Snake Dance

The vast array of ethnographic material at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago piqued Hermon Atkins MacNeil’s interest in Native American culture, and he traveled to the West in 1895 to experience it firsthand. This sculpture depicts the Snake Dance, a Hopi prayer for rain in which priests run from the high mesa to the plains while grasping handfuls of snakes. MacNeil achieved a new level of dynamism that reflected the thrill of the spectacle, as described by his friend, the author Hamlin Garland: “They had rushed four miles at top speed, but they mounted the trail toward Walpi with incredible celerity. As they passed me their long hair waved up at the sides in a peculiar and beautiful fringe. I have never seen anything finer in the way of motion.”