Another fragment of the full Snake legend must be given here to account for what Dr. Fewkes considers the most fearless episode of the Snake Ceremonial—­the snake washing: 

“On the fifth evening of the ceremony and for three succeeding evenings low clouds trailed over To-ko-na-bi, and Snake people from the underworld came from them and went into the kivas and ate corn pollen for food, and on leaving were not seen again.  Each of four evenings brought a new group of Snake people, and on the following morning they were found in the valleys metamorphosed into reptiles of all kinds.  On the ninth morning the Snake Maidens said:  ’We understand this.  Let the Younger Brothers (The Snake Society) go out and bring them all in and wash their heads, and let them dance with you.’"[29]

[Footnote 29:  Fewkes, J.W., The Snake Ceremonials at Walpi:  Jour.  Am.  Ethnology and Archaeology, Vol.  IV, 1894, p. 116.]

Thus we see in the ceremony an acknowledgment of the kinship of the snakes with the Hopi, both having descended from a common ancestress.  And since the snakes are to take part in a religious ceremony, of course they must have their heads washed or baptized in preparation, exactly as must every Hopi who takes part in any ceremony.  The meal sprinkled on the snakes during the dance and at its close is symbolic of the Hopi’s prayers to the underworld spirits of seed germination; and thus the Elder Brothers bear away the prayers of the people and become their messengers to the gods, to whom the Elder Brothers are naturally closer, being in the ground, than are the Younger Brothers, who live above ground.

Rather a delicately right idea, isn’t it, this inviting of the Elder Brothers, however lowly, to this great religious ceremonial which commemorates the gift of rain-making, as bestowed by their common ancestress, and perpetuates the old ritual so long ago taught by the Snake Chief of the underworld to Tiyo, the Hopi youth who bravely set out to see where all the blessed rain water went, and came back with the still more blessed secrets of whence and how to make it come.

Nine days before the public Snake Ceremony, the priests of the Antelope and Snake fraternities enter their respective kivas and hang over their hatchways the Natsi, a bunch of feathers, which, on the fifth day is replaced by a bow decorated with eagle feathers.  This first day is occupied with the making of prayer-sticks and in the preparation of ceremonial paraphernalia.  On the next four days, ceremonial snake hunts are conducted by the Snake men.  Each day in a different quarter of the world, first north, next day west, then south, then east.

It is an impressive sight, this line of Snake priests, bodies painted, pouches, snake whips, and digging sticks in hand, marching single file from their kiva, through the village and down the steep trail that leads from the mesa to the lowlands.