Certain parts of these ceremonies were very likely performed outside the kiva, so that others of the village might also participate—and thus originated the spectacular public dance dramas which visitors nowadays so greatly enjoy at the modern pueblos. Indian dances, as the 20th-century Southwest knows them, are usually short-term public displays of long-term private rituals entailing days of prayer and chanting in the privacy of the kiva. The best known of these Pueblo ceremonies is chiefly a prayer for rain—The Hopi Snake Dance. Others may be prayers for success in the hunt, for productivity of crops, or for healing the sick.
The complexity of the Pueblo religion is increased by the fact that it is indivisibly allied to social and family organization. In the Pueblo scheme of worship, there is not, and seemingly never was, any elite group of “medicine men” or chief practitioners of religion; each person has a part in religious observances, his respective role growing more important as he advances in seniority within a ceremonial organization. With responsibility for the conduct of worship thus placed on all the people, religion is an extremely pervasive force and enters into much of the daily life of each individual.
[Illustration: _Two hummingbirds on a nest at the end of a pine twig. Several species of these birds are common at Bandelier._]
A CAUTION. In the foregoing attempt to portray the origins and modes of life of the Bandelier dwellers, it has been necessary to generalize and abbreviate to a degree which may occasionally lead a reader astray. Particularly in the matter of dating periods of habitation and migration, it has been impossible to detail the many exceptions to the general chronology. It is suggested that the reader who wishes to investigate further the history of the Pueblo people make reference to the publications included in the list on pages 43-44. These represent, of course, only a small fraction of the written material which exists on the subject. Further publication of new findings will increase our knowledge and alter present-day ideas as the years go by.
The countryside in and around Bandelier National Monument is wholly forested and even in dry months is cool and green. Lying at an elevation of nearly 7,000 feet, about one-third of the monument receives sufficient rain and snow to support a handsome stand of ponderosa pine. Over the remaining two-thirds of the area, where the slopes are too warm and dry for the big pine, the hardy pinyon pine and the juniper produce the “pygmy forest” growth common in the middle elevations of the Southwest.