Moñwiva, sacred to their Great Snake. The six acts in the kivas were performed directly after the return of the men with the effigies from these springs.
During the festival all actors abstain from salt and meat and do not sleep with their wives, a tabu which is rigidly observed, especially on the day preceding the exhibition in the kiva.
On several of the days of this festival there are foot races along the water courses in the valley, during which the naked racers kick small stone nodules in a sinistral circuit around the mesa. This was a prayer for streams full of water.
The events which occurred when the effigies were taken to the springs were wholly ceremonial, and not dramatic. During the day previous to this event, all men of prominence, especially chiefs of clans, brought feathered strings to the kivas, and tied them to the necks of the serpent effigies. One or more prayer-sticks were also made to be used at the springs. Six of these were made in the performance of 1893. One was tied to the backbone of each effigy. Five others were deposited at the spring, some at the edge of the water, others beneath it.
The exercises at the springs Tawapa and Moñwiva were not witness by the author in 1900, but they were probably the same as described in the account of this episode in 1893.[1] In that year, about 7.30 p.m., a procession went down to the spring carrying the effigies and the trumpets by which the roars of the serpent are imitated. This procession was led by a man personating Hahai wüqti and the kiva chief, "making a connecting trail from the south edge of the basin [Tawapa], along the east and north sides of the pool, and up as close to the west edge as the mud would permit. Those following with the serpent effigies, beginning at the east side of the pool, laid the effigies down close to the edge of the water, along the north wide. The youths placed their gourd trumpets on the meal trail, upon which also were the serpent effigies. All then sat on the north wide facing the south. The leader, as he went down, deposited the five pahos... at the west side of the pool, setting them in a row fronting the east.
"The leader of the procession bore the kopitcoki (cedar bark slow match).... It had been lighted at the kiva fire before the procession started, and the fire was smouldering in the bark. Momi (kiva chief) lit a pipe by this torch and gave it to the leader, who made the usual response, smoked a few puffs and passed it to the next man on his right. Momi then lit another pipe and passed it also to the leader, and the two pipes passed down the two lines, in which they had arranged themselves when sitting, the elders in front, next the pool, the youths behind them. After all had smoked, the leader
- ↑ Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. VI, 1893.
