towai are planted in the cornfields by the kaan. They are completely buried. They must incline or point towards the town.
Laymen do not make prayer-sticks. But feathered strings, nashie' (wapanyi in Keresan), are made by the clan heads. The clan heads make nashie' for a deceased clansman or woman, and on the fourth day after death they take out the nashie' together with food and deposit all in the river bank or under a fruit tree, a peach or apple tree.
The clan heads go into a retreat of continence and fasting for rain after the summer solstice. The Day clan is the first to withdraw. According to Felipe, the same system of ceremonial clan heads (four of them, all men, selected on a vacancy through death by the assembled clan, men and women, on the eve of solstice ceremonials) used to prevail at Laguna.[1] Beginning with the heads of the Sun clan (equated with the Day clan of Isleta "the only difference is that we (of Laguna) say it out," i.e., directly) all the clan heads (hano nawaai) went successively into a rain retreat of four days when they made prayer-sticks with the assistance of any clan members who volunteered. Some system of clan headship there undoubtedly was and in a measure still is in Laguna; but the account of this highly ceremonialized system, so strikingly like the Zuñi ashiwanni system, I was unable to verify from other informants and as the evidence goes I must hold that Felipe was reading the Tanoan system into Keresan custom.
As at Zuñi and at Sia, Cochiti, and Laguna there is at Isleta a ceremonial (daikwan)—here in March or April—for synchronous cures, an exorcising ceremonial to cure or clean the ground[2] of witch-sent worms or grasshoppers, and all sick persons of witch- caused disease (łuapu, clean, person). For four days, beginning at night,[3] the kaan go into retreat. On the fourth day, about nine
- ↑ They had no altars and no iyatik` proper; but they kept in a basket the completely kernelled ears of corn (kotona) of which the iyatik` is made. The clan heads would send out to notify clansmen to bring to them all the kotona found in their harvest. The clan heads kept fetich animals (shohuna), also terraced medicine-bowls (waitichaini) . Clan heads assisted the cheani at the winter solstice ceremonial to cut feather-sticks for the Sun and for property.
- ↑ Zuñi, awek shuwaha, ground, clean.
- ↑ Cp. "Notes on Zuñi," Pt. I, p. 52; M. C. Stevenson, "The Sia," p. 74,
