The fathers of the Flute maidens brushed and arranged their hair for
them and put on their blankets. If a girl had no father, her uncle did
this for her. There were two Flute Maids and a Flute Boy (See Figure 6)
who walked between them, in each of the two fraternities. Even this
ceremonial costuming was accompanied by solemn singing.

When all was ready the priests sat on the edge of the pool with their
legs hanging over, and the two maids and the boy sat behind them on a
terrace of the bank. The Blue Flute fraternity occupied one side of the
pool and the Drab Flute fraternity another. Many songs were sung to the
strange, plaintive accompaniment of the flute players. After a while an
old priest waded into the pool and walked around it in ever-narrowing
circles till he reached the center, where he sank into the water and
disappeared for a dramatically long moment and came up with a number of
ceremonial objects in his hands, including a gourd bottle filled with
water from the depths of the spring.

It was late afternoon by the time all the songs had been sung, and
evening when the two processions had finished their ceremonial ascent to
the mesa top, pausing again and again as the old priest went ahead and
drew his symbolic barrier of meal and the three rain clouds across the
path, which were to be covered with the pahos of the Flute children,
then taken up and moved on to the next like symbol. The old priest led
the procession, the three children behind him, then the flute players,
followed by the priests bearing emblems, and the priest with the bull
roarer at the end of the line. Each fraternity preserved its own
formation. Having reached the village plaza they marched to the Kisa and
deposited their pahos and ceremonial offerings, then dispersed. The
solemnity of the long ritual, the weird chant and the plaintive
accompaniment of the flutes running through the whole ceremony, while at