As the last couple emerges, the chorus bursts out in full force, the choristers themselves issuing from the dark passage-way.  These are twelve in number, all men, dressed or undressed as each one’s fancy dictates, their faces whitened like the dancers’.  Their rude chant or rhythmic shouting is in the minor key.  They advance in a body, keeping time with their feet, gesticulating in a manner intended to convey the meaning of their song.  In their midst goes the drum-beater, an aged man adorned with an eagle’s feather behind each ear.  Like the rest, his face is daubed with white paint; his drum, which he thumps incessantly with a single stick, being manufactured from a hollow tree.  Both ends of it are covered with rawhide, and the whole instrument is painted yellow.  We recognize easily in this musician the head of the Koshare, Shyuote’s late tormentor.

At no great distance from the exit, the chorus comes to a halt, but the singing, gesticulation and beating of the drum proceed.  The dancers meanwhile move about the whole court to the same step, but the couples separate and change places; man steps beside man, woman joins woman, all turning and passing each other, suggesting by their movements the flexures of a closely folded ribbon.  The couples then re-form, the double rank strings out as at first, tramping and tripping in a wide circle to the rhythm and measure of the monotonous music.

This solemn perambulation and primitive concert is witnessed by numerous interested spectators, and listened to by a large and attentive audience.  The Rito’s entire population is assembled, eagerly, at times almost devoutly, gazing and listening.  The assemblage crowds the roofs and lines the walls below, all confusedly gathered together.  There is every imaginable posture, costume, or lack of costume,—­men, women, children clothed in bright wraps or embroidered skins, scantily covered with dirty rags, or rejoicing in the freedom of undress.  The several roofs of the large house, rising in successive terraces three stories high, form an irregular amphitheatre filled with humanity of all sizes, shapes, ages, clothing, in glaring contrast with one another.  In the arena formed by the court-yard, form and colour intermingle with more order and regularity; and at the same time greater brilliancy is exhibited.  The fantastic headdresses of the women nod and vibrate like waving plants of Indian corn; the lustrous hair and the gaudy costumes glisten and sparkle in the sunlight, fox pelts wag back and forth, plumes and feathers flit and dance, the monotonous chanting, the dull thumping and drumming rise into the deep blue sky, re-echoing from the towering cliffs, whose pinnacles look down upon the weird scene from heights far above the uppermost tier of spectators.