Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A ceremony or dance in which snakes or images of snakes are used; particularly, a ceremony of the Hopi in which live rattlesnakes are caught and carried by the priests in their mouths. The ceremony is related to observances intended to procure rain.
Etymologies
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Examples
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An effigy of the kaiser is washed down Wall Street with a fire hose; confetti pours down; 800 Barnard girls snake-dance on Morningside Heights, and a coffin made of soapboxes is paraded down Madison, with the kaiser symbolically resting in pieces within.
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An effigy of the kaiser is washed down Wall Street with a fire hose; confetti pours down; 800 Barnard girls snake-dance on Morningside Heights, and a coffin made of soapboxes is paraded down Madison, with the kaiser symbolically resting in pieces within.
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I did not happen to run across any Mormons at the snake-dance; but it seemed to me that almost every other class of Americans was representedtourists, traders, cattlemen, farmers, government officials, politicians, cowboys, scientists, philanthropists, all kinds of men and women.
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The snake-dance itself took place in the afternoon at five o'clock.
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On August 17, we left Wetherill's with our pack-train, for a three days 'trip across the Black Mesa to Walpi, where we were to witness the snake-dance of the Hopis.
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Among the others at the snake-dance was Geoffrey O'Hara, whom Secretary of the Interior Lane has wisely appointed instructor of native Indian music.
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The snake-dance and antelope-dance, which we had come to see, are not only interesting as relics of an almost inconceivably remote and savage pastanalogous to the past wherein our own ancestors once dweltbut also represent a mystic symbolism which has in it elements that are ennobling and not debasing.
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As their type becomes dominant the snake-dance and antelope-dance will disappear, the Hopi religious myths will become memories, and the Hopis will live in villages on the mesa tops, or scattered out on the plains, as their several inclinations point, just as if they were so many white men.
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Among those at the snake-dance was a Franciscan priest, who has done much good work on the Navajo reservation.
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Before there was a hint of dawn we heard the voice of the crier summoning the runners to get ready for the snake-dance; and we rose and made our way to the mesa top.
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