The Snake-Dance of the Moquis of Arizona

John Gregory Bourke (1846-1896) served as a captain in the U.S. Army in the New Mexico and Arizona Territories during the 1870s and 1880s. A devoted, if amateur, ethnographer, he used the opportunity to document the cultures of various Native American peoples and in August 1883 was possibly the first outsider to witness the Moqui Indians’ famous snake-dance, a sacred ceremony relating to water and the maturation of crops that lasted from one to two weeks. The Moquis (or Mokis)—a sub-group of the Hopi, or “peaceful people”—lived in seven villages at this period. Bourke observed the dance in the village of Walpi and wrote his book about it while stationed in Fort Whipple, Arizona Territory. The Smithsonian Libraries' copy retains its original decorated publisher’s cloth covers and has all 33 full-page illustrations by Sgt. A.F. Harmer, also of the U.S. Army.