these days) have long ago learned that they would better start for home
immediately following the dance, not waiting for morning, else the dry
washes may be running bank high by that time and prevent their getting
away.

The writer has counted more than a hundred marooned cars lined up at Old
Oraibi or Moencopi Wash, waiting, perhaps another twenty-four hours, for
the ordinarily dry wash to become fordable. One will at least be
impressed with the idea that the Snake Dance (a movable date set by the
priests from the observation of shadows on their sacred rocks) comes
just at the breaking of the summer drouth.

The writer has seen in the Snake Dance as many as nine groups of three,
all circling the plaza at once. But in recent years the number is
smaller, in some villages not more than four, for the old priests are
dying off and not every young man who inherits the priesthood upon the
death of his maternal uncle (priest) is willing to go on, though there
are some novices almost every year. This year (1932) the eleven year old
brother of a Hopi girl in the writer's employ went into his first snake
dance, as a gatherer, and his sister (a school girl since six) was as
solicitous as the writer whenever it was a rattler that Henry had to
gather up. But we both felt that we must keep perfectly still, so our
expressions of anxiety were confined to very low whispers. Henry was not
bitten and if he had been he would not have died. It is claimed and
generally believed that no priest has ever died from snake bite, and
indeed they are seldom bitten. During the past twenty years the writer
has twice seen a priest bitten by a rattler, once a very old priest and
once a boy of fourteen. No attention was paid, and apparently nothing
came of it.