Sometimes the screen performance is accompanied by an exhibition by a masked man or men, who pretend to struggle with a snake effigy which they carry in their arms. This performance consists mainly in twisting these effigies about the body and neck of the performer, holding them aloft, or even throwing them to the roof of the kiva, as elsewhere[1] described in an account of the celebration in 1893.
In some years marionettes representing Corn maids are substituted for the two masked girls in the act of grinding forn, and these two figures are very skillfully manipulated by concealed actors. Although this representation was not introduced in 1900, it has often been described to me, and one of the Hopi men has drawn me a picture of the marionettes, which is worth reproduction in a plate (see plate XXVII).
The figurines are brought into a darkened room wrapped in blankets, and are set up near the middle of the kiva in much the same way as the screens. The kneeling images, surrounded by a wooden framework, are manipulated by concealed men; when the song begins they are made to bend their bodies backward and forward in time, grinding the meal on miniature metates before them. The movements of girls in grinding meal are so cleverly imitated that the figurines, moved by hiding strings, at times raise their hands to their faces, which they rub with meal as the girls do when using the grinding stones in their rooms.
During this marionette performance two bird effigies were made to walk back and forth along the upper horizontal bar of the framework, while bird calls issued from the rear of the room.
The substitution of marionettes for masked girls suggests an explanation of the use of idols among the Hopis. A supernatural being of the Hopi Olympus may be represented by a man wearing a mask, or by a graven image or picture, a symbol of the same. Sometimes one, sometimes the other method of representing the god is employed, and often both. The image may be used on the altar, while the masked man appears in public exhibition in the pueblo plaza. Neither idol nor masked personators are worshipped, but both are regarded as symbolic representations in which possibly the gods may temporarily reside.
So with the use of marionettes to represent the Corn maidens in the theatrical exhibition or the personation of the beings by masked girls. They are symbolic representations of the mythic maidens whose beneficent gifts of corn and other seeds in ancient times is a constant theme in Hopi legends.
The clan ancients or katcinas personated in the Great Serpent drama vary from year to year, implying the theatrical nature of the festival, but there are certain of these personations which invariably
- ↑ Article cited. The masked man who thus struggles with the serpent effigy represents Calako, a sun god, but figures of him drawn by a Hopi artist were called Macibol katcina.
