If there chances to be a so-called educated native present to answer
your inquiry on the point, he will perhaps patiently explain to you that
just as July Fourth is celebrated for something more than parades and
firecrackers, and Thanksgiving was instituted for other considerations
than the eating of turkey, so the Hopi Snake Dance, for instance, is
given not so much to entertain the throng of attentive and respectful
Hopi, and the much larger throng of more or less attentive and more or
less respectful white visitors, as to perpetuate, according to their
traditions, certain symbolic rites in whose efficacy they have
profoundly believed for centuries and do still believe.

Concerning the Pueblos (which include the Hopi), Hewett says:[19] "There
can be no understanding of their lives apart from their religious
beliefs and practices. The same may be said of their social structure
and of their industries. Planting, cultivating, harvesting, hunting,
even war, are dominated by religious rites. The social order of the
people is established and maintained by way of tribal ceremonials.
Through age-old ritual and dramatic celebration, practiced with
unvarying regularity, participated in by all, keeping time to the days,
seasons and ages, moving in rhythmic procession with life and all
natural forces, the people are kept in a state of orderly composure and
like-mindedness.

[Footnote 19: Hewett, E.L., Op. cit., p. 117.]

"The religious life of the Pueblo Indian is expressed mainly through the
community dances, and in these ceremonies are the very foundations of
the ancient wisdom...."

Dance is perhaps hardly the right word for these ceremonies, yet it is