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Show XL VI BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY of the observances of one of the most devotional peoples known to students. While Dr Fewkes' record is based wholly on his own recent observations, it is significant as an extension and corroboration of notes made by me many years ago, and warrants the presentation of a summary of these notes. In the winter of 1868- 69 I was encamped on White river, in what was then the territory of Colorado, not far from the Utah line. During the time a tribe of Utes lived near our camp ground, and I utilized the opportunity to study their language, together with their habits, customs, ceremonies, and opinions. It was during this winter that I obtained the first concept of the Amerind fraternity, or, as I called it at that time, the cult society, which is an incorporated body whose function it is to prevent and cure diseases, or to secure any good or prevent any evil which may come to man through any agency of nature. Thus it is the function of the fraternity to control the weather and the seasons, to secure abundant fruits, to secure the rainfall upon which they depend, to secure abundant game, and all the other things of nature upon which the welfare of men are contingent. The cult society, or fraternity, or phratry, or curia ( for by all of these names it has been known), has an ecclesiastic or religious motive which distinguishes it from the clan and gens which have a sociologic motive. Subsequently I investigated the nature of these fraternities as they are developed among the tribes in southern Utah and northern Arizona, and in 1870 I went from Kanab, in southern Utah, eastward across the Colorado river to the province of Tusayan- the seven villages on the rocks- Zufii, and other pueblos in Arizona and New Mexico. But I especially lingered in Tusayan to investigate the fraternities of the Hopi people, who constitute six of the seven tribes of that region. The language of these people belongs to the Shoshonian stock and is somewhat closely allied to that of the Ute and Paiute of Colorado and Utah, whose languages I had previously studied. I had with me a Mormon missionary, who had spent much time in Hopi villages; and a slight knowledge |
