Prayer took many forms.
Sometimes it was only the person who prayed; and sometimes the whole family, or fraternity, or town. Prayers were always visible, a stuff was used, in an act, to make plain the desire locked in the heart. Of all prayer substances, the most common was meal, ground once, from white corn. It had life in it, it came from something that once grew, it fed life in people, its seed made more life in the ground. The Pueblo person took it in his hand and breathed upon it as he prayed. “Eat” he said to it, and then he sprinkled it into the air, or over the ground, or upon the person, place, thing, or animal he wanted to bless. At sunrise he would go out and sprinkle meal and say a prayer. When holy men, or hunters, or warriors went by his house before or after doing their work, he would come to his wall, breathe upon meal, and sprinkle it before their steps. His fingers were bunched at his lips holding the pinch of meal. In breathing upon it he gave his living essence to it. His inward prayer made an arc of spirit from him to all godliness; and his arm when he swept it widely to sprinkle the meal had a noble reach in it; for a gesture can always be bigger than the little member which makes it.
Sometimes pollen from flowers was used and spread in prayer in just the same way.
Another form of prayer, one which lasted longer, and could be left to bear testimony and intercede by itself, was the prayer stick. It was used in every group ceremonial in some pueblos, and often a whole ritual was built around it. It was also used privately. Much care, ingenuity and taste went into its making. The prayer stick was as long as from the wrist to the end of the middle finger. It was cut from oak, willow, spruce or cottonwood. Its stem was richly painted with colors taken from the earth. There was turquoise color, made out of malachite or copper ore mixed with white bean meal. Yellow ochre came from canyon or gully faces, exposed in stripes by long weather. Shale made black. Pale clay made white, iron-stained sandstone made red, and from cactus flowers or purple cornhusk came violet. The colors were mixed with water from sacred springs, and with flowers from the bee-plant. Honey was sprayed on the paint after it was applied. The sky was called by feathers bound onto the prayer stick. Turkey, duck, hawk and eagle; flicker, jay, bluebird, oriole, towhee, yellow warbler feathers were used. To speak to cloud spirits, downy or breast feathers were bound in with the feather bundles. Beads were added sometimes.
When the prayer stick was made, it was prayed over and exposed to smoke. It was breathed upon and given its intention. Then it was taken to do its work. Perhaps it was set up in the house where it would stay for life, expressing its prayer forever. It might be taken to the fields and buried; or set in the riverbank; or taken to a holy spring and established at its lip; or carried high into the mountains to make a remote shrine; or put away with stored food; or sealed up in the wall of a new house; or carried in the hand during ceremonials; or put to earth with the dead. If a prayer stick was left in an exposed place, they could tell by whether it stood or fell how the spirit of its maker was. If it fell, he must have had bad thought while making it, and his offering was in consequence rejected.
Sometimes prayer and its acts were delegated. Certain persons became priests and acted for everyone else. It was agreed that nature did what the priests told it to do. The priests spoke to the world in grander ways than anyone else. When they meant “four years” they would say “four days,” for example. But everyone knew what they meant when they sounded special. It was part of their having power. People watched to see that the priests used their power when it was needed, such as those times every year when the sun had to be turned back. All summer long the sun moved farther to the south, toward the badger. The weather was colder. Every year, in the same month, there came a point beyond which the sun must not be permitted to go. They would know by watching the sun come to a natural landmark when the limit of his southern journey was reached. At that point, on that day, it was the duty of the priests to halt the sun; and with prayer, ceremony and power, make the sun start northward in the sky once again, in its proper way. Half a year later, when the sun touched the point to the north, with the mountain lion, beyond which it must never be allowed to go, the priests brought it back toward the south again. So the natural cycles were preserved. What nature had already ordered was ordered once again by the people in their prayers. To rise above, govern and hold the natural world they imagined their own control of it and solemnly sanctioned the inevitable.
Other ways to pray and gain favor were found in imitating what nature looked like and did. And here the great group prayer was made, when the people came together in ceremony to tell nature what it must do for their lives.
They gave great splendor to the group prayer, and prepared for it with rigor, always in the same ways which had come down to them out of memory. A certain society of men learned invocations and chants which lasted for hours, and had to be word-perfect. They learned choruses and strict drumbeats to accompany them. Sacred costumes were made, and the materials for them came from expeditions, often to the mountains and even farther—boughs of the pine tree, skins of the fox and the rabbit, the deer, the buffalo, the bobcat; feathers from eagles, the bright parrots of the south; and from nearer home, gourds to dry and fill with pebbles from the arroyos, cornhusks to weave into headdresses, paint to put on the body. Groups of men and groups of women worked at practicing over and over the steps of the dance to be used in the ceremony. They must stand—the men separate from the women—just so, and to the beat of the drum, they must lift and put down their feet so, all exactly together; they must turn, and pause, and advance, facing newly, and the women’s bare feet must be lifted only a little and put down again mildly, while the men must smartly raise their feet in their soft deerskin shoes and bring them down to pound on the ground with power. The singers and the dancers and the drummers learned perfect accord. Implements were made in the ceremonial chambers to be used on the day of the group prayer which was held in the plaza of the town. All persons, young and old, worked toward the day. Men and women could not lie together for a certain period before it. Only certain foods might be eaten. For several days before, those who were going to take part made sure to vomit many times a day. The dancing ground was swept clean. If there was any refuse about the houses it was taken away. Thoughts were put in order too. Some of the figures in the dance were going to be the clowns, the spirits who mocked and scolded humanity, whose very thoughts they could see. And above all, there would be certain masked figures who came there from the other world. All the women knew that these were gods themselves—the spirits of rain and growth—who wore wooden coverings on their heads, trimmed with downy feathers, painted to represent the deities of the sky. These were the most mysterious and powerful of all the dancers. They had naked arms and breasts and legs like any other men, and wore foxtails on their rumps, and had pine boughs banded upon their arms, and wore the woven belts and the rabbit-fur baldrics and deerskin shoes, and used the gourds like the real men, but the women said they were not real men, they were actual gods, called the kachinas, and upon them depended the rainfall, the crops and the yield of the hunt. All year, said the women, their masks were kept in the ceremonial chamber, and when time came for the group prayer, they came like gods and put them on, and appeared in the ceremony. The men knew something else. They knew that long ago, before anybody could remember, or think of it, the kachinas really came and danced with the people. But for a long time they had not really come. It was actually certain men who put on the masks and appeared as the kachinas. But they never told the women of the substitution. Children did not know of it, either; and only boys, when they reached a certain age, learned of it, and kept the secret among their sex. If the gods were properly imitated, then they would do as their imitators did, and make the motions which would produce rain, growth and game.
When the day came the whole pueblo was ready. Those who did not dance sat in silence upon the rooftops or against the walls upon the ground. All was still in the early sunlight. The houses, made of earth, looked like mesas, and cast strong shadows. People waited