what the Hopi himself calls them, and he is right. But we who have used
the word to designate the social dances of modern society or the
aesthetic and interpretive dances for entertainment and aesthetic
enjoyment will have to tune our sense to a different key to be in
harmony with the Hopi dance.

Our primitive's communion with nature and with his own spirit have
brought him to a reverent attitude concerning the wisdom of birds,
beasts, trees, clouds, sunlight, and starlight, and most of all he
clings trustingly to the wisdom of his fathers.

"All this," according to Hewett, "is voiced in his prayers and
dramatized in his dances--rhythm of movement and of color summoned to
express in utmost brilliancy the vibrant faith of a people in the deific
order of the world and in the way the ancients devised for keeping man
in harmony with his universe. All his arts, therefore, are rooted in
ancestral beliefs and in archaic esthetic forms."

Surely no people on earth, not even the Chinese, show a more consistent
reverence for the wisdom of the past as preserved in their myths and
legends, than do the Hopi.




IX. HOPI MYTHS AND TRADITIONS AND SOME CEREMONIES BASED UPON THEM

* * * * *

=The Emergence Myth and the Wu-wu-che-ma Ceremony=