16:58 mins.
Source: American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), film collection, no. 192
Background: This is a compilation film shot in two, possibly three, different Hopi villages. The digital copy available through the link above is only a remnant since the original film suffered from nitrate damage.
Possibly for this reason, the film itself carries no opening titles and it is only from the AMNH catalogue that one learns that it was made by the AMNH curator Pliny Goddard and Howard McCormick (1875-1943), an artist and accomplished cameraman, who had previously been commissioned by Goddard to shoot Snake Dance footage in the Hopi village of Supawlavi in 1912. McCormick had also accompanied Goddard on a filming expedition to the Apache region in 1914.
This film is based on footage shot during an expedition to the Hopi region undertaken by Goddard in 1925. The generally high quality of the material suggests that he might have been accompanied by McCormick or another professional cameraman since by his own admission, his own cinematographic skills were limited.
Content: The first sequence, which runs for seven minutes, shows a man carding, spinning and weaving a woollen sash on a loom. There is no indication of the location, nor of the date, but one presumes that it was shot during the 1925 expedition.
It is very well shot, involving several different camera positions and a sophisticated editorial ‘grammar’ featuring matched continuity cuts. The sequence ends with a wide shot showing the man walking out of frame. It seems very unlikely that Goddard could have shot this.
The second sequence begins abruptly with preparations for the Snake Dance ceremony, then held biennially in most Hopi villages in order to convince the spirits controlling the elements to release the rains.
This starts with an intertitle suggesting that having seen one footrace, one is about to see another, longer footrace that takes place early on the ninth and culminating day of the ritual process leading up to the Snake Dance ceremony. However, neither footrace is shown, suggesting that this part of the film was lost to nitrate damage.
Instead, one sees three young men in a village plaza, walking around a kiva, an underground chamber normally reserved to initiated male members of a particular ‘society’, i.e. religious confraternity. Judging by the classic ethnographic accounts of the Snake Dance ceremony, these men are probably the winners of the ninth-day footrace while the designs on their kilts suggest that they are members of the Snake Society.
This sequence is competently shot but from a single static position, seemingly from the roof of a house overlooking the plaza. The location is not indicated but it seems to be the Second Mesa village of Musangnuvi.
The men are vigorously whirling bull-roarers and shooting out telescoping wooden representations of lightning to evoke the impending rain (see the image above). They circumambulate one kiva before moving on to another kiva nearby and doing the same.
They then descend into the second kiva, suggesting that this is their own Snake kiva, whereas the first kiva was that of the Antelope Society, with whom they will dance in counterpoint during the main ceremony later in the day.
The third sequence, beginning around 9:00, shows the ‘dancing plaza’, also shot from a distant roof. It shows the kisi, the cottonwood bower where snakes captured in the surrounding desert on the previous days will be stored.
The Antelope chief prepares a pit in front of the kisi in which prayer sticks directed to the spirits controlling the rain will probably be placed. He covers the pit with a plank that will serve as a foot drum during the dancing.
Two young men bring the snakes in bags and place them in the kisi. The spectators, including many outsiders, begin to gather around the perimeter.
But then at 10:48, an intertitle announces that “due to the meddling of a Hopi from another village”, the Snake chief withdrew his permission to film, so instead, McCormick’s footage shot in Supawlavi in 1912 will be substituted.
This continues to the end of the film with no final titles.
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