The snakedance of the Moquis of Arizona Author:John Gregory Bourke Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Preparations for a fete—The Estufas—" Fired out"—A holy standard. Our sleep was broken between one and two the next morning by a procession of... more » Indian youths who slowly moved past our door and all around the Pueblo, singing in a measured cadence a song or hymn which the Lieutenant-Governor, later in the day, informed me was a notification that the feast was about to commence. " But why was not this notification entrusted to the ' pregonero' (town-crier) who discharges this duty at other festivals, and why did they sing a hymn, and what were the words they sung ?" Upon these heads Bautista was discreetly silent. The remarkable thing about this vocalisation was the absolutely perfect time maintained throughout. Bautista afterwards said that Santo Domingo keeps up the practice remarked in all the other Pueblos of sending out a patrol or " grand rounds " every night. The day opened cloudy, but without indications of a storm. With the first dawn Indians tapped at our door, bringing fresh eggs for sale—the number was inconsiderable, but amply sufficient for all our needs. Some of these visitors wore nothing but a shirt. These shirts, as all other garments worn this day, were fresh and sweet, and, so the Indians told us, donned in honour of the feast. Breakfast over, I took a promenade around the town with Moran. The Pueblo, as has already been stated, consists of two divisions, the new one in which we were living, and the " old," a quarter of a mile nearer the river, but now almost depopulated on account of danger apprehended from the caving in of the bank. In the new town the houses are almost all of two stories, built of adobes, and in a number of cases surmounted by small wooden crosses. There are very few doors opening out from the ground-fl...« less