawa- saka, " sun-ladder." Miniature imitations (plate XX) of this are made in this kiva on the last day of the TAntai and deposited in a shrine near Sikyaowatcomo, the site of the early settlement of the Tewa. The ponya-saka or tawa-saka mentioned has not before been seen in any Hopi ceremony, and it may be characteristic of Tewa altars. A notched prayer-stick, called the rain-cloud ladder, is placed in the same shrine at this time. This is characteristic of the Tewa of Tusayan, but is not found in the Hopi pahos, with which I am familiar. 9
��1 This zigzag framework had appended to one end a carved imitation of a snake's head, and as it represents the lightning this association was not incongruous. Similar frameworks are carried in the dance by a man impersonating Piiukon, the War god, and at certain other times when lightning is symbolized.
- In asking why albino Hopi are found at the Middle Mesa and not on the East
Mesa, it was unexpectedly learned that in some ceremonies a white prayer-stick is made at the former mesa, and that albinism was due to want of care by the father in making these offerings while his wife was pregnant. The author has never seen the white pa Ac of the Middle Mesa, and does not know when it is made nor its shape and use.
��%,
�� �
