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

  • 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.

    L. Debard and Aliette 2006

  • 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.

    L. Debard and Aliette 2006

  • 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 represented—tourists, traders, cattlemen, farmers, government officials, politicians, cowboys, scientists, philanthropists, all kinds of men and women.

    III. The Hopi Snake-Dance 1916

  • The snake-dance itself took place in the afternoon at five o'clock.

    III. The Hopi Snake-Dance 1916

  • 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.

    II. Across the Navajo Desert 1916

  • 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.

    III. The Hopi Snake-Dance 1916

  • 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 past—analogous to the past wherein our own ancestors once dwelt—but also represent a mystic symbolism which has in it elements that are ennobling and not debasing.

    III. The Hopi Snake-Dance 1916

  • 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.

    III. The Hopi Snake-Dance 1916

  • Among those at the snake-dance was a Franciscan priest, who has done much good work on the Navajo reservation.

    III. The Hopi Snake-Dance 1916

  • 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.

    III. The Hopi Snake-Dance 1916

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